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noisy nforce2 fanless motherboard

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2005 7:16 am
by veryevilmike
hi,

i'm trying to progressively silence everything in my pc but seem to have a noisy motherboard. I was always under the impression that motherboards were inherently silent components but this one is definately making a noise.

my setup:
gigabyte ga7n400pro with chipset fan removed
athlon xp 3200, cooled by a tt silentboost with fan @ 7v
maxtor 200g diamond plus 9 pata hdd
antec phantom fanless psu
radeon 9600 fanless

only fan in the case is the cpu fan - i'm probably going to go in the reserator direction once zalman sort out their pump issues.

Anyway, I've read this thread but it doesn't really answer my question as in that case hdd+vga was the culprit.

what i've ruled out:
-definately not the cpu fan - if i stop it with my finger, noise continues unabated
-definately not the psu - i've read some comments about the antec phantom having a slight buzzing noise and i can hear that ever so slightly if i press my ear against it but its definately not the current noise source as the psu is removed and away from the case
-definately not the hdd, again its been removed fromthe case and resting on foam. if i press my ear against it i can hear it woosh and seek but its a different noise and the mystery noise is louder than the hdd defragging.

this thread suggests its due to dodgy esr caps, but most of the ones on the board are sanyos which from what i've read are pretty good. I eyeballed them all and theres no bulging or smelly ones.

here (the comment by seed) they suggest its when the pc is under load but i get it at idle as well. Now if i boot up the pc with the hdd disconnected it doesn't happen, but when its in as soon as windows starts to load it starts and then never stops - but its definately not the hdd as the noise definately comes from within the case, even when the hdd is isolated away from the case

it definately is emenating from the area around the cpu but its 100% not the fan. i was brave/stupid and gently pressed on all the caps + inductor coil thingies with a plastic rod and the noise continued unchaged.

have i got something bizarre happening, or is it normal for nforce2 boards to be noisey?

thanks

mike

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2005 7:25 am
by veryevilmike
typical - i scratch my head for hours trying all sorts of things, give up in frustration and post a novel, then the next thing i do fixes it. shouldn't complain really :roll:

i had installed the nForce2 C0/C1/C2 Cooling Patch V2 thats floating around that is supposed to lower the idle temps. i removed it, rebooted and presto the sound disappears. idle temps did go up by 2 degrees, so not sure what is the lesser of the two evils.

anyway, hope that helps someone else

Re: noisy nforce2 fanless motherboard

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2005 1:06 pm
by alglove
veryevilmike wrote:this thread suggests its due to dodgy esr caps, but most of the ones on the board are sanyos which from what i've read are pretty good. I eyeballed them all and theres no bulging or smelly ones.
Actually, the way I read that ESR capacitor comment is not to say that the capacitors are broken. Instead, I take it to mean that the motherboard and capacitors were not designed to handle this particular situation. In other words, the capacitors themselves are OK, but the circuitry is being asked to do something it was not designed to do.

Now, according to this article, http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/di ... -3000.html , AMD added S2K Bus Disconnect as a requirement for motherboard certification. However, the article seems to imply that S2K Bus Disconnection should be invoked only with detection of the HALT instruction. The utility you were using, however, had the following settings:
  • enable S2K bus disconnection without HALT detection (C1/2 - advanced mode)
  • enable S2K bus disconnection with HALT detection (C1 - basic mode)
  • disable S2K bus disconnection
In other words, what the article says corresponds to the "C1 - basic mode". Could it be that you were using it in the "C1/2 advanced mode", and this was causing your problems? What if you tried the basic C1 mode?

By the way, there seems to be a V2.1 of that utility out now.

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2005 4:54 pm
by veryevilmike
thanks - i read the esr article again this morning after a bit of sleep and obviously i didn't comprehend too much of it late last night - too long staring at the same thing.

I'll try the new version of the patch and see how I go - will post

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2005 8:33 pm
by alglove
I went ahead and installed V2.1 of this program on my NForce2 (Epox 8RDA+, Barton 3000+). The idle CPU temp did go down from 50 degC to about 46-47 degC. My case temp stayed steady at 30 degC. I did not notice any sound from my motherboard, but then again, I do have a different motherboard.

It turns out those three states that I mentioned were from a different (but related) utility from the same author. The utility you are using only supports C2.

By the way, if you look at the Device Manager --> View --> Show hidden devices, you can see this utility in the "Non-Plug and Play drivers". It is named C2NGOV21. If you double-click it, you can actually change the "Startup Type" from "Boot" to "Disabled". For the setting to take effect, you must reboot. This is another way to test without have to install/uninstall the program.