How to avoid buzzing speakers/headphones?

[Cinders1]

I'm building a new computer from scratch and I want to know how I can avoid buzzing speakers. In my previous 2 builds, I've had buzzing speakers when playing games. The buzzing correlates to my mouse movements, panning in-game camera, or when the graphics really get busy, and other miscellaneous things. It seems to be related to what is being sent to my monitor and/or what my GPU is doing. It buzzes on graphically un-taxing games too, like FTL.
I tried moving all other cables away from sound cables and ports, tried different headphones/speakers. No difference. I believe interference is happening on the board, or at the ports. I built the previous machine in like 2012, so maybe this has been fixed by the industry by now with better shielding?

If not, what can I do to stop it? I had the same case for both builds, is that part of it?

 

[jimmysmitty]

There are two solutions:

1. buy a sound card and place it at the bottom of your board, if able to. I have a sound card and never get any interference.

2. If the above option does not sound appealing buy a motherboard that has the sound card portion shielded. Most high end decent boards have this.

 

[Cinders1]

There are two solutions:

1. buy a sound card and place it at the bottom of your board, if able to. I have a sound card and never get any interference.

2. If the above option does not sound appealing buy a motherboard that has the sound card portion shielded. Most high end decent boards have this.

How do you identify whether a board has good shielding?

 

[jimmysmitty]

Normally the higher end boards will have good shielding while most mainstream boards will have ok shielding and mid to low end boards have crap or none.

Basically if you want better, you spend more.

 

[br00n0]

I had this problem with an older PC. I purchased a USB sound adapter and no humming/buzzing was heard.

B.

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

I had this problem with an older PC. I purchased a USB sound adapter and no humming/buzzing was heard.

B.

I second this. An external soundcard is the way to go. USB bypasses/ignores your internal soundcard. Unless it's a scam unit, you also get an internal amplifier, meaning you get lossless volume control, which is rare in Windows, because everything except 100%/100 on the volume slider, means that you're losing audio quality. People lower this slider, because their headphones (majority) don't have a seperate volume control, without realising they're reducing audio quality, if you're picky, and don't want interference, USB is the way to go!

A common cause for buzzing/interference is the fact if you use a 3.5mm (1/8") 3 pole, there could ltierally be a 1 mm difference to get rid of it, if the cable is old but the jack is not. 4 pole is the modern standard, and with my own amplifier, 3 pole to 3 pole to 4 pole to 3 pole was the only way I could get rid of the buzzing. This was using a 3.5mm jack on my projector (HD141X), directly to an amplifier.


All the best!