Is this $40 card a SCAM? - PCIe Power Filtering

[WereCatf]

7 minutes ago, Nystemy said:

But what we can hear is when the VRM cycles between different loads. (Like each time it changes work load. For an example when it goes from mapping polygons to actually texturing, or when it goes from one frame to the next. This will create a tone that is some multiple of the FPS that our GPU produces, + harmonics of course.)

That is the PWM I mentioned: the current supplied to the circuits through a coil is controlled by adjusting the PWM-signal! You're just using a lot of words to say what I said.

10 minutes ago, Nystemy said:

The primary ones is general resonance, even if the wires are glued down, they can still vibrate.

You don't glue the windings, you wind them around the ferrite core. There is always a resonant frequency to everything, but how tightly those windings are wound changes their resonant frequency.

13 minutes ago, Nystemy said:

But thermal pads dampens the noise rather effectively. _{(And that is the main reason we want to see thermal pads connecting the inductors to a heat sink. Just to limit coil whine, not to cool the inductors, they can happily operate at 140 C and above.}

The thermal pads are on the MOSFETs, not the inductors.

[Required]

13 hours ago, WereCatf said:

You never bothered to actually check the output in any sort of an oscilloscope or audio-software or anything? Like...what the fuck, guys? Looking at Linus listening to stuff doesn't make for an informative or a particularly engaging video, but you'd have had something actually meaningful to show your viewers, if you'd bothered to actually check the signal properly!

I tought the same. The Video was Clickbait as usual.

[TehDwonz]

17 hours ago, SolarNova said:

Still rocking a Asus Xonar D2X soundcard here

 

Same. Though the drivers are getting more and more out of date... I am expecting a future W10 update to break it at some point!

[TehDwonz]

14 hours ago, WereCatf said:

You don't glue the windings, you wind them around the ferrite core.

Most are actually glued now, with epoxy. 

[TehDwonz]

3 hours ago, Required said:

I tought the same. The Video was Clickbait as usual.

Yeah, but this isn't Gamers Nexus

[TehDwonz]

21 hours ago, Nystemy said:

Using the two furthest away slots is logical in a daisy chained setup.
Since the longer traces will have a larger effect on our signal than the shorter "traces" of our unused connector.

In general, a motherboard that only has one slot per channel is going to have the best signal quality. (If it has equally well routed traces as our multi slot per channel board.)

Yeah, that's what I said, in fewer words...

[SolarNova]

5 minutes ago, TehDwonz said:

Same. Though the drivers are getting more and more out of date... I am expecting a future W10 update to break it at some point!

Still rocking W7 , and i use the custom 'Unified' Xonar drivers.

[BluetoothIsBadIn2019]

@Linus the electric noise you are talking about comes most of the times from headphones that requires really high 'ohm's. But if you really want to discover some crazy noise, you should try to record something with a microphone (condenser) and do the GPU benchmark. I think that's the noise you are looking and I am really curious what that card does if you try out what i mentioned.  

[TehDwonz]

3 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

Still rocking W7 , and i use the custom 'Unified' Xonar drivers.

Is this some 3rd party open-source alternative I don't know about? Or something private?

[SolarNova]

10 minutes ago, TehDwonz said:

Is this some 3rd party open-source alternative I don't know about? Or something private?

https://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/

 

Asus no longer supports the Xonar, so these new drivers are 3rd party, but they work very well .

[TehDwonz]

10 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

https://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/

 

Asus no longer supports the Xonar, so these new drivers are 3rd party, but they work very well .

That's really great, didn't know about that - thanks! 

[Nystemy]

13 hours ago, WereCatf said:

That is the PWM I mentioned: the current supplied to the circuits through a coil is controlled by adjusting the PWM-signal! You're just using a lot of words to say what I said.

You stated in your first post that one could get rid of coil whine by " changing the PWM-signal" and no, that won't effect coil whine at all. Since you do not hear the PWM signal.
What you hear is a sub harmonic of the change in pulse width. This is will result in coil whine regardless of the PWM frequency we pick.

Though, I think you forgot the main reason one should actually make proper explanations. And that is so that others can learn why something happens, and not just "it happens!".
 

13 hours ago, WereCatf said:

You don't glue the windings, you wind them around the ferrite core. There is always a resonant frequency to everything, but how tightly those windings are wound changes their resonant frequency.

Some ferrite cores do indeed not have any glue holding down the windings.
But there is still a lot of ferrite cores that do have glued windings. (I have used plenty myself for various designs.)

Now most ferrite cores used in VRMs are single turn inductors, because they are a good fit for the job. (Since they are able to carry more current in the same footprint, though with less inductance for a given volume. But most VRMs don't use more than 400 nH regardless, and less inductance can be solved with higher switching frequencies...)
 

13 hours ago, WereCatf said:

The thermal pads are on the MOSFETs, not the inductors.

I never said that there aren't thermal pads on the Fets.
I simply said that with thermal pads on the inductors, the vibrations gets dampened and thereby we have far less noticeable coil whine. It is a quality of life improvement, but not a necessary improvement as far as thermals go.

[Nystemy]

5 hours ago, TehDwonz said:

Yeah, that's what I said, in fewer words...

