PC beeps/chirps during normal use.

[mac_mogul]

Motherboard is a Gigabyte p35-ds3l

When I turn it on and it posts, it beeps once very loudly as it should.

Then once I'm logged into Windows and doing whatever it is I need to do, it starts chirping at me. Not beeping loudly like during startup, but a softer chirping beep sound. And it isn't any type of pattern, it just does it randomly. Sometimes there's a lot of chirping quickly or sometimes there's one or two chirps and it's done.

It only does this if I'm turning it on or waking it up. Once it's been on for a few minutes, it never does it again until the next off/on/sleep/wake cycle.

It started doing this about 6 months ago when I had moved the computer after it had been shut down for quite some time. (I don't use it often)
I haven't found any info about chirping coming from this board, only info about beeping patterns during post.

I haven't replaced the CMOS battery, ever. Could that be the culprit? The current battery is about 6 years old.

Edit: I should clarify that I have had no other issues. The computer runs just fine. I've been playing Bioshock Infinite some lately and not so much as a hiccup. Just incessant beeping for the first 20 minutes or so of gameplay, ha.

 

[PP Mguire]

I had the same thing going on with that boards bigger brother paired with a Q8200. I just kind of ignored it.

 

[Joe C]

I would check the heatsink to be sure it wasn't jarred during a move, also re-seat the memory, video cards and re-seat all your power and data cables too. Usually, an indication of a weak cmos battery will show the pc not keeping the correct date/time

 

[james addison]

There could be many reasons a faulty cell in it or the heat-sink fan is damaged or not properly placed or some other hardware problem these kind of errors are so complicated to spot out what's actually going wrong you have to check everything one by one these types of errors really frustrate me a a lot

 

[mac_mogul]

I haven't had time to get it apart yet, but that'll be a project for this weekend and once done, I'll report back.

 

[mac_mogul]

So I'm reconditioning my MSI Hawk GTX 460 this week and I went ahead and swapped in my 9800 GTX and the beeping stopped.

So, something about my GTX 460 made my computer beep incessantly.

Case closed, I guess... Once I get the 460 all put back together with the OE fans, I'll see if that's the issue I've been having... for years.

The card was never problematic as far as performance was concerned and until the fans died very recently, it stayed below 65c at full load... so I'm not sure what the issue was.

 

[setishock]

Stalled fan alarm? I've had a couple of case fans die over the span of a month. Old age.
The stalled fan alarm on my MB is a soft chirp also. If the CPU fan stalls, which it has, it screams like a banshee.

 

[mac_mogul]

Okay well, after some work on the card the 460 no longer beeps.

I cleaned everything up, cleaned the heatsink, used new thermal paste, new fans connected to the card's controller and cleaned the pci-e contacts... no beeps!

With the fans being controlled by the card now, running variable speeds, the card is running a bit hotter than it was with my ghetto cooling solution linked in my post above... 74c vs 65c -- but 74c is still acceptable.

Although I did find that, since my original post in 2014, there now appears to be a slew of internet chatter about this card and its various issues. Beeping can be caused by the card not being seated correctly (not my issue, as I had tested many times...) issues with temperature sensors, among other manufacturing problems. Seems to be a great card that can OC well just has a few extra "MSI" features...