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Good timing - just last night I had my speakers plugged into the NUC make weird noises every time I scrolled using a USB mouse receiver plugged into a USB 3 por

Good timing - just last night I had my speakers plugged into the NUC make weird noises every time I scrolled using a USB mouse receiver plugged into a USB 3 port. I knew it was interference but couldn't have made the USB 3 connection without reading this.

TorKlingberg 10y ago
I don't think mice use USB3. It could be some other interference.
- kbaker 10y ago
  Actually, he is probably correct, but I think in his case the opposite is happening from the article. With USB 2.0 and before, USB ports would have input filtering so that this RF energy would be attenuated before entering the system. With USB 3.0, there is so much speed (5 Gbit/s!) that a 2.4 GHz transmit signal is actually inside the bandwidth of USB 3.0, so it can't be filtered out as easily. So, depending on the cabling inside the computer and the design of the motherboard/system, it is definitely possible that some of this energy from the nearby transmitter is leaking out into other areas (ground planes, power planes, etc.) where it would be coupled into the audio path in USB 3.0, but attenuated with USB 2.0.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    Though USB 3.0 works by adding new wires, and there is no reason to remove the filtering on the wires/pins that carry 2.0
yathern 10y ago
As another comment said - the culprit might not be USB 3. It could possibly be your monitor? I had an old monitor (not CRT) that made strange noises when the whole screen refreshed, such as when scrolling. I could possibly see that causing interference as well.
- blinkingled 10y ago
  Actually I can tell fairly certainly from the direction the noise comes that it's not the monitor - the noise comes from speakers (which are separate and apart from the monitor) and it starts when I press the scroll wheel on the mouse - I need to see if a wired USB mouse causes that or not.
  - jrowley 10y ago
    I think the other commenter thinks your monitor is causing the interference which is causing your speakers to create sound. The trick would be to turn off the monitor and see if it still results in sound when scrolling, or just scroll to the bottom of the page and keep scrolling without having the monitor change in any way.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
Yup I ended up installing the wireless mouse "unifying receiver" on a USB extension cable so that it would work. Since I have a spectrum analyzer I could confirm that interference from the USB3.0 port was swamping the wireless signal from the unifying receiver.
- blinkingled 10y ago
  That's a great idea - have a extension cable lying around, will give it a try!
- rahimnathwani 10y ago
  My MS wireless receiver is on a USB 2.0 extension cable, plugged into a USB 2.0 hub, plugged into a USB 3.0 hub, plugged into MacBook's USB 3.0 port. I tried it without the USB 2.0 hub, but it was flaky.
Zagitta 10y ago
If it's a skylake CPU, chances are it has nothing todo with USB3. There are some coilwhine issues in the power delivery system when the GPU is entering and exiting power saving modes and is heavily plaguing the recent Dell XPS 13 model amongst others.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  I'm guessing it's not really worth RMA'ing my 9350 for that coil whine issue. The problem where the Dell WiFi driver causes screen flickering might be, though.
  - Zagitta 10y ago
    I talked to a very nice service rep about the coilwhine and he said there wasn't much point because all of them suffer from it in varying degrees and they would only do something about it if it was very audible and then only if RMA'ed within the first 2 months or so. His suggestion was to disable the GPU power states but that sort of defeats the whole point of an ultrabook. It's a sad issue because it really detracts from an otherwise excellent laptop. I have not heard about that specific wifi issue though, have you updated to the latest firmware? I know there's been quite a lot of versions with various fixes.
- blinkingled 10y ago
  Nope, it's a Haswell NUC. Skylake is problematic though, yes. Got a desktop Skylake Dell Precision and it was weird to see all that unreliable behavior - USB bootable disk sometimes would work and sometimes not. The computer itself would sometimes fail to start back up after it had crashed trying to suspend etc. It was fast with NVMe boot disk and 64GB RAM but it's a bag of pokes!

TorKlingberg 10y ago

I don't think mice use USB3. It could be some other interference.

kbaker 10y ago
Actually, he is probably correct, but I think in his case the opposite is happening from the article. With USB 2.0 and before, USB ports would have input filtering so that this RF energy would be attenuated before entering the system. With USB 3.0, there is so much speed (5 Gbit/s!) that a 2.4 GHz transmit signal is actually inside the bandwidth of USB 3.0, so it can't be filtered out as easily. So, depending on the cabling inside the computer and the design of the motherboard/system, it is definitely possible that some of this energy from the nearby transmitter is leaking out into other areas (ground planes, power planes, etc.) where it would be coupled into the audio path in USB 3.0, but attenuated with USB 2.0.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  Though USB 3.0 works by adding new wires, and there is no reason to remove the filtering on the wires/pins that carry 2.0

yathern 10y ago

As another comment said - the culprit might not be USB 3. It could possibly be your monitor? I had an old monitor (not CRT) that made strange noises when the whole screen refreshed, such as when scrolling. I could possibly see that causing interference as well.

blinkingled 10y ago
Actually I can tell fairly certainly from the direction the noise comes that it's not the monitor - the noise comes from speakers (which are separate and apart from the monitor) and it starts when I press the scroll wheel on the mouse - I need to see if a wired USB mouse causes that or not.
- jrowley 10y ago
  I think the other commenter thinks your monitor is causing the interference which is causing your speakers to create sound. The trick would be to turn off the monitor and see if it still results in sound when scrolling, or just scroll to the bottom of the page and keep scrolling without having the monitor change in any way.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

Yup I ended up installing the wireless mouse "unifying receiver" on a USB extension cable so that it would work. Since I have a spectrum analyzer I could confirm that interference from the USB3.0 port was swamping the wireless signal from the unifying receiver.

blinkingled 10y ago
That's a great idea - have a extension cable lying around, will give it a try!
rahimnathwani 10y ago
My MS wireless receiver is on a USB 2.0 extension cable, plugged into a USB 2.0 hub, plugged into a USB 3.0 hub, plugged into MacBook's USB 3.0 port. I tried it without the USB 2.0 hub, but it was flaky.

Zagitta 10y ago

If it's a skylake CPU, chances are it has nothing todo with USB3. There are some coilwhine issues in the power delivery system when the GPU is entering and exiting power saving modes and is heavily plaguing the recent Dell XPS 13 model amongst others.

voltagex_ 10y ago
I'm guessing it's not really worth RMA'ing my 9350 for that coil whine issue. The problem where the Dell WiFi driver causes screen flickering might be, though.
- Zagitta 10y ago
  I talked to a very nice service rep about the coilwhine and he said there wasn't much point because all of them suffer from it in varying degrees and they would only do something about it if it was very audible and then only if RMA'ed within the first 2 months or so. His suggestion was to disable the GPU power states but that sort of defeats the whole point of an ultrabook. It's a sad issue because it really detracts from an otherwise excellent laptop. I have not heard about that specific wifi issue though, have you updated to the latest firmware? I know there's been quite a lot of versions with various fixes.
blinkingled 10y ago
Nope, it's a Haswell NUC. Skylake is problematic though, yes. Got a desktop Skylake Dell Precision and it was weird to see all that unreliable behavior - USB bootable disk sometimes would work and sometimes not. The computer itself would sometimes fail to start back up after it had crashed trying to suspend etc. It was fast with NVMe boot disk and 64GB RAM but it's a bag of pokes!