Why does my computer make grinding noises when using UE4?

Some really weird stuff is going on inside my PC when using UE4. I have never had this issue with any other application before.

When using certain parts of UE4, my computer (or I guess, harddrive) is making “grinding” noises. The noise differs from what parts of the application I use, which is absurdly strange.

At first, this just sounds like my harddrive dying. But I’m starting to question it, since it doesn’t make this noise in any other application, even when using the same harddrive.

That’s some weird ■■■ sh*t.
Does anyone have a clue what’s going on?

Chris

The same thing happens to me! The noise even varies depending on which panel my mouse is hovering over. Super strange. I feel like my computer is dying. I have an intel i7 liquid cooled cpu, 16 GB of 1866mghz ram, and a gtx 780 nvidia graphics card, so I know my computer can handle it.
My gaming laptop also makes weird noises when using ue4.

Whats going on?

It could be coil whineing,

Coil Whine Explanation & Demonstration Linus Tech Tips - YouTube Linustechtips

Interesting. That is a horrible noise in that video. Thank god my noise doesn’t sound like that. My noise is more of a ‘static’. My best guess is that it sounds like I can hear the electricity going through my processor, like a buzzing sound. And the sound varies depending on where my mouse actually is. Hovering over the content browser makes the worst noise.

Yeah. Its a common thing with coil whineing, i think its because of the fps change in ue4. My friend had that problem with stalker call of pripyat, every time he hovered over something the frequency of the whine changed.

I think you are right Ballistic. After carefully listening, I believe it is coil whining.

Well at least you’r pc is’nt dying, just very annoying.

Have a great day badRadley

Are you using usb powered speakers?

Yea, it’s definitely coil whining :slight_smile: Thanks

This buzzing noise when in the UE4 editor is happening to me as well, but only with my home PC, which has much more powerful hardware than my work PC (and this issue has not arisen when using UE4 on that). I remember something similar when playing either Rust or DayZ; I’ll have to verify which one that was.

There are a number of posts that describe this same or a similar issue (links below), all dated 2014 and newer. Seeing as this is happening with my fairly new and powerful PC build, I’d be very curious to identify any hardware similarities in others’ PCs that are encountering this issue.

Perhaps someone at Epic could organize a survey on whether they’ve experienced this and requested data collection on hardware specifics of the users, so we may be able to identify a pattern. It seems Epic really cares about their users, and I’m sure all of us would really appreciate the effort.

As it makes me a bit nervous to keep using UE4.

I hope this can be of help to someone else as this was very annoying for me, but turning off Realtime Rendering (CTRL+R) in the viewport has removed the coil whine (definitely coming from the PSU and only with UE4 in the Editor).

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Hello,
I also have the same issue.
coil whine while I’m working on UN4 with a brand new RTX 2070.
the GPU company’s said that is normal but I don’t understand why this happening only with unreal…
I’ve checked for cables and loose screws but everything is ok

I have the same issue, the noise is also noticeable with the cinematic movie export…

I think it happens when your monitor refresh rate is way lower than your GPU rendering power. I have a RTX 3080 ti with a 60Htz monitor (It got it because of its color accuracy) and hear that whining noise when I use Twinmotion. It however reduces a bit when I activate the VSync in preferences.
As I see in the comments most of you have pretty powerful GPU which most probably renders faster than your monitor refresh rate.

This is happening only when your GPU producing ultra high FPS like 800fps or 1000fps. It is normal.

Same exact thing happens to me as described it and only if I am working on Unreal nothing else. I use 3D apps which are demanding as well but no noise though.