Let's get undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone
and they hate us because they anus.
So, I'm doing today's video a bit backwards.
Normally at this point
I already have the script written and everything done,
but today you're coming along with me for the testing.
So, here's the situation:
I have my computer, this is a continuation from
the previous computer build video
that I did for my editing PC. And I've had--
that was using the B550 Master Motherboard and it's been great,
but I've had a couple issues so far
which I think are motherboard related
because I've swapped out a lot of other hardware.
One has been this terrible audio interference that
I've been getting through my audio interface.
And I think I mentioned at the end of my last video,
had this solution where I used this Defender thing
that kind of removes ground loops from USB ports
and it solved the problem, but I never actually figured out
what the root cause of the problem was and fixed it.
And the other one has-- some of my USB ports have been--
they've been having instability.
If I plugged certain devices into certain USB ports
based on certain controllers, I'll get blue screens
but not in other ones.
So, I'm thinking that maybe the motherboard
might be problematic with the USB ports.
But luckily, the folks over at GIGABYTE AORUS
are all about this nerdy testing and they sent over three more
motherboards here for me to swap out to see
if we could narrow down what the issues was,
whether my board was just a lemon,
or if there's something wrong
with that specific B550 Master that you should be aware of.
So, that's what we're gonna do today.
I'm gonna unbox these, look at the motherboards,
swap 'em out for the one that I have
and see if we can figure out what was causing the problem,
I'm gonna grab my computer. I'll also show you
the ground issue that I'm having,
it's also kind of peculiar. I've got my multimeter out.
And then we're gonna swap out the motherboards and see if
we can narrow it down. So, let me just unbox these
and then we'll get to it.
B550 Vision D.
An X570 AORUS Master
so that we can make sure it's not related to the chipset.
And another B550 AORUS Master,
just like the one that's in my computer currently
so that we can rule out whether my motherboard is a lemon
or whether it's all the B550 Masters.
OK, so one of the things that I wanted to show you
was this grounding problem.
So, I'm not an electrical engineer or anything, so some of
the stuff I say might be a little bit...
uh, maybe not precise, but just--
I'm gonna share what I've tested.
So, the reason why I noticed this was a problem,
other than the fact that the audio was obvious
when not use this ground loop isolator thing,
it just sounded much different.
It was like a high-pitched whine.
[tinny, continuous whine]
And then if you ran anything that was demanding
on the system, it would make a lot of noise.
[staticky drone]
[silence]
So, I noticed that.
But then, on the Discord they recommended that
I started checking--
On the Discord they started recommending that I check
some of the grounding points to see if there was continuity,
to see if maybe that's what was causing it.
And I did that on both this computer and my previous rig
and the previous rig had no issues.
Now, let me show you. So...
got my old multimeter here. And if I set it for
giving me an audible beep for continuity,
-then anytime that-- -[beep]
--there's continuity it should make that sound.
So, if I touch one probe to one of these screws
on the power supply, which should be grounded
and then touch another one of the probes somewhere else
and I think... my arm's gonna be terribly clipped here,
I apologize for that, but, uh...
that's just what's gonna happen
If I touch, say, the back plate to the GPU here...
-[beep] -Then you can hear it.
And if I touch, you know, inside of a USB port...
-[beep] -Just, like, not like inside
but the IO shield around the motherboard or the antennas.
Basically, just any of the ports
that are attached to the motherboard, we get continuity.
But what's strange is that if I turn the computer on
it goes away, where on my other computer it doesn't.
So, for instance, if I turn this on...
OK, so it's booting up now.
I'll do the exact same thing,
plug it in here and then...
[silence]
As you can see, or as you can hear, rather,
it's not beeping anymore anywhere.
And the same thing happens if you touch
one of the stand-off screws
on the motherboard or basically anything
that's safe to touch internally, it's the same thing.
When the computer's off, you'll get a continuity beep
but when it's on you won't.
And so, what I think might be happening
is that I think the motherboard might be grounding differently
when it's on versus when it's off and using a different path.
'Cause my understanding of how a ground loop works
is that whenever two devices are grounding
through a different route or path
that you can get a ground loop,
which is why, generally, you wanna have, you know,
all your devices connected through the same, you know,
power bar or something into the same outlet.
And this seems to solve it because what this does is
it gives a separate power source.
So, you plug this into the USB,
then you plug your audio interface there,
and then there's a separate USB cord
that goes in and you can plug it in
to the same power bar as your computer
and then that solves the whole ground loop problem.
But why is there a ground loop in the first place
on this machine versus the other one?
