[Lumen249]

Hello there!

I've been experiencing an extremely weird issue with my PC for the past couple of months, and I think in order to give a proper assessment you should know the entire backstory. Buckle up, it's a fun one.

While playing World War Z for the first time for about 3 hours, my PC began to lag for a couple of seconds and while frozen I could hear one distinctive beep coming from the tower. The beeps became more frequent in-game, always 1 beep at a time. I stopped playing the game, thinking it was too strong for the components to handle, however, when I went back to another game I've been playing for months (that worked totally fine before, of course) the PC continued to beep.

I tried googling the issue but couldn't really find anything that's exactly the same as what I'm experiencing. I stopped playing games for a while and everything worked fine. I work from home and I never had issues with those programs, only games. So, once I decided to play a bit after a few weeks, I log into the launcher of the game and the PC starts beeping again, this time while updating/installing, continuously, one beep every 3-4 seconds. This eventually escalated to beeping when opening a folder.

I send the PC for a checkup, they clean it up, do diagnostics and only find a faulty fan - apparently, everything is fine with the hardware. Okay, maybe it's the software. I do a full clean OS install, no change. I reset BIOS to default settings, no change. I check the temp of each component, nothing. And then one day I'm just existing and I smell burnt plastic from the tower. I turn everything off as quickly as possible and open the tower, and figured out that the CPU fan stopped working and started melting.

I take it to another PC service, they do the same thing, clean it up, change and upgrade the melted fan, do a full diagnostic. No other issues found. I keep using the damn PC because I have to (work), but I stop playing games or installing stuff until I figure out what to do. At a certain point, the beeping began during startup and it just continued while the PC was on, so I gave up completely. I find a family friend that's knowledgeable and patient enough to test it to the max, so I send the PC to him. He does a stress test for everything, memtest, etc etc. RAM fine (48h test), HDD fine (also 48h test), motherboard fine (not sure about this one). Oh, did I forget to mention that the PC didn't beep even once for him, or any of the others?

Yeah, that too. That was the weird part, so I decided to call an electrician, changed my power cable, disconnected my UPS. Everything works fine, and the PC still beeps.

So, I'm basically clueless at this point. None of it makes sense, and I'm not sure what else I could try, I'm really hoping maybe someone has an idea of what else I could do.

Motherboard: Gigabyte X150-PLUS WS-CF
RAM: HyperX DDR4 8GB+8GB
CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K CPU @ 3.50GHz
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 580
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 4TB
SSD: Kingston SHFS37A/240G 240GB SATA SSD
Power Supply: Thermaltake Smart SE 730W (87% efficiency)

 

[Stancestans]

What exactly did the electrician find/do/check/change? Disconnected UPS from what, mains power or your PC or both? Try listening in close to find out where exactly is the beeping coming from. Disconnect and power off ALL other non-essential hardware like desktop speakers.

 

[Lumen249]

What exactly did the electrician find/do/check/change? Disconnected UPS from what, mains power or your PC or both? Try listening in close to find out where exactly is the beeping coming from. Disconnect and power off ALL other non-essential hardware like desktop speakers.

The electrician first recommended I get a new power cable before he checks anything, after it kept beeping he checked the stability of the outlets in the apartment. I tried using the PC in another room (nothing really happened but it wasn't plugged in for long), on a different outlet, only with one monitor at a time (I have two), but I haven't tried without speakers (I'll give that one a try).

The UPS was connected to the power cable and PC, I removed it completely so now the PC and monitors are directly plugged into a power cable with overvoltage protection, along with the speakers and a desk lamp.

The beeping is 99.8% from the motherboard, there's nothing else it could be at this point. But given all the random symptoms, there were times where I thought it might be the power supply, processor, HDD... None of it really makes sense, the more we checked the more confused we got. I'm back to using the PC now and it didn't beep while installing games initially (I did another test just in case, dunno), but did while playing them, and yesterday when I tried installing another one it started beeping again. At this point, I'm not opening any launchers because the automatic updates trigger it right away.

I also didn't mention that I was checking overheating while gaming, and the beeping and lagging didn't seem to trigger any immediate changes.

 

[Stancestans]

Which part of the motherboard is the beeping coming from? Is it the speaker (if your mobo has one), or some other part, for example, the components close to the CPU (VRMs, etc)? The fact that it didn't beep even once when your friend was stress testing it and while you tried it in a different room speaks volumes. It can't be a coincidence that it didn't beep after all the testing they did. Try it in that other room for much longer; long enough to confirm whether it behaves the same or not, even if it means running a stress test for hours on end. It could even be the surge protection power extension/strip. Try plugging in the UPS directly to the wall outlet. At this point, elimination is the only way to figure out what could be going on. You've already established it's not an overheating or software problem, and it's unique to your setup.