Electrical Buzzing sound on my motherboard

[Dave3000]

Ever since I bought my Asus P9X79 Pro motherboard, it get's an electrical buzzing noise around the CPU socket area. It only happens if I have C1E, C3, C6, or C7 enabled in the BIOS with vcore set at Auto. I had an i7 3820 before my 3930k and it still did it with the 3820, only did it quieter. I also tried another 3930k chip and my motherboard still gave me the same noise as this one. I have a Corsair TX850w power supply that I bought 4 years ago and I"ve been thinking about buying a Coolermaster Silent Pro 800w if it will get rid of the electrical buzzing. I talked to Asus about the buzzing and they are blaming it on my hard drive so I really can't convince them that it is from the motherboard until I try out another motherboard and see if the problem persists and that means buying a new motherboard and taking everything apart. Also I heard that some power supplys can cause this problem with CPU power saving features enabled. I can go out and buy the power supply and see if the electrical buzzing sound happens and maybe I should get a new power supply anyways because my power supply is getting old. It would be cheaper and easier for me to just replace the power supply than the motherboard. The electrical buzzing sound happens when I load FSX and sometimes while I browse the internet. I had this board for 1 year. I know a few workarounds the the problem but I end up disabling major features of my CPU which I don't find acceptable.

 

[Dave3000]

I'm thinking about buying the MSI X79A-GD45 Plus from a local electronics store to see if it's my motherboard that's the problem. It looks like a solid basic X79 motherboard. If it turns out to be a motherboard problem then I will contact Asus that it's the motherboard. I just don't like the idea of spending money to find out what the problem is so that I can get my warranty honored.

 

[bononos]

So what will you do with your other mb (and psu if you plan to get another one) once you've located the source of your problem? The buzzing/high pitched squeals/whine is hard to pin down and might have no real fix apart from an rma. A google of of your Asus and Corsair components have hits on forums. You might want to have a look at those.

 

[tweakboy]

It could be your video card fan.
and check other fans.

Or the PSU fan. Either way sit tight, this is not the end,, Your rig will run fine.

It could also be the speakers.

Wouldnt blame CPU or RAM . So PSU and video card all is left. RAM doesnt make noise were cool there. Then let us know. gl

 

[Compman55]

Several laptops, and MB's that I have owned produced the same effect over the years. I have had no stability or longevity reduction as a result.

Not saying its normal, but it is more common than you think. Its just people can;t hear it, or their hardware drownds out the sound.

 

[Dave3000]

I recently tried a new power supply, a Coolermaster Silent Pro 800. My motherboard is still giving out the electrical buzzing sound sometimes when I have CPU power saving features turned on with Auto vcore.

 

[Dave3000]

Well today I tried a different motherboard, an MSI X79A-G45 Plus. Still got the same problem with the squealing noises, especially while loading FSX after loading Windows 7. The C settings I left at defaults which were Auto and C1E I left at disabled in the BIOS of this MSI motherboard. I returned the motherboard since it didn't solve the noise problems I was getting with the C settings turned on or on Auto. Asus granted me an RMA on my board but I'm now thinking that my chances of getting a replacement won't solve my problem.

I used to own a Gigabyte X58 board that had the same squealing as my Asus X79 and that MSI X79 board I tried out. I don't even think I going to bother RMA'ing my Asus motherboard as I don't want to be without a PC for a few weeks and I don't think it's going to solve my problem now. I want to have the C settings turned on so I can get higher turbo bins for lighter threaded programs, in otherwords faster performance in lighter threaded programs.

I don't think it's one of my case fans that's doing the squealing because when I set the CPU vcore to a manual setting, the squealing stops or if I disable all CPU C settings it stops the squealing as well. However, I'm keeping the new power supply because I felt it was time to replace it anyways as it was getting old and at least helped in the process of elimination.

Maybe it just takes the right combination of hardware to eliminate the squealing noise?

 

[nightspydk]

Are you sure its not the PSU. I had the same problem on a x58 Gigabyte and as far as I remember, the problem occurred when combined with certain PSUs. The problem is discussed on Gigabyte forum.

The buzzing sound is usually emitted from electrical components, mobo, psu. The capacitors eg.

