Clevo P150EM headphone noise

Hello,

Please help me resolve this.This issue has become very annoying now. There is persistent noise in my headphones when i play games. here is what i noticed:

Specs:

Clevo P150EM - Mythlogic Pollux 1612
15.6" Full HD (1920x1080) Matte 95% NTSC Color Gamut LED
Intel Core i7-3720QM 2.6GHz, 6M L3 Cache
NVIDIA 680M 4096MB GDDR5 DX11 GPU
16GB (4 x 4GB) , PC3-12800, 1600MHz SODIMM
Crucial 512GB M4 Series SATA III 6GB/sec Solid State DriveSerial
KILLER WirelessN 1202
Windows 7 Home Premium


Issue:

Continuous background noise while playing games. Movies and songs are playing fine. for some weird reason this only happens with games

Noise:

Its hard to explain, but it sounds like the noise you hear on radio or old record players

Headphones used:

Klipsch image S4i. 2 pairs. old and new. headphones are in perfect working condition.

Games:

I noticed the issue in wide variety of games: Dishonored, Black Ops 2, Crysis 2, Alan Wake, NFS Hot Pursuit, Borderlands 2

Troubleshooting:

I tried some root cause analysis steps, but no luck

1. tried different positions of the LCD display. no change in the noise intensity
2. played with the brightness level of the LCD. no change in the noise intensity
3. played with different settings of the keyboard back-light. no change in the noise intensity
4. disabled THX completely. no change in the noise intensity.

Appreciate your help!!

 

That is odd it only happens while gaming. It could be a result of the computer switching over to the 680M.
Try updating the drivers from nvidia.
Do you have external speakers that are not headphones to plug in to see if the noise is still there.

 

yeah..you maybe right.. that's a good observation. I am using the latest 310.54 beta drivers now, but i also had the same issue last month when i was using 306.97 drivers. I will try running the game with integrated graphics.I will also try with external speakers today..thanks

 

you are absolutely spot on! looks like GFX card is the issue. I don't hear any noise while playing with integrated GFX. Also, i don't hear the noise while playing on the 680M gfx card on battery. It seems optimus is immediately switching to integrated gfx when i remove the charging.

great! now i found what is causing the issue. any ideas on why gfx card or charging is affecting the sound?

 

You can image a GTX680 generates a lot of EM interference, well Clevo could do a better job shielding their sound PCB layout so it tends to suffer with high speed components around.

 

I have had this happen on my Desktop PC's years ago. I could hear the fans of the CPU sometimes trough my headphones. Or even the static noise when the CPU was working hard. Or the harddisk noises when its in-use, again trough my headphones.
Annoying when the manufacturer doesent shield the audio outs properly.
I have been using an external soundcard (USB) that did a perfect job. No interference and no noise. But it was professional, for DJ's, so I kinda expected it to be perfect in that regard.
Nothing you can do, man. Deal with the noise or get some external USB card.

 

I had this issue before when playing BF3, could be a different source though. I fixed it by setting the 'PC Beep' volume to 0 in Audio Properties>Levels.

 

thanks all for the input...should i send it back to Mythlogic or buy a external sound card? any suggestions?

 

Getting an external sound card would be a good idea. You'll also get alot better sound per a few posts here.

 

thanks, but external sound card will not get any interference from the GFX card?

 

Well it depends exactly whats causing that noise. If you go that route make sure its ones that has a return period incase it does continue to do so.

 

Generally no. The Creative X-Fi USB is compact and works well, and there are a few which use the S/PDIF port if you want something higher end.

Also, double-check to ensure you don't have "listen to this device" turned on for your mic.

 

So I turned off the PC Beep as someone stated on first page. The headphone noise is completely gone now. Hope this helps.