And like I said, I've tried swapping out a lot of stuff
and disconnecting things and disconnecting
all the peripherals and nothing really helped,
so now we're gonna, first-- First, what I'm gonna do is
I'm actually gonna take the motherboard out
and run it, just, outside of the machine
to see if there's some kind of issue between it
and the case or something's being, kind of, like, shorted.
And if that doesn't solve it,
then we're gonna switch out the motherboard.
OK, so I've got the original B550 Master board
that was in the computer here, sitting here,
and I think I've got everything connected that I need.
I've got my CPU and 24-pin power connectors
and I've got the connectors here, 'cause I don't think
that I can-- uh, for the front power, because I don't think
I could turn on this motherboard from the motherboard.
I think I need to use the front port of the computer.
So, I've got that connected. I don't have
the graphics card connected, but I already tested it,
removed, when it was all together,
and it didn't make a difference.
Let's power this-- or let's check it first with it off
and see if there's any differences for continuity,
'cause now we can even probe the motherboard.
-[beep] -And we're getting...
...the same results that we got inside the case.
Now I'm gonna power this on
and hopefully something bad doesn't happen.
[beep]
[silence]
-[beep] -So, that's interesting.
I'm getting continuity on some USB ports and not other ones.
But why don't I get it when it was all assembled?
It's frustrating when stuff like this happens,
when you get intermittent problems.
OK, update. This is the new B550 Master,
and unfortunately, it has exactly the same problems.
There's no ground continuity when the computer is running,
uh, I still get that--
I still get the audio interference.
I took it over to where I normally have it
and checked it with the same audio interface,
same problems. If it's both boards
I'm just gonna assume that it's...
all the B550 Masters that have this problem.
So, then we're gonna have to switch to another motherboard.
And I was thinking the x570,
but maybe we should try the B550 Vision D first,
because if it doesn't have problems,
then that solves that it's not B550 in general,
it's just this particular one or maybe a couple of the B550s.
And if neither of those work, then we'll go to the X570
and see where we are from there.
Alright, so I'm gonna switch out this motherboard
for the B550 Vision D.
But let's just take a look at it first
because I haven't actually seen this board yet.
OK, so this is the B550 Vision D, which...
although it looks good to my eyes,
is definitely a tough thing to expose for.
This is so white! It's, like...
probably beyond 90% reflectance.
You could use it to set your Zebras off of.
But it looks nice. We've got a very similar configuration
to the B550 Master, which you can probably see in there.
The only difference is we'll just check and see
what the set-up is regarding the PCI Express and the USB.
Alright, so based on what I'm seeing in the manual here,
there's a lot of similarities
but there are a couple differences that I think
could be benefits in some regards
and then maybe a couple drawbacks.
One, there's still no USB-C front header,
which kinda bugs me a little bit,
'cause this case does have a front header.
I think only the X570 has that.
But in terms of other inputs and outputs, the--
so, the main thing with 550 is all about the PCI Express,
how it's not fully 4.0 but there's some 4.0.
This top PCI Express slot is a 4.0 x16,
just like it is on the 550 Master.
But then this one below is a 4.0 x8 and you can run both of them
bifurcated to x8 each, 'cause they share bandwidth,
which I don't think is the case on the 550 Master.
Could be mistaken, though.
And then this top NVMe is, again, PCI Express 4.0.
So, that part's the same as the 550 Master.
It's like these top two are 4.0 and then it goes down to 3.0,
'cause this one's a 3.0 and then this one--
the difference here is this is 4.0,
where this bottom one is a 3.0 PCI Express slot,
but you're only getting two NVMes here
because this bottom one is populated by
what looks like a WiFi card
and the cords run up here
and then I guess you would hook the WiFi antenna up.
So, you only have two NVMes on this one,
but you can bifurcate your PCI Express 4.0,
uh, GPUs or whatever, if you wanted to.
So, let's go ahead and build the computer back up into this.
I don't know if there's gonna be much
in the way of driver changes.
I think a lot of this stuff is the same.
There might be a couple Realtek becomes Intel things,
but, uh, we'll take a look at it.
Yeah, let's go from there.
OK.
Go ahead and forget pretty much everything I've said
up to this point. OK, well not really,
but there have been some developments.
I've rebuilt this computer a total of six times, I think,
so far over the weekend and I was able to figure out
all the problems because, yes, it's more than one,
there's three, which is why it was so difficult to diagnose.
So, my original mistake was thinking
that all of these issues were related to the ground loop;
they're not. And thanks to AORUS for sending over
all these extra motherboards.
