PC monitors that make loud noises aren’t very welcome in most people’s homes, and chances are that loud, high-pitched noises coming from them are an indication of something that’s wrong. There can be multiple reasons why this occurs with monitors, which doesn’t particularly help.
Having a high-pitched noise coming from your computer is obviously very annoying, and furthermore makes the user experience horrible. So, why do PC monitors sometimes make high-pitched noises for no apparent reason?
The most common issue that causes noise coming from your PC monitor is that your LCD monitor has a problem regarding the circuits in the monitor that controls brightness. The solution is to raise the brightness to the max in your monitor settings. After this, you can lower the brightness in your GPU control panel to compensate for the high brightness of the monitor.
Now that you’re aware of the most common problem and solution regarding high-pitched noises coming from PC monitors, let’s go over it in detail. I’ll provide detailed information on how you do the above fix and further information on what to do if this solution doesn’t help you.
1. Adjust Brightness Settings
As I mentioned previously, LCD monitors sometimes have problems with the circuits in the monitor that controls the lighting. Without getting into specifics of the components, you can fix this by enhancing the brightness settings on your monitor.
Monitors have buttons, usually located at the bottom of the screen, that can control different settings for you. Exactly what these settings depend on what monitor you have, but brightness is a universal setting.
Find the brightness setting, and put it up as far as it can go. If your screen makes less noise by this point, then you’re on the right track to fixing your problem.
After you’ve turned up the brightness on your monitor, you can turn it down again using the GPU control panel. After you have entered your GPU control panel, go into the desktop color settings.
How to do this depends on what graphics card manufacturer you have, but it should be fairly straightforward. For Nvidia, just right-click your desktop and click the green icon that says Nvidia control panel.
Here you can turn down the brightness again. This shouldn’t have any effect on the noise coming from your monitor, as it simply reduces the brightness input from your GPU, making it a good workaround.
2. Adjust Monitor Audio Settings
Another quick fix you can try is turning your monitor audio setting down to 0. For some monitors, this can be achieved in the monitor setting on the monitor itself. The button is usually found at the bottom of the screen, close to the power button.
Here, look for any type of volume control and turn it down to zero. You can also try to turn your monitor volume down to zero in Windows. To do this, head to the sound settings by right-clicking the sound icon at the bottom-right corner of Windows, and selecting Open sound settings.
From here, click on Manage sound devices. When you have entered the new window with all your devices listed, look for the name of your monitor. Click on it and select Disable. This doesn’t disable the monitor itself, only the sound from it.
Most users have headsets or external speakers connected to their computer, and turning the monitor audio off shouldn’t affect this in any way.
3. Control Video Cables 3
All devices that are connected to your computer should have functional cables. This also goes for the cables that go from your monitor to your PC. In some cases, this is an HDMI cable, and in other cases, it can be a DP cable or a DVI.
Either way, check that they haven’t sustained any type of damage and that they aren’t bent in any meaningful ways.
You can also try to switch cables to rule this out. Take a different cable and connect it to your computer and monitor. This way, you can quickly see if your video cable was the faulty party.
4. Remove Unnecessary Peripherals 3
Try to remove as many peripherals as possible, and see if your monitor still whines. Also, remove things such as TVs, radios, etc from the close proximity of your PC setup, as these things can cause interferences and make your PC monitor whine.
Remove dongles, game controllers, and other stuff from your USB ports, too. This way, we can quickly rule out any peripherals/other devices such as radios from being the reason for the high-pitched noises.
If your monitor doesn’t stop quite quickly, you can connect your peripherals and put back your other electronics again, as the effect should be fairly immediate.
5. Manufacturing Error, Return Your Monitor
If you bought your monitor recently, chances are that you can still return it and get your money back. Manufacturing errors with monitors and similar products aren’t the rarest of occurrences, which means that your monitor can have some sort of manufacturing issue.
Some models have this issue more than others, and this is usually reflected in online scores and reviews. I strongly recommend that you take the time to look these things up before buying a monitor.
There are endless amounts of brands and models nowadays, which also means that there is a big variance in quality as well.
6. Connect Your Computer Elsewhere
Your setup could be experiencing what’s called a ground loop, which is basically an electrical interference loop between devices. In short, this can cause your monitor to start making noise. You can try to move your PC and monitor to a different room to see if that helps.
If you’re unlucky, the issue lies within your building’s bad electrical wiring, but I would still recommend that you try this out. Move it as far from its original position as you can within your household and see if the monitor still produces the high-pitched noise.
Also, another thing you can try to avoid ground loops is to everything to the same power outlet.
7. Try using another power outlet
As I mentioned previously, if you have a bunch of different power outlets for your PC components, try using only one. I realize that this can mess with your aesthetics a bit, but for the purpose of solving your issue, I would recommend it.
You can still use a multi-way extension cable for your outlet, providing you with a lot more outlets. It doesn’t have to be an outlet directly connected to your wall.
8. Lower The Refresh Rate Of Your Screen
Users have reported that the noise scales with their refresh rate. This is to say, the higher the refresh rate, the louder the noise. This is therefore a bit of a desperate solution, but you can lower your refresh rate to see if the noise lowers in intensity.
I realize that it isn’t optimal to sacrifice the refresh rate in order to lower the annoying noise coming from your screen, but you can try at least. If this is the case, there is a high likelihood of your monitor having some sort of faulty component.
If this is the case, you could try and replace it. At 60Hz, users have reported that the noise is no longer there. But 60Hz is a big step down in quality from, say 144Hz, which makes it a bitter pill to swallow.