motherboard jack out suddenly popping and crackling

[dyonoctis]

Hi,
The jack out of my strix B350-I used to work fine for several months, then out of nowhere, I've started to heard pop, crackling and distorted sound from it. Sometimes it works fine again, but that doesn't last long.
The front jack out work fine. I'm using the drivers from asus website. Any clues at what's happening there ?

 

[natr0n]

Could be from the software. If you enable any kind of volume control like SVM in a creative driver you can get random cracking sometimes.

Disable any features you might use one by one.

 

[robot zombie]

Could possibly be software related, but since you say the front jack works fine, it sounds like the jack may be going out. I had a strix b350-f for 6-7 months and as far as I can tell the driver treats front and rear the same, though it can mute the rear output when you plug headphones into the front if you want it to. It detects when you plug something in and gives you a choice, right?

I don't see that affecting one or the other separately, though. If something went wrong on the software end I'd assume both outputs would suffer for it.

Could just be bad contact inside the jack... ...loose solder joint... ...potentially a bad capacitor somewhere in the output section, though that's not as likely. Hallmark signs of a bad connection are as you describe. And you can verify it by gently wiggling the cord when it's plugged into the back. Movement will sometimes trigger it, though a bad connection doesn't always need movement to be set off, which might be why it comes and goes. Could also be that when you first plug-in it may seat just right, but as gravity sets in, it pops out again and the noises return.

Could just have crud in it. You could try canned air.

The other thing it could be is the cable. It may be hanging by a thread on the inside. In that case, the connection gets loose when it's hanging horizontally and switching it to a vertical orientation (by using the front jack) simply allows it to settle into forming a better connection. Try plugging something else into the back and see what happens.

Just some easy things to verify/rule-out. I do still think you should also try natr0n's advice, too.