Which of the following components' failure will cause an intermittent grinding noise?

A grinding noise is a sign of a failing magnetic hard drive. If you don't have a decent backup and a way to reinstall the operating system, you should do it right away before buying a new hard drive. When solid-state drives (SSDs) and RAM fail, they produce no noise. A faulty processor fan would cause the CPU to overheat, causing the system to shut down.