Well... ...most important first. I've got my Corsair RM650x up and running. Happy to report that it is dead quiet. My face lit up when I pressed the power button and nothing but silence followed. That's something the Seasonics couldn't do for me. It's official - those Seasonic PSU's were definitely faulty. I mean, the moment I power on any machine, on any circuit, they scream. While this one doesn't. So that's kinda that.
The noises I heard before, both coming from the speakers and from various components in the machine are gone. What's left coming through the speakers is so faint that I can live with it. It's not at all like before, where it was just obnoxious screeching and cracking and popping coming from damned near everything. I'm still kind of taken aback by that. But no... this noise is characteristically different.
I suspect the remaining noise I'm hearing is actually from my EVGA GTX 1050. It sounds like what people often call "GPU coil whine." Which listening to samples can literally sound like anything
I think what people are calling coil whine is actually something else (or maybe its better to say it is a catch-all for many different things.) What I mean is that is sounds specifically like what is often heard coming from GPU's. Just like it is for me, it often causes audio interference as well, which as bill pointed out earlier, shouldn't be with simple coil whine. But it nearly always is with reports of GPU "coil whine." And it certainly is now. I can hear the characteristic GPU whine coming ONLY from the GPU. If I switch it into another machine I get the same result. I have an RX 580 on the way. I strongly believe that'll be the end of it. It's possible that this GPU has been whining the whole time, and I just couldn't discern it from other sources of noise that are only now eliminated.
Here's what I'm left with. I have dealt with not one source of noise, but many. Over time swapping things out, the source probably changed from one to the other. I'm now of the belief that nearly any part can show this vulnerability under the right circumstances. Somehow I managed to create several different scenarios leading to it. And unfortunately, I didn't do anything "wrong" here. There's nothing in all of this that says "Just don't don't do that and you'll be fine." It's not like I could've had any way of knowing. I am not new to this stuff at all. I built my first machine over a decade ago. And I have never encountered anything like this. Only ever heard faint whisperings... ...thought it was something that just doesn't happen all that often and when it does you swap out and move on.
I suspect that it is a set of widespread quality, or perhaps design problems that I think need to be addressed but likely won't be possible to. There must be a way to mitigate this on a component level, but I don't think it would be an easy thing to reproduce enough to snuff out from a design standpoint. You'd have to test everything with everything.
And yet, I've gone through several PSU's that are certifiably noisy, a mobo, a GPU... All of them isolated as sources of noise all on their own in many, many different configurations, even in different environments and on different main circuits. There's something to be said about that. It's hard for me to believe it still! But I'm not the only one to have this issue. In fact someone else has a thread on it right now!
It's one of those things that can happen to anyone, with no way to pinpoint it or know when it's gonna happen. I went through so many parts, circuits, setups, everything... ...and at different points, doing different things either made the noise change/go away, or come back. The only way I see that happening is if several components are involved. I really do believe that I could've moved out, built a whole new machine and still had the same problem! It likely runs that deep! This is no conspiracy. Just a matter of luck of the draw. Though I really think that if these are the odds, something is seriously wrong.
I think it's more widespread than people realize, and it doesn't seem to be something that anybody fully understands. No support teams I contacted had any idea or helpful advice (and to their credit many of them were awesome - they really tried and no doubt help tons of people!) In my travels I encountered many conversations just like the one in this thread. Same problems, to the letter. And many have gone to the same exhaustive measures as me. Often leading to no satisfactory explanation or solution. And when there has been a fix, it's been different every time. None of the conventional advice has worked in my case, or any that I have seen. This, to me, can only suggest that there is something going on with all of these cases that nobody has really gotten to the heart of. We have explanations that are somewhat true sometimes, but that's it. No definitive information exists on this shit! I've looked for a loooonnngg time!
Two things seems to be happening. Number one is a communications breakdown. People are mis-describing the problem as something it is not, and people on the other end are assuming something different. Overgeneralizing it. It may not be possible to even have a real conversation about it. Too many unknowns and things that can't reasonably be tested by enough people. The other part of the equation is that whatever is causing these problems must be component level and hard for users to test/verify, let alone report in an accurate or meaningful way. It's something manufacturers would have to figure out.
All I've got. Nerve wracking to know that things like this can happen, and that a problem like this could be around the corner at any time. I expect more for my money, and yet this is something nobody can expect to be guaranteed. Hmmm... it's a lot to take in. But I really doubt I'm just unlucky. It's not that uncommon with PC's. In months of looking into this crap, I've learned that there are so many people like me it isn't even funny. To me, that is unacceptable. But otoh, what can anyone do? Where do you even fuckin start when this is what you've got? Call me dramatic or whatever. That sucks :/
I'm going to let Seasonic know about my tribulations. That is at least one thing I'm sure of now. But I don't know if that's really enough. Even if Seasonic gets on top of it, people will continue having these problems and nobody will know why. And the worst part is
there is no known, proven fix. The best advice anyone can give is to try a bunch of shit and hope something works. That's a bunch of crap. These things shouldn't happen to anyone. These are things that should just work. "Build a new machine." when there should be nothing wrong with the current one is not a reasonable fix. I'm not satisfied with how any of this has gone, or how I've seen it go for too many others. There's something to all of this. It seems like this isolated thing, but to me it's more like a prevalent problem that usually goes unseen.
Honestly, I am tired of thinking about it. At this point, I have reached a level I can live with. And that's exactly what I'm gonna do. I'll take it, cut my losses, and just be happy my PSU isn't screaming at me anymore
I'll chime in when I have the new GPU installed. After that, I'm over this. I feel like this is something I could spend a lifetime figuring out. Or I could let it go and be a whole lot better put together in the end. Honestly, this is just a very longwinded way of saying that technology as it is now is not nearly good enough. Unbelievable, aint it?
For many people, these machines are supposed to be high-end, one-stop entertainment centers. With that comes the expectation that there won't be interference.
