• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

CM Storm Trigger Backlight Noise

Sysjack

Sysjack

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 6, 2003
Messages
339
I bought a CM Storm Trigger with Cherry MX Red switches last week, and I mostly like it a lot (except for the lack of a stepped caps lock key). The problem is though it makes noise just sitting there with the backlight on. I can actually hear this noise above the rest of my computer room noises too, just loud enough to be annoying. I have very good ears so I am not sure if this is normal for this keyboard, or if I should be RMAing it.

It sounds like I can hear the PWM brightness controller driving the LEDs, a high pitched whine. Reducing the brightness to minimum reduces the volume somewhat, while increasing brightness raises the sound level. Setting the backlight to "breathing" mode goes through the full range of brightness/noise levels, from fairly quiet at minimum (below the normal minimum steady setting), to (amusingly) silent at maximum (above the normal max brightness steady setting). I'm guessing when the breathing mode hits max brightness it is actually driving the LEDs at full, meaning no PWM switching harmonics, so no noise. It is also silent when the backlight is off. I currently have an AC adapter on order to see if the highest brightness setting is silent like during breathing mode. The highest settings are not available without auxilliary power which is kind of weird.

To test your own keyboard, set brightness to mid/high and put your ear close, especially on the underside. Breathing mode will go through the full range, too. This also really only occurs with full backlighting, the WASD backlight setting is pretty quiet, but useless for me.

So my question is, has anyone else experienced this? Were you able to workaround or fix it? Did RMAing help? If you have another make/model of mechanical keyboard with full backlighting such as a Corsair K90 or Ducky Shine, does it do anything like I've described (in case I decide to switch to the Corsair K95)?
 
It's not an uncommon issue with backlit Cherry MX boards; from what I've read, a lot of people have had success with returning/RMAing their boards for replacements.
 
I am having a very difficult time locating anyone else describing this type of issue. Could you perhaps point me in the direction of these discussions? I can only find this thread in my searching. Before making it nothing of relevance was coming up.
 
There was a thread or two buried on Deskthority; there have been threads on Geekhack as well, but I don't know if those were lost when the site went down a while ago. There might have been one or two threads on Overclock.net as well, but I don't quite remember; it's been nearly a year since I really saw much on the subject.

edit; iirc, one modder that encountered the problem ended up pinpointing the resistor causing the noise and just de/resoldered it, seeing as this isn't always possible you may want to contact who sold you the board and/or the company that produces the board and see what they can do.

side note; this occurs on a lot of backlit Cherry MX boards, but is rarely noticeable.
 
Last edited:
Never experienced it on mine, and I have it on full backlighting. Most likely a capacitor making that squealing noise. CM has a good RMA policy, they may fix that for you if you contact them.
 
Full backlight on my StormTrigger....no coil whine. Granted, keyboard is pretty new -got it in October 2012, but its working well.
 
It was purchased through Amazon so returns are very easy. It is sounding like I may need to do that. I've only had it 5 days so I'm well within the return period, but I wasn't sure if this was just endemic to full backlit mechanicals. The pitch is high enough that I imagine most people would have difficulty detecting it, but it's not something I can live with.

I'm not clear from the above replies, is this normal or not? I've got two reports of no noise, and one report that it happens all the time.

Are you guys able to hear the noise if you go looking for it, getting your ear right up to the board and toggling the backlight on and off? It's localized in the right half.
 
Last edited:
It doesn't happen all the time, no, but it's not uncommon. It is hard for most who do have a board with this occurrence to detect it, so most of the time it does go completely unnoticed. One of the threads I remember asking others to test their boards and quite a few seemed to notice it while shifting through lighting settings mid to upper range in brightness.

Using a Ducky Shine v2 myself atm and never could figure out if it had this problem or not, too many other electronics in the room giving off high-pitched squeals, haha.
 
I got my 5V power supply. It only reduces the noise a little, and the backlight on maximum makes some fairly warm spots on the keyboard. This is disappointing. Furthermore it doesn't seem like the power receptacle was designed to actually accept a connection. It doesn't fully insert, so it it quite loose.

If it wouldn't void any possibility of returning it, I would open it up and have a look at adding some potting to quiet it down, or see if there was something fixable.
 
I ended up doing a return for replacement from Amazon. The replacement is slightly quieter as far as the offending noise, but I gained some new issues. This one has a spacebar that rattles (slightly defective stabilizer), and 3 keycaps with scratches. Two of them show backlight through the scratches. So this board is going back, and I think I will just get a refund.

I've been doing a lot of research on the noise issue and I think CM probably uses a ceramic capacitor that is ringing due to harmonics. A tantalum replacement would fix it, along with voiding my warranty. If it weren't for the crappy aux power jack on this thing (by design) I might have risked it on the first keyboard, but not this one.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top