It sounds like a motorbike throttling up and down. very very annoying. I’ve scanned with MalwareBytes, nothing. I’ve updated my drivers and this is still happening. I’ve even underclocked and undervolted my graphics card and set it into a low power mode to try and stifle the usage but to no avail.
is there any way I can literally force the 3D usage down while my computer is idle? My computer isn’t running any program that uses 3D models right now. but it’s like my GPU thinks it’s running some 3D game. hella weird
edit it’s not the fan making the noise either, I’ve manually activated the fan to see if the fan is causing the noise, and it’s a separate nose to the one annoying me. the noise I’m hearing is a more grind-y noise like a motorbike or propeller airplane that keeps going in and out
Do you have any HDDs? Because that sounds like a bad hdd.
That was actually my guess too. A failing hard drive will tend to make a rapid clicking/grinding noise, as the read/write heads repeatedly snap back and forth across the discs.
OP said they have an SSD as their boot drive, too, so that would explain why it’s not constantly going. I’m not sure why GPU usage would spike every time the noise happens, though.
Entirely possible it’s a fan bearing instead, but ime if a case fan is going bad you hear it 24/7. And since it’s not the GPU’s fan…