Dealing with EMI...

[xVeinx]

I'm wondering how people have been able to deal with issues from EMI (electro-magnetic interference). I recently took the stock cooler off of my video card and put a good full-cover waterblock on it. While sound output doesn't seem to have been affected, I do get some poor quality input from my mike (chatting on vent), and I'm trying to find a way around this. This is using either the onboard sound from the crosshair IV or my xonar dx2 sound card (the xonar had crystal clear input from the mike for my previous build). Any ideas? Only things to change were the motherboard and and the waterblock. I'm assuming I'm getting increased EMI from the power section of the graphics card, but I could be wrong. I dropped the overclock and put everything at stock to also make sure that the noise wasn't from the board itself...

[mpilchfamily]

Either something in this system is causing interference or the mic is the problem. While the mic may have been perfect for the last system they don't last forever and can wear out. IF you can get or borrow a USB sound solution then try the mic on that you could find out if its the mic or system interference. Also do further testing on other chat systems. Vent it known for having bad quality so you may want to test on skype.