How to eliminate electrical noise on Soyo SY-A320D4+ for Metaphor: ReFantazio?
Whenever a massive magic effect hit the screen, I'd get this piercing buzzing in my ears that totally ruined the immersion. The audio capacitors on the Soyo SY-A320D4+ Magic Sound version are prone to EMI from the 12V rail when the GPU is pegged, creating high-frequency noise in the 2-5kHz range. I tried disabling all software audio enhancements first, but the popping still happened whenever the GPU hit 80% load—just another failed attempt. I ended up dropping the system sample rate from 48kHz to 44.1kHz and snapped a ferrite bead onto the audio cable. In a spectrum analyzer, the noise peaks dropped from -40dB to -75dB. I actually placed the bead in the wrong spot at first and it did nothing, but moving it closer to the port fixed it. CPU is steady at 55-62℃ and the audio chip is at 38-42℃. The noise floor is finally below the threshold, and frame times are a tight 5.1-6.4ms.
