Weird fan problem (noise)

I have a weird case fan problem. I have four case fans (cpu fan included) and the one connected to cha_1 makes a high pitch/hard drive kind of noise. At first I thought that the fan needed some oil but that's not the case. It's always the fan connected to cha_1 that makes the noise, no matter witch fan I connect. If I unplug one of the other fans the one connected to cha_1 is fine, no noise.

I'm trying to use SpeedFan to let one of the fans speed be determined by the gpu's heat. I thought for a while that SpeedFan might be the problem but I uninstalled it, removed all its files and reset the speed controls in BIOS. In this process I noticed that the fans sound OK as long as I am in BIOS but when I reboot the computer the noise starts again as soon as I reach the login.

All my fans have three pin heads so connecting one fan to the video card isn't really an option.

Any suggestions?

What is the make and model of your motherboard?

Normally, 3 wire fans can't be speed controlled by the motherboard. There were some motherboards back a few years ago that provided the ability to control fan speed via adjusting the voltage in bios but most all motherboards these days use PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) to control fan speed which requires a four wire fan and four pin motherboard fan headers.

What you describe sounds like it could be some kind of Windows driver issue if the noise only happens as Windows is loading. But something to look at as a workaround is a "Y" splitter that enables you to connect two fans to one motherboard header. That way you could avoid the one header that seems to cause the problem.

It's a ASUS M5A97 R2.0, Socket-AM3+
It used to have fan xpert when that was still supported but I'm still able to control the fan speed.

I'll try a Y splitter. Thanks for the advice!

It worked! I still cant use cha_1 without it making a lot of noise. But I don't have to... I also managed to make my own splitter from old cables. It doesn't look good but it works.

Glad I was able to give you some helpful advice.