EMI interaction among PCI cards proposal

[keantoken]

Hello.

I have heard numerous times about putting your soundcard next your videocard and getting messed up sound, but I have a simple idea (although probably not original) that might be able to help a bit.

I thought that taking multiple layers of heavy duty aluminum foil and laminating them together might help a bit if they were placed between the interacting cards on the motherboard.

There are probably other methods to dealing with this and I will gladly hear your idea. I am hoping that many will benefit from this thread if the topic is worthy.

- keantoken

 

[Steevo]

There isn't enough interference to really cause problems, and the biggest reason that you might have issues with this old myth is that most boards shared the first PCI slot with the AGP slot in bandwidth and that caused issues with real time devices such as sound cards.


Your hard drives with powerful magnets and vibration along with your DVD burner are more likely to cause problems IMHO.

 

[Sasqui]

My original ISA SB card specifically said to keep as far away from the vid card as possible... Unless you are hearing discernable noise, I think the only way you could test the difference is sophisticated signal analysis equip.

But wrapping electrical components in aluminim foil does not seem like a smashing idea, even if laminated.

 

[Thermopylae_480]

I don't think Alunimum foil blocks EMI anyway? If you put it on your head the aliens can't read your mind though.

 

[keantoken]

There isn't enough interference to really cause problems, and the biggest reason that you might have issues with this old myth is that most boards shared the first PCI slot with the AGP slot in bandwidth and that caused issues with real time devices such as sound cards.


Your hard drives with powerful magnets and vibration along with your DVD burner are more likely to cause problems IMHO.

I agree.

I don't think Alunimum foil blocks EMI anyway?

Yeah, I know. It does do something, though, because it works on radio antennas. If it did a whole lot, we'd here a lot about it in the computer modding forum.

- keantoken

 

[Sasqui]

I don't think Alunimum foil blocks EMI anyway? If you put it on your head the aliens can't read your mind though.

Not true, they are reading my mind right now - a whole box of foil wasted!

 

[W1zzard]

part of this "putting as far away as possible from the vga card" comes from the irq assignment mechanism on older motherboards. if you put video and sound card next to each other they would end up with the same interrupt which created a ton of issues.

anybody have a high end sound card and want to run some RMAA tests between different slots?

 

[Steevo]

IRQ, bandwidth.



You say tomato, err, I spell it tomato still. Shit.

 

[Thermopylae_480]

I have an Audigy 2 ZS, and Polaris has an X-Fi. How would the tests be done?