Question Onboard Motherboard Sound Card Potentially Dying?

atif93

Prominent
Jul 6, 2020
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Hello guys, I am hoping you can help me with this bizzare issue.

I reformatted my computer and Windows 10 got all the drivers perfectly, everything updated very well. However, I now suspect that on my custom built computer, which will come to 4 years of age in April, the onboard, motherboard sound card has died. Here's why.

1. I plugged in the Audio jack, one side to the PC other side to the headphones are (Sony £200 ones, no sound whatsoever.

2. I clicked on my headphones to make them the default to play sound from them nothing whatsoever.

3. I updated the audio drivers, still there was absolutely nothing, until I used Windows Media Player. To get sound out of my headphones now, I have to disable sound from the NVIDIA graphics controller, which manages the HDMI Audio.

4. The big gripe is as soon as I turn on TV sound now, it cannot recognise what is the default device and no sound plays through headphones, manually disabling the sound shouldn't be something I have to do.

Can you please tell me are these reasonable failures to have at this point, bearing in mind that my computer is coming to 4 years?

This is such a weird issue, and I don't have much money if my motherboard conks out. Please Help?

Thank you!
 
Last edited:

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
There are two factors involved here, and good ways to handle.

1. There has never been a good way for mobo audio chips to feed their output into a video cards. Yet, newer video cards almost always are sending out their signals on an HDMI cable, and that system DOES have the ability to cary audio, too, to your monitor. So by far the most common solution is that video cards ALSO contain their own audio chip so they can feed to the HDMI cable. Now, at the time that your video card was installed, the driver install process also installed the audio drivers for that cards' chip. So now your system has TWO possible audio output devices. (This is NOT the same as which speaker is your default.)

2. Windows can only deal with ONE audio output device at a time, no matter how many you have available. So your system is set now to use the audio chip on the VIDEO card as the Default Sound Playback Device. Thus it can NOT use the mobo chip, and it can NOT send out sound on any jack on the front or back of your case - sound ONLY comes out through the HDMI cable to your monitor.

YOU can change which audio chip is used any time you like. At lower left, type sound settings in the search window and Enter. In the box that pops up, look at the Sound Output Device window - it is a drop-down chooser. You can choose to output via the mobo chip , usually by Realtek, or by the video card chip, named for the card maker.

If you choose the Realtek system, all your case jacks will send sounds out to headphones, speakers, or whatever they have plugged in there. But NO sound will go to your Monitor via the HDMI cable. IF you want sound at the monitor AND if the Monitor has an audio input jack, you can connect a cable from the case rear panel light green Left / Right Stereo output to the Montor's Audio Input jack, and adjust the settings in the Monitor's menu system to accept that audio source.

If your monitor has no such input and you want sound there, your choice is to change the Windows Sound Setting for Default Sound Output Device to the audio chip on the video card. Then your case jacks will not send out any sound until you change it back again.
 
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atif93

Prominent
Jul 6, 2020
132
2
585
Thank you for you’re answer, without disabling sound from the HDMI Cable, I cannot hear anything, I plugged in my jack last night and chose my headphones, to play sound from nothing happened, even though sound was not supposed to come from the TV, it did. It’s a slightly weird problem.