Hardware Noises Coming From Power Supply

[Kirito-kun]

I've been noticing a static/arcing noise coming from my system's power supply. It's a 350W Antec VP350 PSU about 1.5 years old. It's hooked up to a Phenom II X4 960T BE (OCed) and a Nvidia GTS 450 (OCed). I know that 350W is kind of stretching it for my setup, but I've calculated the exact power consumption of my setup and it's under 250W.

The static/arcing noises only appear when running a very system-intensive game (Crysis, etc.). It's been happening for the last month with no noticeable consequences.

Is this normal? Should this warrant a power supply replacement?

 

[Thanatos Telos]

Odd. How long have you had the PSU?

 

[trumpet-205]

You sure you use Kill-A-Wat or something similar to calculate power consumption? 350 W is indeed stretching for overclocked Phenom II X4 + GPU.

Anyway, you sure the noise comes from the PSU not GPU? In any case what you are experiencing is called capacitor/choke whine. This happens when cheap components were pushed to the limit, which is gaming for you.

I would most certainly replace that PSU in the future.

 

[Kirito-kun]

Odd. How long have you had the PSU?

1.5 years.

You sure you use Kill-A-Wat or something similar to calculate power consumption? 350 W is indeed stretching for overclocked Phenom II X4 + GPU.

Anyway, you sure the noise comes from the PSU not GPU? In any case what you are experiencing is called capacitor/choke whine. This happens when cheap components were pushed to the limit, which is gaming for you.

I would most certainly replace that PSU in the future.

Not exactly, just added the theoretical maximum power consumption of all of my components together. It's not capacitor while though. It's more of an arcing/static electricity noise.