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"Cheap ferrite chokes" on ASUS?

A

aamsel

Senior member
I am looking here at a new ASUS P7P55D-E Deluxe.
Some have said that this model emits a high-pitched whine, due to "cheap ferrite
chokes".

I know what a ferrite choke is, and where they are located, but how do you tell a cheap ferrite choke from a good one?

That asked, is there a current motherboard manufacturer among the key players that always uses better quality components than other manufacturers?

Any other reason to avoid this model?

Thanks!
 
To be honest, it will have more to do with your hearing sensitivity than "cheap chokes". Myself, I'm very sensitive to high frequency whines - I can tell when a TV or CRT is on in a room as soon as I walk in. Other people just aren't as selective.
 
Understand the replies above, thanks, but...
does any company generally strive to use top quality components now,
or do they all go for low cost?

We are talking about parts that cost pennies, just wondering.
 
I don't know if it's a quality issue, I thought all chokes were prone to this (maybe all vibrate, it's just a question of whether the oscillation is within our hearing range or not). This means it could also be coming from your PSU, video card, or any other devices that use coils. I think it can be especially common with high-end video cards.

tcsenter is on the right track, to prevent it you'd want to put some hot glue or something over the chokes to prevent them from vibrating. If you look at the internals of a power supply, a lot use some kind of "caulking" (don't know exactly what it is, but that's what it looks like) to prevent the coils from vibrating and creating noise.

The forums at silentpcreview.com are also a great resource if you're looking to cut down on coil whine.
 
aamsel said:
Understand the replies above, thanks, but...
does any company generally strive to use top quality components now,
or do they all go for low cost?

We are talking about parts that cost pennies, just wondering.
Click to expand...

Genuine intel motherboards tend to offer the higheset component quiality. However there features are limited and overclocking is not an option. They are just that bad at overclocking. All of them I have used or been involved with have never failed and the capacitors are usually very high quality japan caps, not taiwan.

I have no experiance on the newer AMD boards, but I would say gigabyte and asus are still tops for quality.
 
PottedMeat said:
This is an example of a surface mount inductor you find on a motherboard: http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=M8496TR-ND
They may also have exposed windings like this:
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=M8762-ND

Whine may be caused by poor potting/fastening of the windings, changes in load, or by funky control loop design.
Click to expand...

Great, thanks for the information.
I am assuming that, on this ASUS board, the ferrite chokes are the gray/black rectangles that surround 2 sides of the socket.
 
frostedflakes said:
Again, are you sure the sound is coming from the motherboard...?
Click to expand...

I have not heard the noise, but have only run the board for about an hour.
My OP was basically to inquire about the "defect", which I have read a bunch of posts about, and whether there is a better made board.

Some people have said that it is certain BIOS settings, like C-States that sets the noise off, so I may not have heard it for that reason, or I may never hear it.

I am inclined to believe that I will be fine.
 
Now why would you quote spam? -ViRGE

Edit: his post count was high enough i thought it might have been real and was wondering how it related.

wtf?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
aamsel said:
I know what a ferrite choke is, and where they are located, but how do you tell a cheap ferrite choke from a good one?
Click to expand...

A ferrite choke is so simple in tech that it is pretty hard to screw up the design. It is just a wire wrapped around a core made of iron particles. If the wire isn't wrapped tight enough or potted in place then it might make noise, but other than that they are all pretty much the same.

You can put a drop of silicone on the noisy ones,
 
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