4 ms·

Similarly, on-board soundcards are notorious for this. Even in my relatively recent laptop I can judge activity by the noise in my headphones if I use the built

Similarly, on-board soundcards are notorious for this. Even in my relatively recent laptop I can judge activity by the noise in my headphones if I use the built-in soundcard, thanks to electrical interference. Especially on one motherboard I had, I could relatively accurately monitor CPU activity this way. There's also audible noise that can sometimes be heard from singing capacitors[1] and coil whine[2], as mentioned in a sibling comment. [1]: https://product.tdk.com/system/files/contents/faq/capacitors-0031/singing_capacitors_piezoelectric_effect.pdf https://product.tdk.com/system/files/contents/faq/capacitors... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetically_induced_acoustic_noise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetically_induced_ac...

mycall 2y ago
I jokingly refer to my GPU's coil whine as a HDD emulator as it sounds like a spinning disk to me.
- RGamma 2y ago
  Depending on workload my mainboard's VRMs (I think) sound like birds chirping.
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    The voltage regulators are really just buck converters[1], one per phase, and so contain both capacitors and inductors in a highly dynamic setting. Thus they're very prone to the effects mentioned. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_converter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_converter
dapperdrake 2y ago
There was a Lenovo docking station compatible with the T420 (around 2012). The headphone Jack had shrieky noise on it whenever the Gigabit Ethernet connection got going. Took a while to figure that one out. The other two docking stations were built differently and had the wires run somewhere else. EDIT: Typo
jazzyjackson 2y ago
I have a dell laptop that makes a high pitched whine whenever I'm scrolling. really strange. GeForce RTX 2060.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  The connection to scrolling is usually increased activity on the bus. CPU feeding the graphics card new bitmaps is just one source of that traffic. In a previous job, I could tell whether a 3-machine networking benchmark was still running based on the sound.
- bmicraft 2y ago
  On my laptop the same thing happens, but only with one particular power supply connected. The noise itself definitely comes from the laptop though.

mycall 2y ago

I jokingly refer to my GPU's coil whine as a HDD emulator as it sounds like a spinning disk to me.

RGamma 2y ago
Depending on workload my mainboard's VRMs (I think) sound like birds chirping.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  The voltage regulators are really just buck converters[1], one per phase, and so contain both capacitors and inductors in a highly dynamic setting. Thus they're very prone to the effects mentioned. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_converter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_converter

dapperdrake 2y ago

There was a Lenovo docking station compatible with the T420 (around 2012). The headphone Jack had shrieky noise on it whenever the Gigabit Ethernet connection got going. Took a while to figure that one out. The other two docking stations were built differently and had the wires run somewhere else. EDIT: Typo

jazzyjackson 2y ago

I have a dell laptop that makes a high pitched whine whenever I'm scrolling. really strange. GeForce RTX 2060.

yencabulator 2y ago
The connection to scrolling is usually increased activity on the bus. CPU feeding the graphics card new bitmaps is just one source of that traffic. In a previous job, I could tell whether a 3-machine networking benchmark was still running based on the sound.
bmicraft 2y ago
On my laptop the same thing happens, but only with one particular power supply connected. The noise itself definitely comes from the laptop though.