Electric buzzing/humming coming from the motherboard area - Help needed

[Berfs1]

Imma leave this here and head out. This, is clearly above my pay grade.

We've already pretty much narrowed it down to something with the WiFi card. It's a forum bro, respond at your own pace if you wish, no one is forcing you to be here.

Yes, it's enabled since around 20 minutes ago.

Gotcha, if you do hear the noise happening again, go to the wifi adapter settings, you will see general, advanced, driver, details, events, and power management, go to advanced, and set the "Transmit Power" to lowest, this might help. Also, if you would like to try taking apart the motherboard, take off the I/O cover, and unscrew the WiFi card from the board, and remove it, unscrew any remaining screws holding the wifi card enclosure together, and start taking it apart, see if there are any loose antennas. These wifi antennas can be tricky to install, it's possible one is loose.

 

[necessary_chemical]

Gotcha, will try that one with the "Transmit Power" thing. As for the latter I'd rather not go through that given I'm not very well versed in hardware troubleshooting. But so far so good, sound hasn't come back. I can't believe (I don't wanna jinx it by saying it) that it was as easy as enabling and disabling the wifi adapter. And just to confirm, the Transmit Power is set to Highest (i think it was like that by default). Will try to lower it and see what happens (if the sound comes back). Thanks a lot for the step by step troubleshooting, fingers crossed the sound doesn't come back

 

[Berfs1]

Awesome! I'm hoping the issue doesn't come back! As for the transmit power, it should be set to medium by default, but I set it to lowest for my laptop and my streaming PC in my room mainly because my laptop is connected to the streaming PC (both have AX chips) via mobile hotspot (it's really useful if you want to make a PC a router!), and setting it to the lowest hasn't had any detrimental issues when the laptop is in my room (where it is most of the time), but theoretically it lowers the amount of interference it creates, so that's why I usually recommend setting it to lowest.

 

[necessary_chemical]

Oooh, I see. Thanks for the input, had no idea about that. Will keep that in mind Thanks a lot! Btw while I was at it I disabled the 6Ghz option (since I don't have a router capable of doing that) as well as the Wake on Magic Packet and Wake on Pattern Match. I don't use my PC remotely nor do I ever intend to so I reckon better to have them disabled

 

[Berfs1]

Happy to help!

while I was at it I disabled the 6Ghz option (since I don't have a router capable of doing that) as well as the Wake on Magic Packet and Wake on Pattern Match. I don't use my PC remotely nor do I ever intend to so I reckon better to have them disabled

Personally I kinda want to experiment with these settings for my laptop, but yes having these disabled might be useful for you since you use a wifi connection as your primary network connection.

 

[necessary_chemical]

For now yes, I'll probably move houses this year and I plan to have my PC hooked up with a wired connection But in your case, it would probably make sense given that you had mentioned you use it for streaming too

One thing to update on as I wanted to see what's the difference if I set Transmit Power to Medium. Result is that the connection drops to 6Kbps, basically unusable. If I move it to Medium-Highest, it's 44Mbps download/1.5 Mbps upload. On Highest it is 100Mbps download/25 Mbps upload. So in this case, having wireless as my main connection, I must use the Highest setting because the others severely throttle my internet connection speeds

Unfortunately I have to say that sound is back, same as before @Berfs1 (btw I tried disabling the wifi card WHILE the sound was on and it didn't affect it - I was expecting it to stop in the instant I disabled the card)

One other update (this one might interest @Bill_Bright I think): got the socket tester today, used it first in a couple of outlets around the house, all were showing "Correct". Plugged it in the wall outlet in which I have the powerstrip (to which the monitor, PS5 and PC are connected) and it shows "Live/Neu Reverse". What do I do now? Is this why the sound is happening? (I only have one other socket in this room and that one shows "Correct" - if it helps in any way)

 

[d1nky]

For now yes, I'll probably move houses this year and I plan to have my PC hooked up with a wired connection But in your case, it would probably make sense given that you had mentioned you use it for streaming too

One thing to update on as I wanted to see what's the difference if I set Transmit Power to Medium. Result is that the connection drops to 6Kbps, basically unusable. If I move it to Medium-Highest, it's 44Mbps download/1.5 Mbps upload. On Highest it is 100Mbps download/25 Mbps upload. So in this case, having wireless as my main connection, I must use the Highest setting because the others severely throttle my internet connection speeds

