Mobo coil whine when I move the mouse in certain games

Bottle · 11 Jun 2022 at 16:14

My new PC build is having a few issues! Firstly, a duff Noctua case fan (will return it). Then the BeQuiet Dark Power 12 PSU is buzzing a lot (will return it). And now I've noticed that when I run certain games and move the mouse around so that there are differential lighting on the screen (e.g., as I navigate around the start screen on Arma Reforger), I get alternating high pitched coil whine coming from the mobo (the best I can locate it to are the VRMS). It's an X570S Aorus Pro AX rev. 1.1.

Is this normal/common or have I got a duff mobo also?

I can't work out why it does it on certain images and not just navigating around Windows, etc.

Any advice?

RevBillyG · 16 Jun 2022 at 10:45

It might be your gfx card whining when running silly high frame rates in the menus. Try enabling VSynch to see if it goes away.

Bottle · 16 Jun 2022 at 11:42

Thanks. I've stuck my head into the case as best I can to try and locate the source of the noise. As far as I can tell it's coming from the VRM region, but I admit it's hard to tell. Interestingly it's becoming less pronounced as time goes on. I wonder if it's just a sort of "burn in" effect where perhaps the thermal pads for the VRMs needed to be baked on after load, etc. Alternatively, I changed a few Windows settings for the monitor (e.g., turned the graphics variable refresh rate setting on) which may have helped. Who knows?! Fingers crossed it will eventually completely disappear. Thanks again for your suggestion.

eeii · 22 Jun 2022 at 08:34

Try a large kitchen towel tube to find that sound. Unfortunately it could be the power supply as well.

Bottle · 24 Jun 2022 at 11:02

Thanks for the advice. I'll remember the kitchen roll idea for the future. However, it seems this noise has now disappeared completely. I'm assuming it was just a burning in phenomenon and the heat pads or what ever have finally equilibrated.

Rroff · 24 Jun 2022 at 11:04

If you are using a gaming mouse you might find 1000Hz polling rate results in some whine/interference noise either physically or apparent in headphones - dropping it to 500Hz can fix that without making much odds to mouse performance.