Laptop creaking sound

No PC is truly silent, but your computer shouldnt be noisier than your lawnmower. If you have to turn up your music just to drown out the whirring or grinding noises your computer makes, you may want to look into thatit could be the first signal of some serious problems.

Knowing how to tell different hard drive noises apart and learning what they might mean, can save your computer. Or at least give you an unequivocal pass to buy a new one.

Clicking or grinding noises

Lets start with the most worrisome sound. If your computer starts to click, grind, or make any sort of low-pitched buzzing noise, you should stop what youre doing and check the hard drive. This sound could indicate a dying disk. Do not ignore this sound.

To check your drives health, I recommend a third-party tool like CrystalDiskInfo [Windows] or DriveDx [macOS]. Fire up the program, click on each of your drives in the menu, and make sure theyre all listed as Good. If it indicates your drive is anything less than that, you should back up all your data as soon as possible. You may still have some time to do sooccasionally a drive marked Caution can still run for years, but if its making noises, the drives death might be close. Once all your files are safe, consider replacing your drive with an SSDnot only will it likely last longer, but itll make your computer feel much faster. If your hard drives are healthy, take the incident as a warning and avoid any unpleasant surprises by backing up your data regularly, because as it happens to any living creature, all hard drives will die one day.

One youve ruled out your hard drive as the culprit, youll need to dig a little deeper to find the source of that clicking sound. If your computer still has a DVD drive, then it could be in the process of failing, and needs repair or replacement.

Finally, in a lot of desktop PCs, a clicking noise could just mean a cable has gotten too close to a fan, and is getting hit repeatedly by the blades. If youre comfortable with a screwdriver, open up your PC and make sure the fans are clear of obstructions.

Loud whirring noises

If theres one sound every computer user knows well, its the loud whoosh that comes from an overzealous fan running at full speed. On a desktop PC, this will likely be low-to-medium pitch like the video above, and on a laptop, it could be higher-pitched and much more annoying. The smaller the fan, the louder and higher pitched that noise will be.

If youre hearing this, theres a very good chance your machine just needs some cooling adjustment. You might also want to check your hard drives health, just in case, since a drive spinning up and down repeatedly could create a similar sound. Finally, check to see if theres a disc spinning in the DVD drivesometimes those can be obnoxiously loud even if theyre working properly.

If your fans are indeed too loud, start by opening Task Manager in Windows [Ctrl+Shift+Esc] or Activity Monitor in macOS [under Applications > Utilities] and see if any applications are taking up a large portion of your CPU. If your computers working hard, the fans will work hard to cool it, so you may have a program running in the background you forgot about, or malware eating up resources without you knowing. Close the offending program or run a malware scan to see if that helps.

If your computer is idle and still making fan noise, it could be overheating. A program like Core Temp [Windows] or Fanny [macOS] can tell you if your CPU is running hot. As a ballpark, if you arent running anything strenuous and your CPU is 70 degrees celsius or higher, Id say thats abnormal, and will likely cause excessive fan noise. If youre using your laptop in bed, make sure to put a tray or anything solid under ityour clothes, skin or blankets might be preventing the system from cooling off, making the fans work harder and louder. The same happens with accumulated dust, so give the fan grilles a few passes with a dust blower, or better yet, an electric duster. If you feel comfortable, you might even want to open up your machine and wipe the dust off the fan with a clean microfiber cloth.

Finally, if you have a desktop PCespecially one you built yourselfyou may just need to adjust the fan curves in the BIOS. Some of your fans may be running at 75% or 100% all the time by default, which is unnecessary. Or, the curves may be set in a weird spot that causes the fans to constantly ramp up for a few seconds to cool the CPU, but then they ramp back down, allowing the CPU to get hot again. Press *Delete* as your computer starts to enter the BIOS screen, and look for any fan control settings you can play withtry a lower setting, but dont set them too low, lest your temperatures get too high.

Sounds coming from your speakers, even when you arent playing anything

Put your ear closer to the soundis it coming from inside your computer or is it coming from the speakers? Speakers are supposed to make sound, but if youre hearing noise from them even when your computer isnt playing audio, something might be wrong. Make sure the speaker cable is plugged all the way in to your PCyoull usually hear a click that tells you the cable is fully connected, but sometimes you have to really shove it to get that last millimeter in. If that doesnt work, you can troubleshoot your speakers by plugging them into another device [like your phone] to see if the sound persists. The problem could be in your speakers cable, or it could just be feedback from the internals of your PC, in which case a USB sound card, also known as a DAC, might help.

You might also be experiencing a ground loop, in which case a ground loop isolator can reduce the noise. Ive even had speakers that picked up faint radio signals due to poorly shielded cables, which is a remarkably spooky experience.

Ultimately, there are so many things that can cause unwanted noise from speakers that we could probably write a whole article on the subjectbut if you play around with your connections, you may be able to narrow down the source, and replace the offending component.

Buzzing or screeching noises

If none of the above have fixed the problem, but youre still hearing a buzzing sound, it could be just about anything. Heck, if theyre mild enough, any of the above problems could be described as buzzing, so check your hard drive and running processes before you move on.

Once youve discarded all the scenarios above, my first guess would be that youre experiencing coil whineone of my least favorite noises in computing, since theres often little you can do about it.

Coil whine happens when the coils in your components start vibrating at just the right frequency to start making a very annoying noise. It can be anywhere from a low-pitched buzz to a high pitched squeal, and often happens when your computer is under load. If you can pinpoint the source, you might be able to mitigate the noise, at least to some degree. For example, in gaming PCs, coil whine commonly comes from the graphics card when its doing a lot of work, in which case you can decrease your graphics settings or turn on VSync to lighten the load. Ive also heard coil whine on a lot of power adaptersif you move your laptop or monitors power brick further away, it may not be as annoying. Some laptop manufacturers may even offer other power adapters without the old school brick that may coil whine less. In other cases, theres nothing you can do, and youll have to suffer through the noise.

If you arent convinced the buzzing sound is coil whine, you might also look back at your fans. If they are vibrating against the steel case of your desktop PC, some rubber dampeners may help stop the sound. Your fans may also need lubrication, so a small drop of sewing machine oil in the bearing of an old fan can make it run like new again. And if you have one of the ever-so-trendy all-in-one liquid cooling units in your gaming PC, make sure its mounted properly, and check the manual to see if the pump is adjustableturning the pump speed down could lessen the buzzing sound it makes.

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