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Do you often hear the ringing of switching power supplies and devices when you are in a quiet space? (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by j4k3@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I'm curious, how many people are aware of these sounds. I have designed, etched, and built my own switching power supplies along with winding my own transformers. I am aware of the source of the noise. So, does anyone else hear these high frequency sounds regularly?

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[–] insomniac_lemon@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Even past 30 and with (mild) tinnitus, yeah my hearing is still great so I'm going to hear it. Light bulbs, chargers, the router etc.

Recently my computer's PSU has started randomly buzzing a not-quite-high frequency. It could be age (it's from 2019) though I'm pretty sure it's some kind of interference because sometimes it won't make any noise at all for days and I'm pretty sure my light bulb (an LED filament bulb which doesn't have much in the way of components) seems to also make different pitches of buzzing that coordinates with how much my computer PSU will buzz.

Anyways it bothers me, so as soon as I post this I'm going to power-down and unplug my computer and switch to a different device for the next day or so.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The switching frequency is usually set by a small capacitor that is on the mains auxiliary power circuit. This may degrade depending on what kind of capacitor was used. There is also a small electrolytic capacitor that smooths the auxiliary power for the chip itself. If this capacitor degrades too much, it can cause some switching frequency stability issues too.

My current laptop supply sounds about like R2D2 when my GPU is running full tilt and I'm maxed out on 18 of 20 cores with AI.

[–] insomniac_lemon@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

My current laptop supply sounds about like R2D2 when my GPU is running full tilt and I’m maxed out on 18 of 20 cores with AI.

But that's the thing it happens at idle, and I've tried fixing it by unplugging+discharging and letting it sit unpowered in my colder-than-average room for 5 hours or so and it was still happening when I booted back up. So time or some other random thing seems to be a bigger difference.

When I had it not happen for days, doing anything that made the fans ramp up didn't cause it to happen (even full tilt as you said). In fact most of the time it'd start with nothing open other than the browser.

I thought it might've been dust (despite my PSU being the least dusty component) but after dusting it doesn't seem to have been the issue.