is a legacy PSU causing this squeal / crickets?

[R B Customs]

hey guys so my machine had a circa 2010 setup for ages. i7 2600K, GTX680(bit newer), P8P67 pro, and my power supply was a PC power & cooling silencer 750w. everything was water-cooled. It had a reasonable coil squeal/cricket on speed noise but nothing really noticeable. I'd say it got worse at the years went on.

fast forward to this decade and I've swapped my motherboard, cpu, ram and gpu. I now have a Ryzen 5 3600, B450F strix, and an RX5700XT anniversary. Everything is still water cooled including a back-plate on the GPU. I still have the PCP&C 750w PSU.

I still have the squeal and the squeal is pretty bad. it's noticeably loud actually. I haven't yet tried to figure out which components are emitting the sound but it is in tune with game performance and sounds like like sqealing coils / vrms etc that changes tone with FPS.

My question is, could this be the PSU? perhaps the sound isn't emitting from the PSU, but could the power that the PSU is serving then cause this issue down the line? it's the oldest part of my system now and it's never let me down but i'm thinking it's dated now.

cheers

 

[EsaT]

It could be any part with some kind switching mode power regulator.
When more active SilentPCreview regularly mentioned it in graphics card and motherboard reviews.
(you bought very crappy&overpriced brand hype scam mobo)

Anyway if that PSU is "first gen" Silencer it was old already in 2010 and now it's very outdated.
Even Mk II is outdated.

Right now availability of many normal level PSUs is just rather bad.

 

[R B Customs]

It could be any part with some kind switching mode power regulator.
When more active SilentPCreview regularly mentioned it in graphics card and motherboard reviews.
(you bought very crappy&overpriced brand hype scam mobo)

Anyway if that PSU is "first gen" Silencer it was old already in 2010 and now it's very outdated.
Even Mk II is outdated.

Right now availability of many normal level PSUs is just rather bad.

Thanks for the reply, this might get complicated then! tonight i will stick my head in there when it's running and find the bit that's actually buzzing.
I used to be pretty conscious of component noise back in 2010 and remembered which boards at the time were bad / good for it - it's a thing you're right, and I took great care over that specific issue back in the day. i'm nowhere near as up to speed as i used to be though; have i wrongly assumed that manufacturers have weeded a lot of these problems out by now and don't have buzzing components out of the box?

Are you saying the mobo I got is really known to be that bad? I didn't really look into it at all. I was all set for getting an X570 but upgrades have been snowballing recently so I paired it all beck to a 3600+B450 bundle that was too good to refuse. I hope i've not bought a lemon! it was the difference between spending and saving a few hundred so i don't think i could have made a better choice really. A few of my friends are buying the same bundle and have no issues like me, which is why I'm seeing if anyone knows the PSU to be part of the problem.

so the PSU i have was maybe even an engineering sample at the time(i was a system builder). I got it directly from PCP&P for free so it's done a decent job so far. I reckon it's first-gen alright! the fan failed a number of years ago so i replaced it. but god, i just can't find an excuse to replace it really. the case is red, which is awful, and even that hasn't made me replace it. I built a few systems with them in but not many. at the time seasonic, corsair and tagen were all the better ones; evga maybe too. I'm hoping something about how the power is being delivered was contributing to the buzzing but i think i'm going to find it's unrelated.

i'll investigate further tonight and the last thing i'll do is pull a PSU from my girlfriends machine and try it just to rule it out. if it's the board I may send it back as it's pretty loud and i don't want this for another 10 years

 

[EsaT]

tonight i will stick my head in there when it's running and find the bit that's actually buzzing.

Waste of time:
Human hearing is bad for locating such type and in general higher frequency noises.
(once spent like half hour wondering where mosquito was in room... in the end found it from other direction than it sounded to be)

You'll need some kind "listening tube" for decent chances of locating its source.


In the words of Buildzoid: All makers suck.
(and scam you if you buy just for brand)

That Asus board is only good for 65W CPUs, making it ~£50 overpriced scam.
In The Stilt's testing stock 2700X made it literally overheat and throttle CPU in 12 minutes of X264 encoding.
Also 2600X with PBO enabled was too much.
Even lowly Asrock B450 Pro4 has stronger and cooler VRM and MSI B450 Tomahawk simply smashes it.
(Gigabyte B450 boards no better except for ITX)

In X570 situation turned around with half the MSI range having complete crap for the price B450 copypasta VRM:
https://nl.hardware.info/artikel/94...den-review-op-de-proef-met-een-3900x-vrm-test
Something good from lead free solder's higher melting/softening temperature with that MSI reaching 120C on backside...

While Asus corrected VRMs in X570 they just used 15 years old bad chipset cooler designs with tiny tinfoil origami heatsink relying on constant airflow from fan and everything directly under graphics card for bathing in its heat.
Which leaves Gigabyte the best/most balanced X570 board maker with chipset cooler capable to semi passive cooling and "correct" overkill VRMs in £200 Aorus Elite.

Also in graphics cards Asus is the worst brand for Radeons, by for example just sticking there cooler designed for Nvidia.
X5700 TUF is basically burning its memories from alive and super expensive Strix is also bad for its price.