I now have duplicates of everything,
so, I was able to narrow down exactly what the issue was.
So, for issue #4,
that whole thing with my USB ports
causing blue screens,
it's unrelated to these other problems
and it turns out that actually was just a bad motherboard
and that was the other B550 Master.
Because this B550 Master,
as well as the other two boards here,
the B550 Vision D and the X570 Master,
none of those three had the problem
that that other motherboard did,
so, I'm just gonna go ahead and assume that was just--
I just got unlucky and that that one was faulty.
So, that's solved and that's unrelated.
Just kind of a red herring in the diagnosis here, though.
For issue #1, regarding the continuity,
for this one I think it's actually a case issue.
I think it's this R6 case from Fractal Design
because what it is, I swapped out all
of the guts of this thing, including the power supply,
all of the hardware, into the other computer
that I keep referring to, which is in its own NZXT case.
So, basically, I swapped all the internals
and the continuity issue followed the case,
not the internals.
So, once all of this stuff was put in that NZXT case,
I did have continuity, whether on or off.
But when all that stuff was put in this case,
I went back to not having continuity.
And I also tried a few other things to see if I could...
fix the case. I replaced the screws,
the standoffs for the motherboard,
I chipped away some paint in certain areas
to try to make sure that the contact was great.
Nothing seems to have helped.
So, I don't know if this case is just insulated differently
than the other one that I've used, but what's weird
is the fact that I do get continuity when it's off,
but not when it's on. And this is something I'm hoping
that maybe you guys if you have, you know,
an electrical background or whatever,
maybe you could explain this in the comments to me.
Maybe it's just a resistance thing,
like the case has high resistance,
then when you power it on the load makes the resistance
too high to get continuity, I'm not really sure.
But why would a case
not give you continuity
from, say, the motherboard to the power supply
when it's on, but it will when it's off.
I'd love to know that answer. But anyway,
I narrowed it down that it's the case,
not the motherboard, that's causing that grounding issue.
Then... for issues two and three,
this is where it gets strange.
So, I thought, OK, now I've got a set-up
that doesn't have that grounding problem.
I've got all these guts put in that other case,
I have continuity, so, let's fire it up
and see if we hear the sounds. And I did, again.
I got that high-pitched ringing right away.
So, I was not expecting that, but I figured,
now that I have a test configuration
that is a few steps forward from where we were before
when there was, like, four problems that I don't know--
I don't realize are separate problems,
now I started swapping parts out again,
piece by piece, to see if we could narrow it down.
And I did! It was the RAM.
The same RAM that you see here,
it's this, uh, AORUS RGB Memory.
The--the stuff that I originally installed
when I did this build the first time.
As soon as I swapped that part out
for just some cheap,
non-RGB DDR4 slow memory that I had,
the ringing stopped. But I don't really understand why
the memory would cause that ringing sound
unless it has something to do with the RGB.
Maybe the controller for the RGB,
the dimming of the light, has, like, a frequency of switching
and that switching frequency is what
we hear as the ringing sound.
I don't know, but if I don't put the RGB Memory
in this motherboard, the ringing goes away.
So, that's issue #2,
except for when I put the GPU under load,
which was issue #3.
That sound does come back,
but it's a lot quieter on
the other computer that has--
when you have continuity, it's a lot quieter, so,
I do think it's aggravated by the whole grounding issue,
but also, that weird interference sound...
[staticky drone]
...Can be heard when the panel's off
and it was easier for me to tell this
in the other case because the other case is not,
like, a soundproof case like the R6 is.
And so, it turns out, I think it's actually
just coil whine coming from the GPU, because if you get
your ear right up to it you can hear it from the GPU
and I think because of-- maybe because of the grounding issue,
but that sound gets through and then goes into my speakers,
where they don't when I was using this USB Defender thing.
Which is interesting because why would this USB Defender,
which is supposed to be a ground loop isolator,
make it so I couldn't hear
the coil whine unless the coil whine
was being aggravated by the ground loop.
Does that make sense?
I believe now that I could definitely configure a build
that wouldn't have these problems.
I could do a different case, I could do a less coil whine-y GPU
and I could use different RAM
and I think I wouldn't hear anything,
even if some of the problems persisted.
Maybe even if there was still a grounding issue
I might not have-- might not hear it,
even though, like I said, another case
might not have the grounding issue.
But that also kinda speaks to this little USB Defender thing.
I'm not-- this is not a sponsored video,
I have no reason to promote this.
I just took a flyer on this. Someone on the Discord was like,
you should try one of these, so, I bought it.
