Subwoofer question

Question

I heard that subwoofers have strong magnets built into them. The subwoofer for my Dell A525 speakers is located within close proximity of my computer (a little more than 1 foot). It's been that way for almost 2 months. Should I be concerned about this, even though nothing has happened yet? Any advice would be appreciated. Sorry if this is a stupid question.

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My Dell XPS 600

Original CPU (12/7/2005 to 2/7/2006):
Pentium D 830 Dual Core 3.0 Ghz

New CPU (2/7/2006 to present):
Pentium D 950 Dual Core 3.4 Ghz

Nvidia nforce4 SLI X16 Intel mother board
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 533 Mhz
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
Dual SLI Nvidia Ge Force 6800 256 MB
160 GB Hard Drive
19 inch flat panel monitor

Message Edited by jg1981 on 02-24-2006 02:11 AM

jg1981 · Answer

@Aeterno wrote:
You are correct that subwoofers have strong magnets, but unlike what vcraig said, I've found that most boxed subwoofers, especially those made for computers, are shielded somewhat. There's still a strong field around larger ones, but the one you have isn't a high powered one, so about a foot should be safe... (14" logitech subwoofer in a $300 ZZ-5500 says not to put electronics within two feet).

Also don't worry about your monitor, flat panel monitors are not affected by magnets.

Thanks for the information. That made me feel a little better. :)

Aeterno · Answer

You are correct that subwoofers have strong magnets, but unlike what vcraig said, I've found that most boxed subwoofers, especially those made for computers, are shielded somewhat. There's still a strong field around larger ones, but the one you have isn't a high powered one, so about a foot should be safe... (14" logitech subwoofer in a $300 ZZ-5500 says not to put electronics within two feet).

Also don't worry about your monitor, flat panel monitors are not affected by magnets.

jg1981 · Answer

@VCraig wrote:
Not a stupid question. Unlike your satelite speakers the sub-woofer is NOT shielded so, yes, it would be best if you relocated the sub-woofer to the floor away from the computer..and especially the monitor.

Ok, thanks for the information. I moved it away from my computer. Just curious, if there was any kind of damage caused by it I probably would have noticed it by now. Right? I just suddenly realized this potentially hazardous situation when I was browsing the board today. I haven't noticed any problems at all so far. Maybe I'm being a bit too worried about it? I know for a fact that magnets can ruin sensitive electronic equipment. Do computer cases provide any kind of protection from weak magnetic fields? Is a distance of a foot between my computer and the subwoofer enough to damage anything in it?

VCraig · Answer

Not a stupid question. Unlike your satelite speakers the sub-woofer is NOT shielded so, yes, it would be best if you relocated the sub-woofer to the floor away from the computer..and especially the monitor.

Aeterno · Answer

Yeah, they can cause some pretty bad damage to some things, but small size subwoofers don't have a particularly large or strong field around them... The main thing that gets damaged is the hard drive, which is a magnetic storage... the magnets in the speakers can corrupt the data on the drive. Also, older CRT monitors (not flat panel) have some lead and iron in the glass screen that can be warped by the magnetic fields.

I'm not sure if computer cases do anything to protect what's inside them from magnets, but I do know that modern hard drives have some shielding built into them, both to prevent the field from their magnets from harming anything, and to prevent other magnets from harming them.

Basically you want subwoofers as far away from anything else as possible, but ones like yours aren't really going to hurt anything unless it's very close to them.

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Subwoofer question

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