 

[R B Customs]

Waste of time:
Human hearing is bad for locating such type and in general higher frequency noises.
(once spent like half hour wondering where mosquito was in room... in the end found it from other direction than it sounded to be)

You'll need some kind "listening tube" for decent chances of locating its source.


In the words of Buildzoid: All makers suck.
(and scam you if you buy just for brand)

That Asus board is only good for 65W CPUs, making it ~£50 overpriced scam.
In The Stilt's testing stock 2700X made it literally overheat and throttle CPU in 12 minutes of X264 encoding.
Also 2600X with PBO enabled was too much.
Even lowly Asrock B450 Pro4 has stronger and cooler VRM and MSI B450 Tomahawk simply smashes it.
(Gigabyte B450 boards no better except for ITX)

In X570 situation turned around with half the MSI range having complete crap for the price B450 copypasta VRM:
https://nl.hardware.info/artikel/94...den-review-op-de-proef-met-een-3900x-vrm-test
Something good from lead free solder's higher melting/softening temperature with that MSI reaching 120C on backside...

While Asus corrected VRMs in X570 they just used 15 years old bad chipset cooler designs with tiny tinfoil origami heatsink relying on constant airflow from fan and everything directly under graphics card for bathing in its heat.
Which leaves Gigabyte the best/most balanced X570 board maker with chipset cooler capable to semi passive cooling and "correct" overkill VRMs in £200 Aorus Elite.

Also in graphics cards Asus is the worst brand for Radeons, by for example just sticking there cooler designed for Nvidia.
X5700 TUF is basically burning its memories from alive and super expensive Strix is also bad for its price.

oh yikes, that's not good - I didn't realize a lot of that. I'd usually get hung-up on overspending for workstation spec stuff for a gaming rig but this is the only time where i've bought budget stuff purely for gaming. I definitely didn't buy it because of the brand, hype etc; I've no loyalty to any of these suckers for the reasons you state above! only for the bargain price and performance at that value did I buy this bundle.

luckily my case has good airflow, my watercooling is overkill for what's in it so perhaps I won't see my chip contributing too much to the board temperature. i've not noticed any throttling but i'll poke the bear a bit and see if I can cause it!

this board's got me up and running with a new chip, ram and CPU block which were significant and new expenses (i had to gave up my beloved XSPC prototype block as well ffs ) so a motherboard swap down the line isn't that scary of a thought; however, if i can find good reason to return this one I might before it's been more than 30 days. I never thought it would be a capable overclocking board so was not under any illusions there.

I get what you're saying about not being able to tell where the noise comes from, and yep there's a few tricks to find it that I will employ. a lot of the time simply pressing on things (dttah!) can give an indication too.

the GPU is direct from AMD. I bought it in the MM I was lucky enough to find one bundled with a fullcover block and plate. the stock cooler is a really nice looking cooler, beautiful in fact - but it's a blower, and i've heard terrible things about it. there was a period where people were waiting for 3rd party coolers and this is what we've got. a couple of my friends are buying 5700XT's at the moment and were sending me links to that asus TUF variant which is such a tempting price. what on earth are they playing at? they have the audacity to put an image of just the block, pipes and fins from the cooler with everything else removed and there's NOTHING for the memory. the audacious bit is that they've put a big arrow and label on the image pointing to the block that touches the chip with 'MaxContact Technology' on it. look at the chip, not around the chip, don't look around the chip - look at he chip. you're under. this will have MAX contact with the chip - not around the chip

I hate what market / release date pressure does to hardware these days there was very little (not none of) of this rushing things out back 10 years ago. I've never known a manufacturer to deviate so far from a reference design that they omit entire parts of it. the stock cooler cools the memory. maybe not much - but enough - more than not at all.

Thanks for your insight on the state of AMD boards at the moment. that's a lot of useful information there.

 

[EsaT]

I hate what market / release date pressure does to hardware

It's not about any rush.
Question is all about modern ga(y)mer hype marketing and branding selling **** to people dictating designs.
I mean as if VRM of Strix B450-F wasn't bad enough, marketroids even crapped plastic excrement on top of heatsink to sabotage cooling!
Pretty much all above low end boards have some kind useless garbage there to restrict airflow around VRM heatsink.

Semi-OK components and lack of such cooling sabotaging is the reason why MSI B450 Tomahawk would do decently well with stock 12/16 core CPUs with working case cooling.
But in X570 scale that and bigger heatsink just isn't enough, when other boards have VRM components whose theoretical max current capabilities are like doubled/tripled.
(like 12x 50A powerstages in Aorus Elite)

X570 chipset coolers have same problems.
Lots of boards have marketing excrement restricting that fan to make sure it has to run at higher speed than necessary.
Also Gigabyte is guilty to that with design quality decreasing when marketing hype increases:
Aorus Elite has unrestricted fan farthest from heat of graphics card. >
Aorus Pro moves it couple cm closer to graphics cards heat. >
Aorus Ultra slaps excrement on top of it to restrict fan.


RGB crap is another price bloater for lower actual quality.
And then there's this Wintoys10 abomination. (can't call it as Windows anymore)

Marketing shouldn't be let inside heavy sniper rifle range of technical design process.