What Could This Sound Mean?

[H. Flower]

So I have a 2.66 Nehalem, 12 gigs of RAM, the upgraded Radeon. 3 WD Black 1 TB internal drives.

Every so often the machine will make a soft, rolling, rickety sound, which is sustained for minutes on end, before slowly rolling away.

Any ideas on what it could be?

 

[macuserx86]

any chance of recording it?

 

[zmttoxics]

So I have a 2.66 Nehalem, 12 gigs of RAM, the upgraded Radeon. 3 WD Black 1 TB internal drives.

Every so often the machine will make a soft, rolling, rickety sound, which is sustained for minutes on end, before slowly rolling away.

Any ideas on what it could be?

Could just be a fan with a slightly off bearing, or just spinning up to compensate for heat.

 

[shroud]

I'd say fan too. Without a recording it is hard to say for sure though. My Mac Pro has a sound that I would describe just like you did but it also has a passively cooled 7300GT so no fans other than the case fans. My noise seems to be from one of the front fans as I move my ears around the case.

I have had it for almost three years and no problems with my temperatures yet.

 

[Dr.Pants]

I know this is with a G5, but I remember a buzzing sound that I thought was a fan, but it turned out to be an improperly mounted hard drive (my boot drive, too ), and I only found out about it via having the machine open. This probably isn't the problem (the MacPro has better HDD brackets, in my opinion), but still, pinpointing where the sound is coming from is probably your best bet,