Hey all,
Thanks a bunch for all your advice. Sorry if I sound frustrated, I came here only once the hair-pulling started :) I think the fact that this doesn't go away in different slots and the fact that the onboard sound doesn't suffer from this really eliminates a lot of the options that were laid out, don't you agree?
After reading all your tips:
- I checked, the driver I have is the latest one from August. I reinstalled it anyway.
- I have no reason whatsoever to think the PSU is causing this. If you have thoughts as to how one would check this, I'm all ears. Voltages are solid, and the PSU is nowhere near its max.
- PCIe slots-wise, it is currently in the 1x slot I have but as I mentioned I tried the others too. Some slots on my mobo go to the CPU and are PCIe 3, but others are PCIe 2 and go to the chipset. The only one I haven't tried is the one that turns off the M2 slot if it's used.
My machine deets:
6950X (@4.6, 1.27V)
ASUS Rampage V Extreme
64GB of Patriot Viper RAM
EVGA 1070 Black
Samsung 970 EVO
Corsair HX1000i PSU
Everything is watercooled (custom loop)
I haven't registered this card so apparently I can't contact EVGA support. I kind of have to make a call as to whether I think that chance is worth it, because currently all things point to me having to resell this card to someone else and I don't want to use up the registration.
If we step back from solutions for a sec, what is the actual likely cause? Considering loading the CPU doesn't cause a problem, only the GPU, do we think it is coming from PCIe interference? Or, and I'm really grasping for straws/out of my depth here, does a GPU also create EM fields that can somehow be picked up by the card? If this is the problem, is there even any hypothetical solution? Or SOL?
One minor addition - I cranked up my speakers to levels I don't use, and there is a hissing/buzzing even at idle. I re-tested the GPU and CPU loading after doing so, and the GPU sounds start to get real interesting (there is a sort of intermittent louder pulsing within the noise), while the CPU load, weirdly, actually reduces the noise. Also, this may be self-evident to those of you who are more well-versed in this stuff, but if I mute the sound in windows, the noise does not change at all. As a layman in sound things, this tells me the noise is not being generated by the system or apps or whatever, but rather is electrical in nature.
And slightly off-topic: do USB sound cards still suffer from interference through the USB port, or are they much more immune to this kind of interference?