Why can I hear my SATA drives through my AVR+amp?

[Fillius]

I'm not familiar with the 0V option - possible to link an example?

0V is just ground for components of a PC, the black wires. Red wires are 5V, Orange are 3.3V and yellow are 12V. 0V will be connected to the shielding of USB connectors and presumably also the shielding of the HDMI.

If the noise is happening on both SSD and HDD then the problem isn't likely to be the drives, it's more likely to be crosstalk/noise on the PSU or motherboard when under load. Can you hear any noise coming from the physical components? Coil whine from inductor coils can make quite a racket, usually from the graphics card or the motherboard VRM next to the CPU. It would vary with load, like if you're playing a game without a frame rate limiter and the graphics/CPU are under stress.

 

[b4nt]

0V is just ground for components of a PC, the black wires. Red wires are 5V, Orange are 3.3V and yellow are 12V. 0V will be connected to the shielding of USB connectors and presumably also the shielding of the HDMI.

If the noise is happening on both SSD and HDD then the problem isn't likely to be the drives, it's more likely to be crosstalk/noise on the PSU or motherboard when under load. Can you hear any noise coming from the physical components? Coil whine from inductor coils can make quite a racket, usually from the graphics card or the motherboard VRM next to the CPU. It would vary with load, like if you're playing a game without a frame rate limiter and the graphics/CPU are under stress.

Audible noise the PC makes shouldn't be the issue, nor any indicator of what can happen at electrical levels. Any stress test app may help, to make the CPU, CGU and disks work a lot, for diagnoses.

Is the noise radiated? Could be tested by moving the PC at distance.

The other only electrical pathes I see are via the HDMI cable, mainly 0V and 5V rails (plus the data rails, which is digital). This is why I ssugested the test at #17 then #20. Doing more, like on 5V HDMI rail would be complex.

 

[Jinjuku]

Any suggestions?

Does your AVR have a separate grounding lug that you could try tying to the outlet ground via a IEC ground cable strap?

 

[dougi]

It still might be worth trying a new HDMI cable. Grounding/shielding requirements in older cables was not well specified I believe. The latest spec to support 8k "ultra high speed" cables have strict shielding specs which may also help with grounding. I can't quickly find a good link for this though.

 

[b4nt]

It still might be worth trying a new HDMI cable. Grounding/shielding requirements in older cables was not well specified I believe. The latest spec to support 8k "ultra high speed" cables have strict shielding specs which may also help with grounding. I can't quickly find a good link for this though.

I didn't find either. Older may have different wires gauges, up to small. This is why I suggested to add a wire between PC OV and Denon GND. Won't cost anything, just the time to test.

 

[dougi]

I didn't find either. Older may have different wires gauges, up to small. This is why I suggested to add a wire between PC OV and Denon GND. Won't cost anything, just the time to test.

Sort of found it. A description of the original problem related to EMI and plan to solve it with the latest spec. HDMI and EMI.

 

[oupee]

Years ago, growled in speakers and a subwoofer, and I couldn't figure out why. So my father came and twisted the power cord of the AV receiver in the wall socket. I don't know why it helped.

 

[tifune]

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions and sorry for delayed response to my own post. I decided I'm just going to replace it outright. The final straw was, the wife and I were having a moment and the PC gave a BSOD causing our romantic soundtrack to skip like a CD until the entire 12GB dump file finished writing to disk followed by a reboot wherein 2 of my drives failed SMART causing the motherboard alarm to start firing until I hopped over to hit F2 for [Continue Anyway]

Not that you needed so much info, I just thought it's an amusing anecdote. I now know my exact threshold for how much bad behavior I'm willing to accept from my gear to save a buck. I got 16 years out of it, I'd say that's a pretty good run! (i7-970 based)

 

[Berwhale]

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions and sorry for delayed response to my own post. I decided I'm just going to replace it outright. The final straw was, the wife and I were having a moment and the PC gave a BSOD causing our romantic soundtrack to skip like a CD until the entire 12GB dump file finished writing to disk followed by a reboot wherein 2 of my drives failed SMART causing the motherboard alarm to start firing until I hopped over to hit F2 for [Continue Anyway]

Not that you needed so much info, I just thought it's an amusing anecdote. I now know my exact threshold for how much bad behavior I'm willing to accept from my gear to save a buck. I got 16 years out of it, I'd say that's a pretty good run! (i7-970 based)

I'd say it's definately time to replace it with a little NUC!