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Can the electricity from the audio cable damage the GPU ?


MiniNatural

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Hello everyone, I got the nvidia gtx 680.

I plugged in the audio jack to the back of the case and there was a sound ( some kind of static sound that come out from a speaker ) which usually does occur, but this time it's louder than before, then the screen went black for a couple seconds and came back normally, which i haven't had this issue before. I think it's caused by the electricity in the cable going into the motherboard.

Did i just damage the gpu? Is there the way to check it?

Since this is my first PC after many years of gaming laptop, Im kind of nervous now, I don't really know how to deal with the desktop gpu.

Thanks...

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Best practice is to turn things off before playing with connections.

 

To be honest I would be more worried about speakers being damaged than the GPU, and I don't think you have damaged your GPU if it is still running. You could run some benchmarks though and see if its scoring right.

 

In the future though make sure you turn your PC off before messing with connections or working on it.

 

There is honestly a heap of reasons why the screen may have blacked out temporarily but I don't think a static shock or short to the GPU is one of them.

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...now all these years i thot that random electricity in any unintended places anywhere around the inside (or outside) of a puter is bad... call me crazy

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well since the cable your plugging into the back of the computer is a signal cable outputing audio from the sound card to your reciever, the voltage on it is prolly very very low, if even measurable without it being pluged into the pc first, since the signal is generated from the pc's sound card. The poping you hear is because there are many channels typically 2 on the cable your plugging into the pc they are seperated by black stripes on the connector, those insulate the channels from one another, and when you slide it in it makes connections across all the channels rapidly causeing the poping noises, this is normal. Just plugging in the audio jack wouldn't cause the Video card damage. Either you accidently bummed the connector on the video card momentarily causing it to need to re sync signal with the tv/monitor (hence the black screen for a sec) , or 2. most likely what happened is the default sound device changed under windows from the gtx680 to something else which changed to driver profile, which made the video card shut off for a sec and then reconfig and turn back on, which is also normal. In my case I use a monitor connected with dvi-d dual link and an hdmi to a reciever to connect to my tv, if i turn my tv and reciever on while doing something on the pc the monitor goes black for a few secs then comes back on. You have nothing to worry about I would say, unless you saw sparks flying off your hand or the cable into the chasis or the card itself.

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well since the cable your plugging into the back of the computer is a signal cable outputing audio from the sound card to your reciever, the voltage on it is prolly very very low, if even measurable without it being pluged into the pc first, since the signal is generated from the pc's sound card. The poping you hear is because there are many channels typically 2 on the cable your plugging into the pc they are seperated by black stripes on the connector, those insulate the channels from one another, and when you slide it in it makes connections across all the channels rapidly causeing the poping noises, this is normal. Just plugging in the audio jack wouldn't cause the Video card damage. Either you accidently bummed the connector on the video card momentarily causing it to need to re sync signal with the tv/monitor (hence the black screen for a sec) , or 2. most likely what happened is the default sound device changed under windows from the gtx680 to something else which changed to driver profile, which made the video card shut off for a sec and then reconfig and turn back on, which is also normal. In my case I use a monitor connected with dvi-d dual link and an hdmi to a reciever to connect to my tv, if i turn my tv and reciever on while doing something on the pc the monitor goes black for a few secs then comes back on. You have nothing to worry about I would say, unless you saw sparks flying off your hand or the cable into the chasis or the card itself.

whoa,...good job sir ! :thumbsup:

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I appreciated all the comments, thanks

 

One thing i made u guys misunderstood, the thing is im not plugging in the headphones or speakers, the speakers itself is already connected, but the audio cable i plugged is into the line input of the pc which carry the signal from another laptop.

 

If this is the case, will it be any different ?

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In that case you may generally have anywhere up to around 2v that you could have potentially shorted out across the case.

 

Same rules apply turn things off before fiddling with them. Don't go plugging things in and out while stuff is running it is a sure fire way to just damage things. Mikes given you some of the reasons why your screen may have blacked out and if you want to see that there was no damage to your GPU specifically then all you can do there is as I said already. Run benchmarks and see if it scoring right and functioning right.

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The difference in the loudness of the Pop from plugging connectors in hot is the temporary difference in the DC voltage between the devices, I've worked on guitar effects strips/stomp boxes and it's annoy extra work to prevent pops when swapping connections in/out properly.

 

It isn't difficult to build up voltage, whenever you see a flash from static when you touch something, that's at least 20,000 volts for a visible spark, and takes about 3,000 volts for you to feel it in the first place. There is hardly any power in these potential differences, so you aren't likely to damage something directly. That isn't to say that that small spike where the voltage equalizes on an signal line that is going to be amplified and then fed to other devices, isn't going to indirectly harm something, like having you volume maxed and harming a speaker with the pop sound.

 

My guess is that at worst you caused your soundcard's protection to kick in which like stated before cause windows to do it's driver thing causing the video output to stop momentarily, or if you soundcard was just shocked at what it received and reset itself causing the same result.

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In future, plug cables into anything only after switching off the whole PC and the specific component. It is not safe to plug cables into switched on components as chance that the part getting damaged involved with it.

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The difference in the loudness of the Pop from plugging connectors in hot is the temporary difference in the DC voltage between the devices, I've worked on guitar effects strips/stomp boxes and it's annoy extra work to prevent pops when swapping connections in/out properly.

 

It isn't difficult to build up voltage, whenever you see a flash from static when you touch something, that's at least 20,000 volts for a visible spark, and takes about 3,000 volts for you to feel it in the first place. There is hardly any power in these potential differences, so you aren't likely to damage something directly. That isn't to say that that small spike where the voltage equalizes on an signal line that is going to be amplified and then fed to other devices, isn't going to indirectly harm something, like having you volume maxed and harming a speaker with the pop sound.

 

My guess is that at worst you caused your soundcard's protection to kick in which like stated before cause windows to do it's driver thing causing the video output to stop momentarily, or if you soundcard was just shocked at what it received and reset itself causing the same result.

Static is a very easy way to kill electronics. The voltage quickly breaks down transistors designed to function at less than 2 volts. :P

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