Beeping noise?

[croden]

I am relatively new to pc building, I am usually able to find my answers in others' posts but not sure about this one, so I'm posting for the first time.

Ok, I've recently upgraded everything in my friend's case for her, except for the psu and the optical and floppy drives. It all worked fine for a few days, then it started making a strange new noise. On bootup, after the single beep indicating all is well with post, about the time windows is loading, there comes a long kind of screeching beep noise. It doesnt come on a reboot, only a cold boot. Also sometimes the pc doesnt come on at all, the fans will spin for a moment then nothing...this seems to only happen when rebooting.

After reading around in here I believe we have a psu issue, it is only 300 watts and pretty old. To back that theory up, on the times when it would not start, I would unplug the optical and floppy drives and then it would start.

I'm just confused as to why it only makes that beeping noise on a cold boot, and also wanting to make sure that beep doesnt signify a more pressing problem. When I listen close, it almost sounds like a series of beeps all run together rather than one long one.

In the case we have :
GIGABYTE GA-K8NF-9 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 4X ATX AMD Motherboard
PNY VCG66256XPB GeForce 6600 256MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card
CORSAIR ValueSelect 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) System Memory(2 sticks)
Western Digital Caviar SE WD1200JS 120GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 2.0GHz Socket 939 Processor
also 1 CD-RW, 1 CD-Rom, 1 Floppy, and 2 case fans.

I have a new 450 watt X-Clio psu on order from newegg, this should be sufficient right?

Thanks for any direction.

[flanzig1]

The PSU fans could be bad. When cold the bearings probably squeal until they warm up. Have seen that scenario many times with old muffin fans.

[croden]

Sorry I wasn't clear...I'm almost positive the noise is coming from the internal speaker...when I stick my head very close it seems to come from the same place as the single beep from post.

[newbuilder14]

Any cables come loose? HSF come loose? Video card? etc.

You said you moved the PC correct?

[croden]

Nope I'm pretty positive everything is firmly situated...what is the HSF? The graphics card and all the cables are new, I've double checked that everything's in the right spots...and it even runs ok, I'm just baffled by the screeching beep that comes on a cold boot.

[newbuilder14]

heatsink fan for the cpu

[glc]

Replace that power supply with a quality ATX 2.0 unit. That old 300 watter is not suitable for a PCI-E board of any type, much less one with a video card. The XClio should take care of that issue. I would NOT power that thing up again till you have the new PSU.

[croden]

I've got the new psu on it's way but I wanted to clear my mind that it was the only problem so I took the psu out of my pc, an Antec 500w, and plugged my friend's pc up to it.

Much to my dismay, it is still making the noise. At least I've figured out what is causing the beep. I watched the heat sink fan on bootup and it starts spinning when I push the power button as it should, but just as windows starts to load it stops spinning for a moment....when it stops is when it makes the long screeching beep. Must just be a default system error beep. It beeps for 3-10 seconds approximately then the fan begins spinning again and all is well. It doesnt do it when I turn the pc off and then start it again, only when it has been off for several hours. It was a new heat sink and fan out of the AMD box...is it possibly faulty? Or is there something else that could be causing this?

Thanks all for your helpful suggestions!

[glc]

Check your bios for fan controls and "cool n quiet" - they could be set incorrectly. I'd personally disable both.

[croden]

Ok I got the new psu in the other day, just had a chance to install it last night. I had an unused AMD heat sink and fan so I went ahead and installed that on the processor just to be safe, with a fresh application of Arctic Silver. I booted up, holding my breath, and it did NOT make the noise this time, so I thought it must have been a faulty HSF unit. Then today before work I switched it on to run some torture tests before giving it back to the owner and it made the stinking noise AGAIN. I was pretty perplexed...then I came back to the pcmech forums where I always scurry when I'm confused and saw the previous post. Thank you GLC I will try that when I get home from work. I'm thinking that must be it...I mean I've ruled out everything else so it almost has to be something in the bios.

[flanzig1]

That mother board also has a chipset fan just below the ram slots. Could a bad fan or the grill impeding the fan blades.

[croden]

You mean a fan built into the mobo? The board in this pc doesnt have any visible fans other than the one attached to the heat sink...maybe I'm not understanding...

[flanzig1]

If this is the mobo your working on:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128268
Then the gold square next to the ram slots is the fan for the chipset.

[croden]

Now I'm super confused...that is indeed the board, but there is no fan on it, only a gold heat sink. Looking at the picture on newegg it sure looks like there's a fan there but the one I received does not have that fan on it. I had noticed before that the gold heat sink on the board got pretty hot so I put a fan intake on the front aimed in that direction...I'm thinking maybe they left the fan off of mine, that kind of sucks.

[croden]

After doing some reading I've found out that the 1st version of this mobo came with a fan but later versions had a heatsink instead, so that explains that...that heatsink does get pretty toasty though, I wonder why they took the fan off.