[nicholars]

I got a new PC recently with a Gigabyte GTX 970, it has a small amount of actual coil whine from the card which does not bother me much, BUT for some reason it seems to cause noise through my speakers, for example on Skyrim it makes a buzzing noise that changes in tone when moving, or in furmark it makes a noise through the speakers depending on load, this is only audible when the amplifier is turned up but it bothers me because I do not want the graphics card to damage anything else in my computer or my amplifier, the strange thing is that when I unplug my TV from the amplifier (connected separately via 3.5mm > RCA cable to play TV through amplifier) it stops 90% of the noises and then I can only hear a slight buzzing in one speaker with the amplifier at 90% volume. Is this a faulty card that needs to be sent back or is it something else? I have a Xonar STX sound card in PCI-E x4 slot 3 and the GTX 970 in PCI-E 16x slot 1. WHY is it causing buzzing through my speakers under load and is this a fault or something I can fix and not worry about. I think it might be a "ground loop" which I do not really understand or it is EMI from the GTX 970 interfering with the Xonar STX, which is not very good as the STX is supposed to be a high end shielded sound card... Can anyone help me please. Unplugging my TV input to the amp reduces 90% of the noise but this is not a solution as I now cannot use my TV through the amplifier.

 

[PurpleAngel]

Did you disable the motherboard's on-board audio, in the BIOS, when you installed the STX?
Sometimes on-board audio causes issues with an add-on internal sound card.
 
What is the make and model of the amplifier?

 

[Ari33]

There was a thread on here recently where someone with a very similar problem to yours discovered that the buzzing was also from the monitor and the buzzing also dissapeared when he disconected it. I'll try and find it..
 
I suspect they do because there is likely to only be one but... Do both PCI-E devices use the same PCIE controller?
 
What monitor do you use?

 

[nicholars]

As far as I can see from manual etc. the PCI slot that the sound card is in does not share with the graphics card, there are 3 slots, 2 of them are controlled by CPU and 1 by the chipset, the sound card is in the chipset controlled slot, its annoying because I don't want to have to RMA the graphics card but it seems to cause electrical interference with my other components, during load eg. gaming the graphics card will buzz a bit which does not bother me much and seems to happen on a lot of GTX 970 cards, but if I turn the amplifier volume up I can hear interference in the speakers (only at high volume on the amp, not really hear it at normal volumes but the sound quality seems a bit worse due to the noise) and also the power supply in my monitor seems to be buzzing more than usual and making a strange ticking noise when I turn it off, could be a coincidence but I have not heard that noise from my monitor before using this new graphics card...
 
So it must be a "ground loop" or interference or something and I do not know what I can do about it other than swap the card, but I might get another that does the same or worse. The graphics card works perfectly other than a buzzing noise from the card which I could live with but I am worried it might damage my other components due to the strange interference eg. when the card starts buzzing in games, my monitor starts buzzing louder than normal and also if I turn the amplifier volume up and the game sound down / off I can hear interference in the speakers.... Not sure what I can do about it :S

 

[Ari33]

What models of PSU and Motherboard are you using?  
 
I assume you are not using the front panel headphone out as that nearly always picks up an EM induction buzz.  A PCIE x4 card should still work in the longer PCIE X16 slots. You could try swapping the PCIE components to different slots to hopefully move your STX as far away from the GPU as possible.
 
If you happen to have the older PCI slot (not PCIE) on your Mobo the ST version of the Xonar might be an option worth looking into?  My ST is dead silent.
 
I've also read elsewhere about enabling the VRM spread spectrum in the bios if you haven't overclocked the CPU to the very last few hundred stable Mhz.  Spread spectrum tries to use the system clock generator to disipate any residual EMI hanging around the system. Unless you're using something that puts out a lot of EMI or you have things outside of your computer that are causing EMI to your computer you usually don't need it on.

It causes problems with overclocking because it produces spikes in the system clock frequency. In some rare cases it can cause the core clock to jump up a couple hundred mhz. 

 

[Muinarc]

Slot 1 with a 2-slot card, your Sound card is basically right next to the gfx card right? I had that setup a few months ago and moved the sound card and background noise (especially in the mic) dropped off a ton. If you have another slot to use, I'd try it.

 

[nicholars]

Motherboard Asus Z97-a
PSU - EVGA 750w supernova G2 (very good power supply)
Graphics - Gigabyte GTX 970
 
Thanks for replies, No the graphics card is as far as possible from the sound card its in the bottom slot and the graphics is in the top slot, I will give the VRM spread spectrum a go and see if that helps, otherwise its going to have to be an RMA on the graphics card