Unfortunately I have to say that sound is back, same as before @Berfs1 (btw I tried disabling the wifi card WHILE the sound was on and it didn't affect it - I was expecting it to stop in the instant I disabled the card)

One other update (this one might interest @Bill_Bright I think): got the socket tester today, used it first in a couple of outlets around the house, all were showing "Correct". Plugged it in the wall outlet in which I have the powerstrip (to which the monitor, PS5 and PC are connected) and it shows "Live/Neu Reverse". What do I do now? Is this why the sound is happening? (I only have one other socket in this room and that one shows "Correct" - if it helps in any way)

What does live neutral reverse mean?


If your outlet's polarity is reversed, it means that the neutral wire is connected to where the hot wire is supposed to be. This may not sound like a terrible thing, but it is. There is always electricity flowing out of an outlet with reversed polarity, even if an appliance is supposed to be off.

From Google.

Pretty sure you're lucky to have a PC if that's the case. OR get a big shock from it. I'm no expert tho.

 

[necessary_chemical]

Yep, did a bit of reading and it's definitely not something that one should live with but to me it's baffling that I've been using THAT SAME plug for about 2.5 years now and all of my appliances are doing fine and dandy. What I'll do however is get a powerstrip hooked up to the other outlet that I have in the room (that's a bit farther away from my desk but doesn't matter), the one that reads "Correct" and connect everything to that.

Edit: sound still happening even after doing the above

 

[d1nky]

Edit: sound still happening even after doing the above

Pretty sure that's the interference from dodgy electrics

 

[necessary_chemical]

Having tried so far all that I can (without swapping out the mobo) ... I tend to believe that is indeed the case, taking into consideration all the factors I/we've talked about

 

[Berfs1]

Having tried so far all that I can (without swapping out the mobo) ... I tend to believe that is indeed the case, taking into consideration all the factors I/we've talked about

If that's the case (no pun intended), that would probably mean the case isn't grounding properly. That being said, could you take a picture of the screws you are using to mount your PSU to the case (unscrewed and I would like to see the underside of those screws), and could you also take a picture of where the screws would be on the case?

Edit, ignore this, I misread

 

[d1nky]

If that's the case (no pun intended), that would probably mean the case isn't grounding properly. That being said, could you take a picture of the screws you are using to mount your PSU to the case (unscrewed and I would like to see the underside of those screws), and could you also take a picture of where the screws would be on the case?

He doesn't mean case. He's already proved that his house socket has the polarity reversed.

 

[Berfs1]

He doesn't mean case. He's already proved that his house socket has the polarity reversed.

My apologies, I just woke up haha. Yeah definitely get an electrician involved ASAP since the polarities are reversed.

 

[necessary_chemical]

The idea is that I'm no longer using that socket any longer. I've connected everything to a powerstrip that's connected to another socket which reads "Correct" but the sound is still happening so maybe I'm thinking that it's not the socket? Even though of course I'll have someone look into that.

 

[d1nky]

The idea is that I'm no longer using that socket any longer. I've connected everything to a powerstrip that's connected to another socket which reads "Correct" but the sound is still happening so maybe I'm thinking that it's not the socket? Even though of course I'll have someone look into that.

I'm pretty certain it'll still cause a kind of feedback interference. Your pc is picking that up.

 

[necessary_chemical]

A bit of an update: tried a different motherboard (same Z790 chipset but different model) -> Same noise. Tried also different RAM -> 2 x32GB (just like I have now) but different manufacturer and different timings/frequency -> Same noise. At this point I've changed all the stuff that could have been the culprit for the sound and it's still happening which makes me believe it's the electricity issue like many of you had already guessed.

 

[d1nky]

Hope you didn't waste too much money. The outlet tester kind of gave it away.

Go spend some money on an electrician.

 

[necessary_chemical]

No, it was still in the first 30 days of purchase and even though it's not very nice to do it like this, Amazon offered me a "no-questions-asked" type of policy when it came to refunds so I cheekily took advantage of that. I'll be moving houses in a few months (living in a rental place now) and hopefully I don't bring the sound with me to the new home