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SOLVED Strange noise and heat

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Aldakoopa

KING OF PROCRASTINATION Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2012
Location
North Carolina
Just started having an issue with my graphics card. I haven't had any issues with this card whatsoever... until now. I was only on the internet using Google Chrome, so I wasn't putting it under load or anything, and the screen flashes black for a second, comes back and my taskbar and windows are set back to the default blue/grey color instead of black, and I start hearing a high pitched noise coming from my card. It would last about 5 or so seconds and then stop, then start again for another 5 seconds. It sounds like it's coming out of the back, directly where the DVI ports are, but that might be because of the holes for ventilation being there as well and giving the sound a clear path to travel. The fan was still running perfectly fine. I opened up HWmonitor and GPUz and checked on everything, and it had reverted to it's factory clock settings (820MHz core 1100MHz mem) and the temperature was climbing as if it was under load. It normally idles around 30-35C, and its temperature was at 55C and climbing. My overclock was done in CCC if that makes any difference.

All details are in my sig.
 
Sounds like the capacitors in your GPU were whinning while windows was doing a refreshed Windows Experience Index so it was actually under a 99% load, there are i think 3 GPU tests that all take 10-15 seconds, DX9, DX10 and something else. That would be my guess anyway.

EDIT: If it did the test and your drivers crashed and reverted to stock, then the OC probably wasn't stable enough, it's also not unheard of for the Windows Aero to reset to default after a driver failure or after a new refresh.
 
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Well, the overclock was stable in all my games except one (GTA4) so I guess going under load in a DirectX test could possibly do it. Does Windows really run these tests at random in the background? I have noticed the theme resetting before on obviously unstable settings, but never heard the noise until last night.

I guess I could turn the overclock down, turn the overclock in CCC off and go back to the tried and true Afterburner, and if that still doesn't help revert the drivers back to 11.12 and see if that makes a difference.
 
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Sounds like the capacitors in your GPU were whinning while windows was doing a refreshed Windows Experience Index so it was actually under a 99% load, there are i think 3 GPU tests that all take 10-15 seconds, DX9, DX10 and something else. That would be my guess anyway.

EDIT: If it did the test and your drivers crashed and reverted to stock, then the OC probably wasn't stable enough, it's also not unheard of for the Windows Aero to reset to default after a driver failure or after a new refresh.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this thread as solved because after making some adjustments nothing similar has happened. I didn't know about the DX tests and that must have been what was making the noise because my computer has run fine all day without a problem, so it wasn't any kind of hardware fault or damage. Thanks for your answer! If somebody hadn't been able to tell me about that I would probably be afraid to even use my computer today. :chair:
 
I'm pretty sure WEI has to be user initiated... But either way, keep us updated.

It's a scheduled event, even after you run it it can run again. Iv'e had it happen on mining rigs because i tried to run the test before i started to keep it from running during workloads. It will reschedule a run when it detects a new GPU, new drivers and sometimes frequency changes.

The current version of WinSAT in Windows Vista (Build 6002) and Windows 7 (Build-7600.16385) performs the following tests:

Aero Assessment
Direct3D Alpha Blending Assessment
Direct3D Texture Load Assessment
Direct3D ALU Assessment
Windows Media Playback
CPU Performance
Memory Performance
Disk Performance (includes devices such as Solid-state drives)

While running, the tests show only a progress bar and a "working" background animation. Aero Glass is deactivated (but not in Windows 8) during testing so the tool can properly assess the graphics card and CPU.

In addition to tests requested by the user, WinSAT is scheduled to automatically run every week. The default schedule is 1am on Sundays.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_System_Assessment_Tool
 
Well, come to think of it, it did happen at exactly 1AM on Sunday. That's defintely it.
 
A little update on this, the Windows theme changing back to default happens even on the stock settings when I start the assessment, so it wasn't even a driver crash, so I'm back to my 900/1200 OC that I don't have to worry about unless I'm playing GTA4 (which I haven't even tried since updating my drivers to 11.12 and then 12.1 a few days ago). :D

I just didn't know Windows did it automatically, and for some reason there was no progress bar at all, only the noise from my GPU. Starting it manually causes the same noises. I'm new to Win7. I know, I'm late in the game, but this is my first new computer in... 5 years? My old one had XP. :rofl:
 
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