The noise is driving me nuts. It rattles and ticks, and sounds like it’s about to fail. It’s just a few months old. I pulled the cooler assembly off, and removed the fan, and replaced it with an older one. I kept the heat sink, because the older one was about half the size and cooling capacity. But the old fan makes similar noises. I’ll go buy a new one at Fry’s, but I wonder if something else is going on.

[Update a while later]

OK, it’s not the fan. I stopped it momentarily, and there was no change. The question is: What is it? I can’t figure out exactly where it’s coming from. I only have one physical hard drive hooked up, and it’s not in the case.

[Update a while later]

OK, I changed power supplies. It’s better, though the noise is still there, and it’s not coming from the power supply. Still can’t quite isolate it. It’s now more of a steady ticking. It was doing it at 2 Hz or so, and now sounds like maybe 10, and not as loud.

[Update a while later]

This makes me wish I had a stethoscope.

[Sunday-afternoon update]

OK, got a stethoscope. The sound is not coming from anywhere or anything on the motherboard. I only hear it when I touch the case itself, and it seems to be being transferred through the metal. Still no clear where it’s coming from.

[Bumped]

[Update a while later]

I picked the case up off the desk, and the sound changed slightly. I set it back down, and it’s changed a little again. But whatever was rattling is still rattling. I feel like I may have to pull the board and reinstall. Part of the problem is that the front edge of the board doesn’t have much support, due to configuration.

[Monday-morning update]

OK, when I push the case away from the motherboard, it gets a little quieter.

[Early afternoon update]

OK, starting to think it is supernatural. I tried recording it, so people could hear what I’m talking about, but nothing came out. It was like that old tape in The Sixth Sense. But I upped the mike gain, and aimed it better (it’s my headset, which is pretty directional), and now you can hear it, if you crank up speakers. It’s about a 3Hz resonance.

[Wednesday-afternoon update]

I FOUND IT!

There is a huge case fan in the front that I had previously been unaware existed. It turned out to be impossible to R&R, due to being trapped behind a riveted drive cage. So I just unplugged it. The bad news is that I now know how loud my PSU and CPU fans are. But it’s still a huge improvement. White noise instead of rattling.

[Bumped]

Sound works fine in Fedora. Sounds works fine in Virtual Windows machine running in Fedora. Boot native into Windows 8.1, and no sound. Windows troubleshooter says there’s no problem. I’ve updated the Realtek drivers. Everything looks great on Windows, except no sound out of the speakers. And of course, Fedora running virtual on Windows doesn’t have sound, either, because it only sees what Windows sees.

She wasn’t happy running Windows as virtual in Fedora, but that seems to be the only way to get sound.

[Friday-afternoon update]

Well, I’ve sort of solved the problem, but it’s still not right. I unplugged from the rear, and re-plugged into the front jack, and RealTek sees it now. For some reason, it’s not seeing line out in the rear, even though it works fine in Linux. So we have sound, but it’s sort of a PITA to have to use the front jack, and keep the door open.

[Bumped]

[Update a while later]

Well, this is apparently not an uncommon problem.

Went to the MSI web site to download the latest RealTek driver, and it doesn’t recognize the hardware. So current MS driver may be the best I can do until they update.