I came to this site looking for info about monitor noise. What is quiet and how to make my LCD samtron 51s quiet!! It makes a terrible but soft high pitched hum. Never new it was there until I made the rest of my computer quieter.

You don't even have a section about this topic to post to!!
HELP!!

Douglas

Hello Douglas, and welcome to SPCR!

Is there a separate power supply, or is it self contained? It seems from your description, to be a vibrating coil (aka choke), and unfortunately, there is not too much to do about it...unless you are willing to disassemble the monitor, and apply some hot glue to some of the coils?

...I'm willing. Is hot glue the normal treatment?

My Princeton 20" Costco special that I just picked up makes an ungodly racket.

probably the inverter. not much you can do about it except to sell it.

...or return it. I bought it from Costco who will take anything back.

The noise is on the inside of the monitor. It is an LCD monitor.
A link to the specs.
http://www.samtron.com/product/51s_spec.html

I am happy to open it up but I have only ever made one heathkit robot. So I can do a little bit but not much.
How do I do this??
Thanks Douglas

I had a noisy monitor once, but i swapped with another and assigned that one to the dust heap.

None of my 3 dell LCD's seem to make any noise at all.

The problem I've noticed is a lot of LCD panels are only silent at maximum brightness. Once you start to decrease the brightness they make a very high pitched (like probably 15-18khz) squeel, much like what a lot of CRT's make in their normal operation. I'd love to find a flat panel I can run at a lower screen intensity but not have that ear-splitting squeel.

Eureka! That solved my problem. Silent as a mouse now.

my nec lcd makes a low buzz...so turn down the brightness?

Wonderful !!! I only had to turn the brightness up to 65 out of 100 and the buzz went up in pitch and then stopped. At any setting below about 63 it sounds like a very big mosquito. The buzz does not change in pitch with lower numbers so maybe it is really gone. I don't know if it is really gone or just to high to hear but it is gone for me!!!

Thanks Lots! That sound was driving me crazy and putting the monitor in a padded solid wooden box with a fan was just not going to work for me.



Douglas

I run mine at zero brightness (!) and it is inaudible from more than about 10cm away. However, before this I had an Iiyama 17" that buzzed horribly, even at maximum brightness, so I sold it on Ebay and bought my current one, which is a 17" GNR. So there are silent LCD's out there, it's just trial and error I guess. There have been a couple of threads about silent LCD's with recommendations, search function might unearth these.

Hello,

I have had good luck with quiet LCD's, I guess. The first ones were 15" CTX PV500's, then an NEC LCD1760V, then a couple of ViewSonic VP17b's, and lately Samsung 204T and 204B's. All have been quiet...

My Iiyama VM Pro 454 (19" CRT) buzzes no matter how low / high is the brightness. My previous Iiyama buzzed too.
I am planning to get a new 24" LCD next year, but it's impossible to discern the buzz in the shop, ambient is too loud.
It would be good to find out why some LCDs buzz and others not, besides the parts / assembly quality issue.

More data points:

I have a four-year-old Viewsonic VX800 18" monitor that's pretty darn quiet,
at all the brightness levels I've used, but then it has an external power brick.

I just bought a Viewsonic VG2030wm, which ups my screen resolution
to 1680 x 1050. It has an integral power supply. It's silent at 97%-100%
brightness, has a faint hum from 94%-97%, and squeals below 93%.
Otherwise I'm very fond of it.

One of these days I'll use the kill-a-watt to see what the power
consumption of these two units is.

My friend just informed me that the buzz is the same buzz that you get with a light on a dimmer switch. He also said that if the companies that make the monitors use a few more resistors and capacitors then there would be no buzz. They are being cheap and that is why we have that buzz.
Douglas

Nice to see a home for Monitors here!

I'm happy with my Samsung 570V 15" LCD monitor. No buzzing at my settings (which I never touch). The monitor is a few years old and has an external power brick.

I'll probably be buying a 19" LCD soon. I've noticed that the new LCD's all seem to have internal power adapters. Most of my peripheral's power adapters develop hums over time.

I'm wondering if I should be looking for an LCD monitor with an external power brick, if they still exist?

It would be nice if everyone could test there monitors at very dim settings and post the results here. Also I would say that you should go to a monitor store and test the monitors at very dim levels and report.

Douglas