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Buzz noise with ECS board

E

edgardo

Junior Member
I have now purchased two of the Fry's ECS motherboard/sempron 3100+ bundle and they both have had a problem where I can hear a "buzz" noise when the system is more loaded. It almost sounds like electrical interference of some sort.

It certainly seems to happen when the cpu fan kicks in (and no it is not the fan). Has anyone else run into this?

I have an antec case with a very quiet PSU and Case fan.
 
Where is the noise coming from? The speakers? High or low frequency? Are you using the onboard sound? What are you using to load the system? Were you able to simulate the problem by running Prime95?

I'm using the onboard sound, with SMART fan enabled. No noise from system in Prime95 (CPU 100% load at 45C).
 
The noise is coming from inside the case from what I assume is the motherboard. Just to be safe I turned off the case fan and the cpu fan to listen more intently. It seems to be coming from the side of the motherboard between the PSU and CPU. I would consider the noise high-frequency and it varies in pitch and frequency. It is not a constant hum or buzz, which makes it that much more noticeable and annoying.

I am using the onboard sound and lan. To load the system I was encoding a DVD into divx. I have not run Prime95 but I will now.
 
My board and/or PSU also made that noise (ASRock and Antec). It went away after a while though when I added more Ram. It IS seriously annoying, but shouldn't be a problem as afar as I know. From what I read on the subject, it is known as Coil Buzz or Coil Whine. Search the forums on SilentPCReview (good site), there are a lot of posts about it. For me I couldn't really tell where it came from since a lot of coils on the MB were just under the PSU which also has lots of coils...
 
You have the MB's PSU section at that region. Could be cold solder joint(s). If the coil is the problem, then putting RTV silicon on the coil may help. Are you sure it's not coming from the video card? Pull the MB from the case and retest on a card board box. There is no high pitched hum coming from my rig.

See if you can return the MB and retest.
 
It might be one of the large coils on the mainboard swinging, or the same thing happening inside the PSU. If the former, a small (!) blob of hot glue is an easy cure.
 
Excuse the newbieness. How can I test the MB on a cardboard box? Do I need the CPU on it as well?

What kind of hot glue does one use?
 
Take the MB out of the case and put it on the shipping cardboard box. You can leave the CPU and CPU cooler in place. Just connect the two PSU power terminals, hard drive, mouse, and keyboard. Now you can tell if the noise is coming from the MB or the PSU.

Once you locate the offending component on the MB, apply RTV silicone or epoxy glue to prevent the part from oscillating. Wait for the glue to dry before use. What are the S/N of those ECS boards?
 
I had the same thing on an ASUS board - one of the torroids was "squealing" and generating excessive heat. Needless to say, the system was extremely unstable. The large section of capacitors and other components near the CPU socket deal with the boards power regulation, etc. Having issues here is less then ideal.
 
The system doesn't appear unstable at the moment but I am of course somewhat concerned. I may just buy a new mobo, after all the chip itself is worth the $80 I paid for both.
 
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