Buzzing through speakers

strumpusplunket

strumpusplunket

strumpusplunket

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5 Feb 2009
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When I got my GTX 780 the other week, I thought there was some fairly minor buzzing coming from it that I could hear when it was being stressed.

I've noticed, however, that whilst there is some buzzing coming from the card itself, this is only actually audible if I put my ear near to the case under the desk. From my seat it's completely inaudible. What I was hearing was buzzing coming through my speakers.

Because the speaker volume was low initially when I was testing the card I just put it down to minor electrical buzz I've had on a couple of cards and that seems to settle down with use. When playing Tomb Raider, though, and turning the volume up I noticed the buzzing increasing with the speaker volume to the point it became unbearable at decent volume levels for immersive gameplay.

There's no buzzing when I use my USB headset, and I can cure the issue if I unplug and plug the speaker cable into my sound-card output a few times. It's a bit hit-and-miss, but I can usually make it go away with a bit of fiddling with the connection.

Any ideas what might be causing this? It didn't happen with my old GTX 670, so I'm inclined to think it is some sort of electrical interference from the graphics card.

My speakers are quite old Videologic Sirocco Spirits plugged into an equally old Creative Soundblaster Audigy 4.
 
As you've guessed, it's EMI (electromagnetic interference) from the new card that is affecting your sound card. Unless you can try the card in a different slot, that is further away, there is not much you can do about it without possibly trying a different card.

You have no way of knowing though, if any replacement card will also suffer. This is a sound card's Achilles heel. A card may go from perfectly working card to useless, just by changing GPU.

As you are getting no noise through USB, an external option would offer better protection against EMI, although in some cases USB can also be affected.
 
Right, thanks for confirming that. I thought that seemed likely but really don't know much about this sort of issue.

My sound-card is already in the bottom PCI slot and my 780 in the top PCI-E slot so I can't move them farther apart.

I guess I could try onboard sound to see if that suffers the same issue.
 
I just bought the MSI GTX 970 and had the same problem with my Creative SoundBlaster Z card, which was right next to the 970.

I moved the card to my bottom PCI express slot and solved the issue. I had the problem even though the Z has an EMI shield (allegedly). Now no buzzing when I move the mouse, or play games, I only put up with it for a day.

Cheers

Von
 
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