sound issue outside of game

[Getback]

I was watching Psyche online when I started noticing a bit of a soft static or soft popping sound. It became annoying after a while. After the episode I did some research. One suggestion was that it was a virus. My issue didn't exactly match the description but what the heck let's give it a try.

So I ran ad-aware and found 91 items and deleted them. Still the sound issue was remained. Afterwards I ran my AV and found one virus. Which it automatically deleted. That didn't cure the problem either. Soon after I did a "restart" and yet the issue remained.

I thought that maybe there were temporary files stored from watching Psyche and did a disk cleanup. No good, problem remained. Well I didn't want to but I started searching for realtek drivers. But before I did that I thought let's shut the system down to install the MS updates. When I turned the computer on the problem was gone. Go figure.

[Chalenge]

How old is your PSU?

[Getback]

3 years old.

[Chalenge]

It might be coincidence but that (audio anomaly) is one of the first signs of a PSU that is out of spec. The next indication will be random data loss on a hard drive. Finally one or more components will fail if not the PSU itself.

If you are running at above 75% of rated capacity you might consider replacing it with one more appropriate or at least have it checked out.