Hey HardOCP,
Long story short, I had a second audio card die on me lately. I think the culprit is accidental exposure to small static discharges when I pick up my headphones in my residence.
I now live in a state that is very dry in humidity so I gather static all the time in my place.
This is the second time I've replaced my soundcard in my old PC. I'm now going to redo a build and luckily had a third soundcard spare replacement for this new build anyway, but I've killed two Creative soundcards thus far, both having the same symptom of high pitch whine in the left channel (and gets worse with mouse movement, but still is present even with no mouse, and launching videogames makes the left channel totally whine in a really insanely loud high pitch) after I realized they've been compromised; moving PCI slots does nothing. One was an X-Fi on PCI-e; the other that JUST died, and still didn't work in another slot as well, was a PCI X-TremeGamer (OEM) card I got off eBay years ago as well.
I'm wondering, what the heck can I do to prevent sound card and computer damage when I want to use my PC?
Pardon my post; I'm under huge anxiety to do a midnight build and also that I'm deeply dependent on my audio capabilities for my well-being (music really soothes my person). I really don't want to keep buying sound cards or possibly damage my motherboard(s) from now on.
Long story short, I had a second audio card die on me lately. I think the culprit is accidental exposure to small static discharges when I pick up my headphones in my residence.
I now live in a state that is very dry in humidity so I gather static all the time in my place.
This is the second time I've replaced my soundcard in my old PC. I'm now going to redo a build and luckily had a third soundcard spare replacement for this new build anyway, but I've killed two Creative soundcards thus far, both having the same symptom of high pitch whine in the left channel (and gets worse with mouse movement, but still is present even with no mouse, and launching videogames makes the left channel totally whine in a really insanely loud high pitch) after I realized they've been compromised; moving PCI slots does nothing. One was an X-Fi on PCI-e; the other that JUST died, and still didn't work in another slot as well, was a PCI X-TremeGamer (OEM) card I got off eBay years ago as well.
I'm wondering, what the heck can I do to prevent sound card and computer damage when I want to use my PC?
- Should I get a humidifier?
- Should I somehow setup some sort of grounding system between my headphones and my soundcard?
- Should I somehow ground my PCI-brackets to something with wire?
- How do I easily ground, what is some easy wire to pick up from the hardware store for this type of thing, and what conductive end materials to clamp/help ground?
Pardon my post; I'm under huge anxiety to do a midnight build and also that I'm deeply dependent on my audio capabilities for my well-being (music really soothes my person). I really don't want to keep buying sound cards or possibly damage my motherboard(s) from now on.