Hope that made sense.

Maybe a bit far fetched considering.. I ran a Gigabyte PSU btw and they are not really considered brand.

 

[Compman55]

I know this can crash the OS but you may consider loading the program that causes the squeal, then unplug all of your platter based hard drives. The spindle motors can cause a frequencey in the PSU, then it gets transfered to the MB. I know this is far fetched, but I had one do this only with 7200.7 model hard drives back in the day. Once moving to WD JB series drives, the sound stopped. It too was coming from the power section of the motherboard which threw me in terms of troubleshooting.

On a serious note, are you concerned due to reliability, or becuase it is loud enough to be annoying?

 

[Dave3000]

I doubt it's the power supplies. I also built an i7 3770k with an Asrock Extreme 4 motherboard about 1 month ago and used my Corsair 850TX power supply. Only thing that was different was the CPU and motherboard. That combination of components never squealed with the CPU vcore on Auto and CPU power saving features enabled. I didn't end up keeping the i7 3770k and Asrock motherboard. I tried also an MSI Z77-G43 board with the i7 3770k and it squealed with C6 turned on in the bios, worse than my Asus P9X79 Pro. However the MSI board didn't squeal if I disabled C6. Disabling C6 on my P9X79 Pro does not get rid of the squealing, as I have to disable all C settings on this board to get rid of the squealing or run at a fixed vcore if I want any of the C settings enabled without the squealing. I also used to have an Intel P67 board with an i7 2600k and it never squealed when I had an Intel 160GB SSD but when I upgraded to a 240GB Kingston SSD it would high pitch buzz for a second but not very often and it would usually do it in Crystal Disk Mark in the 4k tests unless I used a utility to disable C1E and turn off CPU power saving feature in the BIOS.

Of course I could try a hard drive instead of an SSD but then the accessing sounds of the hard drive during accesses might mask the squealing if it doesn't eliminate the squealing as the squealing is whenever something gets loaded from my SSD sometimes, like FSX loading for the fist time but not making that sound the 2nd time I load FSX, as this is the only situation that I can reproduce the squealing I'm mentioning here. Also it can't be a defective SSD because my previous Samsung 256GB did the same thing, my old Kingston 240GB did the same thing, and a Crucial 512GB m4 that I tried out did the same thing or actually I think these SSD's didn't cause the squealing.

I also tried an old Radeon 6450 card just to rule out the squealing and still I got the same squealing when loading FSX for the first time. I'm not talking about the so-called coil whine that come from video cards when the fps are very high that people keep talking about as I know that it's not that.

I don't think it's worth buying another X79 motherboard for the 3rd time when it possibly won't solve the problem as I already tried 2 different ones, I had other boards that did those noises in the past with different CPU. Even if I RMA my Asus motherboard, too much money would be lost because I would have to buy an X79 board while I wait for a replacement from Asus assuming that I get a replacement and not the same one back saying that they couldn't find a problem.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

I feel your frustration. I hate electrical noise. I was on a silent PC kick for a while, but I gave up because after you eliminate all the fan and hard drive noise, you start it hear it from all sorts of stuff -- voltage regulators, PSUs, graphics cards.

It's sometimes really hard to get to the bottom of it -- certain combinations of components will induce coil whine, while others are silent. Interesting that you should mention the Extreme4: I actually returned two of those before switching to an Asus board that doesn't whine in my setup.

Good luck to you in solving the problem! All you can really do is keep switching parts out till you find a combo that doesn't cause noise. Those of us with sensitive ears are cursed!

 

[Dave3000]

Also sometimes when my 7200 rpm HDD gets accessed I can hear the same squealing in the background. So this happens when my SSD and HDD gets accessed sometimes, but harder to hear it while my HDD gets accessed. I also tried the power cord that came with my new power supply and my PC still squeals.

 

[gmturner]

Chopsticks are your friend, here! Fire up your system with the case open, do whatever causes coil whine, and touch one end of the chopstick to your ear, and the other to the various components of your board until you find the source. This won't help you to diagnose complex power interactions involving multiple components, but will at least allow you to know exactly where the noise is coming from.