Is it possible for a faulty processor to cause audio static/noise?

Posted by Tom on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Tom
Published on 2012-10-29T15:48:22Z Indexed on 2012/10/29 17:05 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 286

Filed under:

audio

|

cpu

|

static

I have a Core 2 Extreme processor I received from a friend and have set up an XBMC box using it. However, I constantly get audio static whenever playing any music or videos. Here is a video of the sound:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqKQkxYRVA4

I have tried replacing everything short of the case and the processor, including cables, audio interfaces, operating systems, ram, etc, leading me to think it might be either the case shorting out the motherboards I have tried or a faulty processor.

Is it possible for a faulty processor to cause audio static/noise?

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Edit - Here's a list of things I have tried:

Reinstalling OS
Installing/upgrading/repairing PulseAudio/Alsa
Installing alternate OSes, straight Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Arch, Mint, Windows 7
Switching audio from the external card to internal Optical, audio out through HDMI, audio out through headphones
Different ports on receiver (my main desktop sounds fine on the same sound system)
Different optical cables
Unplugging everything unnecessary from the motherboard (1 HD, 1 Stick of Ram, 1 Keyboard)
Swapping out ram
Swapping out the motherboard
Replacing the Graphics Card (was replaced due to fan being noisy, not specifically for this problem)
Different harddrives
Swapping power supply
Disabling onboard audio
Switching Power Cable
Plugging in through surge protector
Plugging into different outlet on separate circuit

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about audio

How to create a virtual audio device and stream audio input with it

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Is it possible to create another audio device and redirect only wanted input streams to it? Here's my concrete problem: I am broadcasting a game via XFire and it uses the Windows audio device to capture any audio I receive. As I am broadcasting, other users who watch the video stream are communicating… >>> More
PhP/HTML play button [migrated]

as seen on Pro Webmasters - Search for 'Pro Webmasters'
I'm wanting to make my own small webpage, I've got a domain Saoo.eu As you see there is a small play button in the corner witch plays a playlist. Is there anyway to have that playbutton on each page I'd add in the future without resetting every time the page changes? Am I forced to use iFrames for… >>> More
How to fix these compiler errors?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have this source code from 2001 that I would like to compile. It gives this: $ make g++ -O99 -Wall -DLINUX -pedantic -c -o audio.o audio.cpp In file included from audio.cpp:7: audio.h:14: error: use of enum ‘mad_flow’ without previous declaration audio.h:15: error: use of enum ‘mad_flow’ without… >>> More
Play an audio file using RemoteIO and Audio Unit

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am looking at Apple's 'aurioTouch' example for the iPhone and I would like to play an mp3 or wav instead of using the built in mic. I am very new to the audio portion of iPhone programming, but I think I need to modify the SetupRemoteIO(...) function and replace the AudioComponent named 'comp' with… >>> More
Create Audio file on iPhone/iPad from many other audio files (mixer)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am trying to create something similar like Piano app on the iPhone. When people tap a key, it play a piano note. Basically, there will have only 7 notes (C) at the moment. Each note is a .caf file and its length is 5 seconds. I do not know if there is any way to save the song user played and export… >>> More

Related posts about cpu

Speedstep and Intel x5570?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hi, My new server has 2 x X5570 CPUs. Now here is the output of grep -i hz /proc/cpuinfo model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5570 @ 2.93GHz cpu MHz : 1600.231 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5570 @ 2.93GHz cpu MHz : 1600.231 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU … >>> More
VMware ESXi - varying CPU time (CPU reservation)

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hello! I'm running FreeBSD 7.2 under VMware ESXi 3.5. Host has 2 physical CPUs and the BSD box is currently the only running VM. Only one virtual CPU is assigned to the VM. When measuring CPU time of a specific program, I get very different results from time to time. Processor usage is reported… >>> More
How to calculate CPU % based on raw CPU ticks in SNMP

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
According to http://net-snmp.sourceforge.net/docs/mibs/ucdavis.html#scalar_notcurrent ssCpuUser, ssCpuSystem, ssCpuIdle, etc are deprecated in favor of the raw variants (ssCpuRawUser, etc). The former values (which don't cover things like nice, wait, kernel, interrupt, etc) returned a percentage… >>> More
disparity between `top`'s given CPU % and process CPU usage total

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I've noticed that there are sometimes (large) differences between the reported total CPU usage and a summation of the per-process CPU utilization given by apps like top and wmtop. As an example: I recently ran a git filter-branch --index-filter on a fairly large repo, with the index-filter command… >>> More
How to read oom-killer syslog messages?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have a Ubuntu 12.04 server which sometimes dies completely - no SSH, no ping, nothing until it is physically rebooted. After the reboot, I see in syslog that the oom-killer killed, well, pretty much everything. There's a lot of detailed memory usage information in them. How do I read these logs… >>> More