"Michael Brown" wrote in message ...
jbgcjncg wrote:
Okay, so my A64 3000+ system occasionally emits this sound as if a
wire is touching a spinning. After a little bit of makig it, it stops.
I'm really not sure what's up with that, but I'm fairly sure that no
wires are actually in any fans.

Prime suspect would be northbridge fan, GPU fan, or any other fans in the
40mm range. Most northbridge fans tend to start having problems within 6
months, sometimes sooner.

So anyway, when it began to make this sound today, I was rebooting
right around then, and when the American Megatrends logo showed up, I
was told that overclocking failed.

I had an ASUS board that did this periodically. IIRC it seemed to be caused
more often than not when the system wasn't soft-powered off (for example,
sometimes came up when you hit the reset button if Windows locked up). Just
check to make sure nothing's configured oddly in the BIOS and don't worry
about it

[...]

I think you may have nailed it.

I do have an ASUS K8V-X board, and I do believe that before I did this
controlled reboot, I switched the computer off while it was booting
because the sound scared the crap out of me. ASUS weirdness? Perhaps,
but it better not be attempting anything funny. I'm quite happy with
the board, otherwise.

I'll check out the fans from up close again, thanks for the hints!