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Loaded_Glove · ‎10-01-2016

Let me start right away by saying that I am 100% sure the clicking/popping noises I am hearing are not coming from fans, hard drives or my power supply. I have tested the whole system outside the case with no spinning drives connected, no case fans connected to the board, using onboard video just to eliminate the video card fan and with a close ear to the very slow spinning cpu fan. Apparently this board has something called a de-pop relay for the onboard sound and may also have some sort of relay for the surge protection the board has built into it. When I turn the system on or off, when I reboot and sometimes when a load is on the system like running Valley benchmark for example, the board will make a somewhat load click/pop sound. It is not a continuous clicking or a sustained duration sound, just 1 single click at a time and a very short sound like a tenth of a second maybe. Perhaps it is nothing to worry about, but I'm very concerned because I googled everything I could think of and find no information about this anywhere online. Does anyone have any idea what is going on here?

w4tch0 · ‎10-02-2016

Mine does the same. The sound card has a relay for switching outputs which makes the pop (it's the white block part that is in bottom left corner of the board) . A Xonar DX soundcard I used to have a few years back used to make the same pop as well when turning the PC on/off.

Loaded_Glove · ‎10-02-2016

That makes sense, but besides powering on/off/rebooting, it occasionally does it at other times. When I've run some graphics benchmarks like Time Spy for example, it has done it once in awhile.

FonzieBulldog · ‎10-02-2016

The same here.Sometimes its a popping sound or clicking. 🙂

Loaded_Glove · ‎10-02-2016

FonzieBulldog wrote:
The same here.Sometimes its a popping sound or clicking. 🙂

Started when the board was new or later? For me, it's been this way since it was new.

ricemanhk · ‎10-03-2016

I've only had it click when turning on, off, or switching between speaker outputs in the back and headphone output on my case. These are all normal relay switch clicks.
If it's clicking at other times, it COULD be a protective switch kicking in to manage voltage/current spikes. If it's not that frequent and there's no issue with sound output I wouldn't worry too much, but if it clicks all the time and your sound is cutting out then something might be wrong with the onboard sound card.

Loaded_Glove · ‎10-03-2016

Haven't noticed any audio issues. Not in general or corresponding with the clicks. When you say voltage spikes, would that be like how the power supply is feeding the board power. In other words, if there was some kind of issue, would it definitely be a power supply issue or could it be a line issue with the actual power in my house? I originally thought the clicking was my power supply and so I switched power supplies a couple times. Once I realized it was the board, that's when I started looking more into it from that point of view. I can't imagine I would get 3 different supplies that had an issue that was affecting the board the same way. For various reasons I even got a different power supply each time. Started with a Corsair HX1000, then got an EVGA Super Nova 1000 P2 and finally ended up with A CoolerMaster V850 which Jonny Guru rates at near perfect and this model also happens to be on ASUS QVL list for this board.

Adrian1976 · ‎10-03-2016

I don't use the onboard audio and have it disabled, you would think it would disable this annoying relay clicking when the onboard audio is not required, I can't help but feel it's slowing my boot process down. Cmo'n Asus how difficult would it have been if power was cut to the relay also when audio is disabled in the bios ???

Loaded_Glove · ‎10-03-2016

Adrian1976 wrote:
I don't use the onboard audio and have it disabled, you would think it would disable this annoying relay clicking when the onboard audio is not required, I can't help but feel it's slowing my boot process down. Cmo'n Asus how difficult would it have been if power was cut to the relay also when audio is disabled in the bios ???

This may sound dumb and I admit I'm not basing this on technical knowledge, but did you also disable the front panel header in the bios?

ricemanhk · ‎10-03-2016

The voltage spikes are between your PSU, your board and the onboard audio, your line power should be shielded through the PSU already. Spikes can be caused by a host of factors, some have said even running CPU at 100% then at idle can cause a voltage spike on another rail.
As long as these clicks are only happening when you turn on, turn off, or switching between back output and front panel output then there's nothing to worry about. These clicks happen all the time with my AV amplifier whenever I turn it on/off or switch speaker setups, so I'm used to them. As long as they don't click when sound is being played and you haven't made any changes that require a relay switch then it's all normal.

All your 3 PSUs are well regarded brands and models, so I do not think they are causing the issue (unless the individual unit is faulty).

Maximus VIII Hero noisy board clicks/pops