Motherboard Electrical Buzz / Grinding when Idle

AMD_Ruthless wrote: Hello All After 2 months my X370 Fatal1ty Gaming Pro died and I had it replaced by the reseller. However, while the new board is working I now hear this annoying electrical grinding noise similar to that of a mechanical drive around the VRM / CPU area.  Strange thing is I only hear it when idle, or browsing the net. If I watch a video, or even do something like decrypt /encrypt a drive the sound is greatly reduced and is very faint. I did not have this issue with the first board before it died. Obviously this is a choke issue around the VRM.  I have C6 disabled and tried a bunch of other things too but the fact remains I am using the same BIOS settings as the first board and that did not have this issue whereas the second board does. Being a first time customer with ASRock and having a board die after 2 months and now this issue with the chokes with the 2nd board is very disheartening. So, question is should I RMA this second board or is there anything else I can try? Thanks in advance.....

Inductor/choke noise is normally worse under low current conditions, which is why you hear it during low load situations on the processor. It seems you know that by having C6 disabled. This can also be related to the PSU being used, the low load ripple on the +12V rail, or the +12V rail voltage regulation varying under different loads. That is, the voltage increasing under low load.

You really must have a quiet PC with zero fan noise if you can hear inductor buzz from inside a PC case. Or you are sitting next to the PC.

Electronic components vary in their construction, and can change slightly over time. The inductor noise does not mean the part is bad (although that could be debated about inductors), just that vibration is not being damped in one or more of the inductors. A noisy inductor will still provide the correct electrical specs, but simply make noise at times.

If you would consider this a (potential) fix, using a fixed VCore voltage will tend to apply more voltage to the VRM stage and in turn to the inductors, which may keep one or more of the 16 inductors in the CPU VRM circuit from resonating. High frequency sounds like this can be difficult to pin point, so it could be any inductor, such as one used in the memory VRM circuit.

You could try carefully pressing on each inductor with your finger, to check if it will move a little bit. An inductor that is hovering above the board on it connecting wires/pins might stop buzzing if its body is touching the board.

Have you tried reconnecting the 4/8 pin CPU power cable from the PSU to the board? Are you using a 4 or eight pin connector?

I occasionally hear a little inductor whine when I am shutting down one of my Intel chipset board PCs, just before the PSU main voltage rails are switched off. I had one mother board, actually made by Intel, that had inductor whine when C6 was enabled. Otherwise I've never had a board with noisy inductors.

We have no idea about any of the other hardware in this PC.

I have not had an ASRock board die on me yet, I won't say it doesn't happen but I have been using them a long time and never had one fail on me. Considering the fact that I have used over a dozen different ASRock boards that is saying something. 

not nit picking here but

you can also have too large a psu

the power draw can be too low on it causing it to run well out of its efficiancy band

i vote for wardogs solution

a hot glue gun is actually a good call

Disable C6 glob states in bios.
If not help also disable qool&quiet.

hot glue =

its a stick of glue you shove in a heating gun and it squirts out the end runny and sets hard

quite handy for dads with kids

what wardog suggests is to squirt a bit around the base to stop any undue resonance