Death or Glory - silencing the coil whine from my Asus mobo

luminous · Post by **luminous** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:23 am

My machine has been emitting a reasonably loud, intermittent, high pitched whine for a few months. Its driven me to distraction to work out where it was coming from.

I sounded like idle whine from HDDs, so I changed those (I wanted new ones anyway), but that did not solve it. Then it stopped every time I turned my monitor off, so I thought it may have been coming from there.

In the end I did track it down to the case, an exercise that was much harder than you would think. After that though, I was at a loss as to where the noise came from. Finally I got a break, the covers were off and I was imaging my HDDs and all of a sudden I got a much louder, continuous whine of the same pitch as normal. Taking the butt end of my pencil (the rubber part

), I started to prod components inside the case. Eventually I found some coils on the mobo, that when pressed, reduced the whine significantly.

http://andy.romar.users.btopenworld.com ... G_1142.JPG
http://andy.romar.users.btopenworld.com ... G_1143.JPG
http://andy.romar.users.btopenworld.com ... G_1145.JPG

I decided that I would try and coat them with some form of adhesive. The plan was two fold, covering the coil should attenuate the noise, and hopefully the adhesive element may actually stop it from vibrating in the first place.

After talking to a lot of people, and driving around for ages I came across a product called Servisol from Maplin.

http://andy.romar.users.btopenworld.com ... G_1147.JPG
http://andy.romar.users.btopenworld.com ... G_1148.JPG

I applied a reasonable amount all over the coil to see if that would help.

Warning: - covering your coils will increase the temperature of them. You may cause permanent damage (see the Death or Glory title

)

http://andy.romar.users.btopenworld.com ... G_1151.JPG

Early indications are good. It would appear that the coil whine has almost been totally eliminated. I cannot be completely sure, as I have over the last few months started to suffer from tinnitus. This makes it quite hard to determine what exactly the noise is, and where it comes from.

Overall I am happy with the results. The noise from the 900rpm 120mm Nexus case fan is more than the coil whine/tinnitus that I hear now. There are now many hours of the day when there is no whine coming from either my head or my machine in normal use. Compare this with almost constant HDD like whine and the improvement is obvious.

I can only hope that the mobo does not go up in smoke any time soon.

DG · Post by DG » Mon Feb 07, 2005 3:01 pm

What mobo do you have?

ps: the links to your pictures, are not working.

SebRad · Post by **SebRad** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 4:36 pm

Hi, is it a A7N8X model by any chance? Mine does exactly the same, except when the CPU is under full load and as the machine runs a distibuted computing project (like Folding but not) it's not an issue. I get e few squeals when it goes from one unit to the next but apart from that...
And of course the challenge of managing a full load 24/7 overclocked super quiet rig...I love it...mostly.
I was getting wierd Optical drive "crashes" they stop responing when burning / ripping. Think it was the HDD ide cable... go figure, possibly the Opticals cable as well, 2 new cables wasn't expensive and OK now.
Seb
PS pics working fine for me.

DG · Post by DG » Tue Feb 08, 2005 12:28 am

Hmmm, the pics are now working. Oh, well...

luminous · Post by **luminous** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 3:30 am

I do apologise for not saying what mobo I use. I was about to say look in my sig, but after I did that I realised that I had omitted to put the details in there aswell!

Its an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe Rev 3 (3rd replacement board.....)

Bitter Jitter · Post by **Bitter Jitter** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 4:38 am

Nice fix luminous!
Coil buzz is probably one of the most annoying noises a computer can make. It's certainly not easy to fix.

My CRT monitor buzzed when my computer was quite quiet and it drove me to the point where i turned up the fans to drown it out!

Now i have an LCD, problem solved!

mathias · Post by **mathias** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 6:56 pm

Bitter Jitter wrote:Nice fix luminous!
Coil buzz is probably one of the most annoying noises a computer can make. It's certainly not easy to fix.

I disagree, the buzzing from my very old viewsonic (which I never noticed until after my latest mods) is, to me, not disproportionately annoying at all. It's much less anoying, not even comparable to spinpoint whine(Hmmm, where did that go, did the JVC motor mutate into a Nidec or something?) or the similar more whistle like coil whine from my fortron (Where did that go, did better grounding get rid af it, or could it have been dust?). I'd say it's slightly less annoying than speaker hiss.

Bitter Jitter · Post by **Bitter Jitter** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:53 am

Well i wish i had your ears because buzzing grates on me.....
When all you can hear is buzzzzzzzzzz like a bee flying round your head it becomes pretty annoying, though not as annoying as Maxtor whine....

mathias · Post by **mathias** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 4:51 pm

Maybe that would be very annoying. My monitor's noise is significantly lower pitched than a bee.