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javex

Member

Registered: 2011-12-30

Posts: 76

[SOLVED] New NVIDIA Graphics Card: Crackling sound when scrolling...

I just recieved my new graphics card which is a switch from ATI to Nvidia. All is fine so far, except for a stupid side-effect: Whenever I scroll, I can hear this kind of crackling sound from my speakers. It is clearly related to scrolling and even depends on how much of the page is scrolled, i.e. scrolling a sidebar procudes less noise than scrolling the whole window. Also, scrolling is not the only thing to produce this effect, i.e. switching my awesome tags produces it as well (though very much less noise) and I suppose other stuff would as well.

I used to have this effect about 5 years (or more) ago on Windows but when I switched to Linux it was gone so I didn't bother any more. However, now I have it under Linux, and I have no idea how it could happen. Currently, I have the following ideas:

- It is some kind of a driver issue (how to find out/fix?)
- It is a problem with the proximity of graphics and sound card (the latter one is on-board directly above the PCIe slot)

Beyond that, I pretty much have no idea how to fix it. I would prefer a way that doesn't involve installing a new sound card :-)

System information:

- Geforce GTX 650 Ti with driver "nvidia" in version 325.15-4
- MSI P55-GD65 Mainboard, with the following soundcard: 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05)
- Linux: Linux archdesktop 3.10.9-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Aug 21 13:49:35 CEST 2013 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Any further information I can provide?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Note from 2014-01-11: I was kinda busy so I had to put this off. When I decided to take some time to fix it now, I noticed it was gone. Since I did not alter my hardware in any way since then, I am not quite sure what fixed it. For someone having the same issue, the only thing I did change sound-wise was to install pulseaudio. Not sure why this would have an effect as the hardware interference is levels way below pulse, but it might be worth a shot.

Last edited by javex (2014-01-11 02:57:46)

Max-P

Member

Registered: 2011-06-11

Posts: 164

Re: [SOLVED] New NVIDIA Graphics Card: Crackling sound when scrolling...

That definitely sound like the graphic card causes interference in the audio amplifier.

If don't know how you could fix that without changing some more hardware, but here are some ideas:

• You can try to check if the power cables pass near the sound card: graphic cards usually takes power directly from the PSU, and that wires could pass in front of the sound card. The graphic card drawing more or less power depending on what it have to draw cause some buzzing in amplifiers

• You can try changing the the slot into which the sound card and/or the graphic card is, if possible.

• You can try to somehow shield the sound card from the graphic card with some isolating material. I don't recommend playing with that in a computer, but you could always do something with tin-foil in a plastic bag, but be extremely careful to not block any air flow, prevent the bag from melting and most importantly, the tin foil to touch any component. That would cause a short-circuit and instant-kill a couple of components.

• Get a cheap $20 USB audio card

• Playing with the mixer levels. If you are lucky, you will be able to tune it in a way that the amplifier doesn't pick too much noise and the volume is high enough for you to still play it decently.

My sound card is sandwhiched between two GTX 580 card and the sound is crystal clear, so there must be a way to prevent this for sure.

You could always troubleshoot that while the computer is open by running some graphic-intensive task (glxgears, glxspheres, games, benchmarks) and see first if this is really related to graphic activity. Maybe it's not the graphic card, but the change in performance level that cause the interference. Then you can start moving wires around and see if moving them makes it better.

A picture of the computer might help a bit too.

I hope this helps, my hardware knowledge is pretty limited.

Last edited by Max-P (2013-08-26 00:20:48)

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: [SOLVED] New NVIDIA Graphics Card: Crackling sound when scrolling...

I believe this is commonly electrical interference, created by the CPU rapidly changing between power-saving modes. So try fixing your CPU's clock frequency and power-saving - see Thinkpad wiki.

mich41

Member

Registered: 2012-06-22

Posts: 796

Re: [SOLVED] New NVIDIA Graphics Card: Crackling sound when scrolling...

Probably it's poor ground routing. Ideally, all ground wires and motherboard PCB traces should stay at 0 volts, but by Ohm's law, the current flowing through them causes them to have small positive voltage (up to tens of millivolts). This voltage varies with location on the motherboard and momentary power consumption. If headphones or speakers are connected to ground in any different point than soundcard, they will see these ground voltage variations on top of normal signal.

Some front panel jacks have audio ground wires connected to some metal part of the case, causing above issues. Try rear jack. Also, try both jacks with some headphones - since they have no amplifier, any problem can be safely assumed to be caused by motherboard or front panel. If neither jack works, temporarily disconnect all front panel cables from the motherboard (except for audio) and unscrew and remove front panel PCB from the case - if this helps, you'll need to somehow install it back insulating audio jack ground from the case and/or from other connectors' grounds.

FWIW, I own a 2 year old MSI mobo with Realtek ALC889 and have no such problems with rear jacks and my modded front panel.

Last edited by mich41 (2013-08-26 13:02:45)