They're expensive, though! They were, like, 70 or 80 bucks
for just this little USB stick,
but it actually solved all the problems.
So, I guess to wrap up, since GIGABYTE was nice enough
to send me all these extra motherboards
just to test the issue that I was having,
I should probably say some nice things
about the motherboards to thank them.
Uh, so in this one I've got the X570
and I think that's the one that I'm gonna keep in there,
and I'll explain why in a second.
But if I had to rank these based on--
because I did get to build them pretty much back-to-back,
I was able to, kind of, I guess, experience them all
and I would probably rank them in order of price.
So... the B550 Vision D is the cheapest one at $259.
I liked this one, I thought it had a decent
building experience. This would be the one
that I would probably recommend if you needed
to go dual GPUs and didn't need too many M.2s,
like maybe you just had one NVMe drive
and you wanted to do dual GPUs on the B550;
this is probably the way to go. Next up,
I guess my second favourite, if you will, of the three,
would be the B550 Master, which was my original pick
in the original build that I did.
So, this one is just a little bit more.
It's $269, so $10 more than that.
And it's a pretty similar experience, to be honest.
Uh, the only thing that-- I would say that this one's
probably better if you want one GPU
and more NVMe drives, go with that.
That one's more if you want two GPUs and fewer NVMe drives.
And it has more, like, standard input/outputs than the Vision D,
but fewer of, maybe, the more specialty ones.
Like, it only has one USB-C port,
and only one RJ45 Ethernet port,
but more, just, standard USB ports.
But it does have more SATA connectors
if that's something that's important to you.
One thing that the B550 Master doesn't have that I wish it did
is there's no CMOS clear button, or really any, kind of, like,
buttons on the motherboard itself
or even on the back panel.
So, if you wanna clear your BIOS,
for instance, you have to actually jump two pins,
which is kind of inconvenient. Which brings me to the X570,
which is probably my favourite board,
unfortunately, because it's the most expensive.
Now, this is revision 1.2 and it costs $329.
But it solves a bunch of the,
I guess, limitations that I found
with the other boards when building them.
It's basically no compromises when it comes
to the whole GPU/NVMe choice thing.
Not only are they all PCI Express 4.0,
where on here only certain slots are,
but you can use them all
and you're not really giving anything up. The--
I guess the trade-off there
would be that it's actively cooled,
so, the chipset actually has a fan on it.
But you only really hear it when you first boot up.
It ramps up, it's loud, it's whiny,
and then it goes away right away
before you even, like, get into your operating system.
And because this case is sort of, like,
a soundproof case, it's a really nice fit for this
because I don't hear it at all when the case is put together.
Which, I also think this better complements
the R6 case because this is the only one of
the three motherboards that has that USB-C front header
so I can actually finally use the USB-C port on this case,
which is why I think I'll probably
leave this one in the computer.
Also, when I was doing the tests on the bench,
it also proved to be more useful
because it does have power and reset buttons
right on the motherboard, as well as on the back,
it has that clear CMOS button to make that easy
to manage your BIOS, as well as an easy way to flash them.
And there's two BIOSes, so, you're gonna have some...
redundancy there. But what I can say, though,
after having built all of these back-to-back
is that the experience was pretty much the same
once we do get into that BIOS.
So, the-- the setup was the same,
like, all the things were in the same order,
it's really, really easy to find.
My overclock was maintained
on all three boards with no issues,
each one could support it. And it's pretty--
like, it's not crazy, it's like 4.35GHz
on the 3900X, so...
I mean, there was no issues on any of these boards doing that,
and when you actually get into Windows,
there was no driver issues,
so, I guess the devices are all close enough
that it's very seamless where
there was no, like, driver conflicts at all
between the three boards, so that's great as well.
And now that I know that I don't have
a motherboard problem with any of these boards,
I'm happy to use any of these in my current rig.
So, thanks again to GIGABYTE AORUS
for sending these over so I can test this.
There's definitely some relief involved
in finally, I guess, knowing what was going on,
even though it's multiple culprits.
Like, it's just-- it's so much easier if
it's just one thing, like, "Oh, you didn't flick the switch,"
and now it's fine. And I also wanna thank you guys
for coming along with me on this ride.
I know this is kind of a crazy video,
but do let me know in the comments
if you have any theories about any of these issues
that we've discussed along the way.
But that's gonna be it for me.
I hope you found this video entertaining
or at least helpful. And if you did,
make sure you leave it the old thumbs up
and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
try setting the playback speed to 75%.
Alright... I'm done.