Desktop Computer is Humming

[Scott M]

I hear this irregular humming noise coming from my tower now. Is my fan going out? or a more vital component?

Just in case I've got a big backup planned, but was hoping someone might have an idea what was going on.

[Jim43]

Often there is dust buildup on the fan itself. Have you opened it up lately and used some compressed air to blow the dust off the fans and clean it out.

I clean mine out 2 times a year and you would not believe how much

dust can build up that short a time. I take mine out on the deck

and open it and blast it out. Sure helps it out from heat buildup

then to. Especially around the CPU heat sink and video card.

[LMITOUT]

Very well could be a fan. I had a video card that had an on-board fan and it became noisy which is usually an indication that it's going to eventually fail. I searched around for a replacement fan but found it was just easier to buy a new video card.

[upnorth]

I am going to say try cleaning out it out first. Aside from your power supply fans and a few case fans you can pretty much take a pencil and stop the fan to see if that is the noisy one.

[Scott M]

I'm guessing sound card. All the sudden I don't have any audio.

[upnorth]

Not many audio(if any) have fans on them.

[LMITOUT]

Maybe it was the speaker buzzing?

[upnorth]

Could have been your sound card in it's death throes. Is it still making noise?

[DTro]

I wouldn’t rule out a HDD about to go bad. They sometimes will make some weird noises prior to crashing.

[upnorth]

It could be, but they usually grind more than hum when they start to go downhill. But may be a good time to copy important data files to somewhere else.

[Scott M]

still making the noise, a hum not a a grind. I checked all of my audio connections and hardware settings and don't have any audio. I'll try a reboot. Got evening plans but still have to search for a few more odd things that need backup.

Thanks for the help/suggestions.

[Nick Kuhn]

Open your case and stick your head in there to find out where it's coming from. Usually it's just a fan aging, or primary and secondary effects of dust build up (primary being physical interference with the motion and secondary making cooling more inefficient so "smart" fans speed up to higher speeds where they become more audible).

Also on audio Vista has a reputation for losing audio at times. Reinstall drivers usually takes care of things, or just resetting the device.