A new Corsair 450VX power supply is making a high pitched rattling noise when I scroll around in a full screen web browser.

Putting constant load on one of the CPU's cores turns that into an almost steady high pitched whine.

The whine is inaudible from about 6 feet away, but loud enough to be annoying at 3 feet where I sit. I can hear it over the stock fan on the CPU (4600+ X2 65W). Case is an Antec Solo with fan set to low.

Here's the really weird part: Switching out the old passive ATI X300 for a factory overclocked GeForce 9600GT provokes kind of opposite symptoms - the power supply whines all the time, and becomes silent when I scroll in the full screen web browser.

I can get the power supply refunded or replaced. Is this noise normal?

All I can tell you is that my 450VX is completely silent.
Extremely happy with it.

Its kinda normal what your experiencing. Some PSUs hiss/whine.

I would RMA it and hope to get a better sample next time.

It isn't unheard of but I wouldn't call it normal either. I wouldn't put up with it.

fight the powa

not sure how helpful this is but i just discovered something interesting about my vx450.

i ran ati tool' "3d thing", whatever the heck it's name, to load the 3870 (swapped sinks on it) and psu started making very annoying, very high-pitched noise that would go up and down in intensity. sort of like a tiny police siren running inside the psu.

i thought that before i start panicking, i'll try and see if increasing load will make any difference. as soon as i started up the prime, the noise is gone.

ATItool's 3D view thing makes noise just about everywhere

i see