I hope you didn't forget to read the rest of my post that goes in to why that is the case.

After all, your comment were in the form of a question.
And mine, were in the form of an in depth explanation as to why.

[Required]

You are free to edit your post to!

[WereCatf]

2 hours ago, Nystemy said:

You stated in your first post that one could get rid of coil whine by " changing the PWM-signal" and no, that won't effect coil whine at all. Since you do not hear the PWM signal.
What you hear is a sub harmonic of the change in pulse width. This is will result in coil whine regardless of the PWM frequency we pick.

So, you're saying pulse-width isn't part of "pulse-width modulation?" Or that changing the signal, like e.g. to 100% pulse-width or to 0% pulse-width won't affect the noise? Or.....are you still saying that what I said was correct? Last I checked, pulse-width is part of the signal and changing it does affect the noise-output.

 

Obviously, you can't practically go and change the signal in a PC without affecting its functionality.

2 hours ago, Nystemy said:

I never said that there aren't thermal pads on the Fets.
I simply said that with thermal pads on the inductors, the vibrations gets dampened and thereby we have far less noticeable coil whine. It is a quality of life improvement, but not a necessary improvement as far as thermals go

Well, I, at least, have not seen a PC with thermal-pads on the inductors -- not on the mobo, not on the GPU's PCB, not on any other addin-cards.

[Nystemy]

13 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

So, you're saying pulse-width isn't part of "pulse-width modulation?" Or that changing the signal, like e.g. to 100% pulse-width or to 0% pulse-width won't affect the noise? Or.....are you still saying that what I said was correct? Last I checked, pulse-width is part of the signal and changing it does affect the noise-output.

 

Obviously, you can't practically go and change the signal in a PC without affecting its functionality.

Running at a constant pulse width would not result in coil whine.
Since it is the periodic change of pulse width that leads to coil whine.

On can also get coil whine from low frequency (sub 20 KHz) VRMs, here we would hear the coil whine as the actual switching instead of reactions to long term load changes. But exceptionally few buck converters run at that low frequencies.

But mainly my first comment were to fill out with technical information in regards to coil whine. Your statement were nothing but a convenient jumping off point for that.
_{Now I am not surprised that you decided to jab back with incorrect assessment in regards to the state of the industry. It's rather common behavior of people in general after all. I could also point out that 0% pulse width means that the VRM is off. While 100% is going to result in over current and a blown fuse.... Though, coil whine can get a bit more fun to deal with in pulse skipping supplies, though that is more common for mains voltage ones...}

14 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Well, I, at least, have not seen a PC with thermal-pads on the inductors -- not on the mobo, not on the GPU's PCB, not on any other addin-cards.

I guess you haven't watched a lot of teardowns to be fair.
It isn't all that uncommon to put thermal pads on inductors.
Here is a pair of videos showcasing such designs:

 

 

[mariushm]

Modern motherboards have the onboard audio on separate pcb layers, sometimes even with cutouts. Example:

 

You can see on the right that the whole audio circuit is isolated from the "noisy" voltages in the motherboard, powering the pci-e slots and other onboard chips - everything audio related is to the left of that yellow strip, and all the traces are on a pcb layer separate from the rest of motherboard.

The audio chip and maybe some opamps are also shielded from electric noise using that shield (heatsink)

 

A second example, on an Asus motherboard ... they go the extra step of adding a LDO (linear regulator, you can see only its input voltage pin jumping over that separation line at the top).

Besides that there's only some 0 ohm resistors probably to connect the ground layers and some transistor, probably for some basic enable/standby signals, which would not affect the sound quality.

Again, the actual chip is shielded and you can see the opamps as far away from any component (bottom corner) and you can see the "audiophile" electrolytic capacitors.

 

 

 

The audio chips themselves have built in linear regulators that filter the input voltage and power the analogue stuff, so you get extra line filtering and noise rejection ... the chip gets 3.3v from the motherboard and the linear regulator inside the chip produces 2.5v or 2.8v or some other lower voltage for the analogue part.

 

The asus board probably takes in 5v and output 3.6v or something like that for the opamps used to amplify the audio output for headphones or something like that.

 

So yeah ... if you have a decent power supply ... you have the power supply producing a relatively clean 12v, then the power supply uses a high frequency dc-dc converter to produce 3.3v and 5v from that already clean 12v and that very clean 3.3v is used to power the audio circuit on the motherboard.  The board has additional filtering and then the audio chip itself has extra linear regulators that further filtering of  noise.

You have filters after filters after filters already.

 

The pci-e board full of capacitors of all qualities and sizes won't help much, if at all. You have capacitors in the power supply, you have capacitors and chokes by the 24pin connector (because wires between psu and motherboard have resistance and some super small inductance just adding some small capacitors results in a basic LC filter to clean the incoming voltage) and then all motherboards already have at least a capacitor by each pci-e slot, for each voltage (pci-e has 3.3v and 12v) which filters and provides some bulk energy for when a pci-e device wakes up from sleep or something like that.

 

 

 

[Fulkaffe]

On 9/3/2020 at 7:56 PM, bloodaxe222 said:

will ABC book for Little Gamer be available in lttstore.com??

Thats what i wanna know to