Hardware whining

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neekibo · Post by **neekibo** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 2:29 pm

I have a Geforce 7600GT (agp). When i open glxgears, I noticed a whining sound and it seems to come from my graphic-card. It isn't the fan. The funny thing: When I resize the glxgears-window, it changes the whining-sound's frequency. Increase the size of the window lowers the sound's frequency.

Glxgears uses 100% CPU.
It does not happen in full-screen OpenGL apps like Q3.
If i run emerge beside that, no whining-sound.
EDIT: Just notices the whining-sound more often. Using some fancy beryl features will bring me some short whinings.

Any hints how I get rid of that, it's quite annoying. Guess I have to get new hardware ...

Monkeh · Post by **Monkeh** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 5:01 pm

I really doubt the GPU itself is whining. D'you happen to have speakers on, onboard sound perhaps?

opentaka · Post by **opentaka** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 5:04 pm

I don't think it's a gentoo-specific issue but the graphic card issue(possibly bad GPU?)
or, is the sound directly coming from the hardware or through some PC speaker or your headphone? it could be some nasty noise there

widan · Post by **widan** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 8:30 pm

neekibo wrote:I have a Geforce 7600GT (agp). When i open glxgears, I noticed a whining sound and it seems to come from my graphic-card. It isn't the fan. The funny thing: When I resize the glxgears-window, it changes the whining-sound's frequency. Increase the size of the window lowers the sound's frequency.

It has nothing to do with the GPU (a sound means something is vibrating - a silicon chip has nothing that can move it it except electrons). Those sounds usually come from inductors in the voltage regulators vibrating (look for toroids wound with thick wire - those are the usual culprits). The frequency depends on the amount of power being used. There is a range of power usages where it will be audible (too high or too low a frequency won't be heard - or not as much).

Edit: Search for "inductor whine" or "coil whine" on Google, this is a common problem, but it usually affect the CPU VRMs on the motherboard (or sometimes inductors in the PSU).

neekibo · Post by **neekibo** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 5:57 pm

- It is definitively the graphic card's fault, i just plugged it in, and with my old one, there was no whining.
- It has a separate power plug so I guess it is not mainboard or cpu related.
- Maybe the power-supply ? I think you are right with the "inductor whine" ...
- And sound is off, no speaker attached.
- And it is not in Win Vista (I haven't heard it there) ... but yeah not really Gentoo-related.

I will look around, thanks for the hint.

EDIT: Just checked again, the source of the whining is the graphic-card. There are three inductors on it. Have touched all three, no change in the sound, so I guess the glue-trick won't work.

vandien · Post by **vandien** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:14 pm

Thanks, this was informative. I have the same sort of whining when using GL apps on my laptop (which is rarely, especially since it makes the annoying noise). I could never figure out what was causing it.

widan · Post by **widan** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 7:30 pm

Sometimes there are inductors that are inside a plastic case (like the ones on this photo) but I think those already have epoxy or something in the case, so they shouldn't vibrate, but you never know. Press down on the platic case to check them, it should damp the vibration enough to change the sound, but depending on their design, it may be difficult to get glue in there non-destructively.

shiver · Post by **shiver** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 12:51 pm

I also get a whine from my 7900 GTO when I run glxgears. The weirdest thing is that it only happens if I have beryl running as well. The card doesn't whine if I'm using kwin. No other app causes any whining sound.

Lloeki · Post by **Lloeki** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 12:56 pm

try to change monitor. I noticed this with certain apps, and certain graphics card/monitors combinations, be them linux or windows, when they draw massively (i.e very high fps, like 2000) to the screen, and when you have vsync off.
seems like some signal ends up resonating somewhere because of the high fps, which effectively sounds like a quiet ~2000Hz pitched sound.

neekibo · Post by **neekibo** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 4:21 pm

Ok, I'll send back my graphics card and will get a new one.
I'll post when I get my new card.

neekibo · Post by **neekibo** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 9:53 am

neekibo wrote:I'll post when I get my new card.

Now I have a new card but I still get some whining. I guess it is some small electronic component on the mainboard very close to the agp-slot.

Would a big drop of hot-glue over 3-4 components do some harm here ?

Hardware whining

Hardware whining

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