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PSU Coil Whine

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  • Power Supplies
  • Games
  • Components
Last response: in Components
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March 26, 2014 1:33:34 PM

I recently built a brand new system with all new components. I bought a Corsair HX850, EVGA ACX 780 Ti SC and a 4770k.

The problem I have is the PSU creates a very loud whine that also changes in frequency while playing some, but not all games.

When I play a game such as Counter Strike Global Offensive I notice as I move my camera around from looking at say the ground the whine is mostly quiet and in some cases unnoticeable but when I look around and get a good whole look at a map the whine will increase, so while I'm playing the whine is constantly shifting in sound and pitch just by moving my camera around. Enabling Vsync reduces the whine slightly, but will still make a noticeable whine that also changes based on (I'm assuming) what's rendering.

It does not make the whine at all when idle, and not all games cause the whine either, games such as League of Legends won't produce whine.

The whine is for sure coming from the back of the PSU and not originating on the graphics card itself. Right now all parts are available for refund and/or replace through newegg, but also through the manufacturer's warranty. My question is which component is most likely the culprit?

Other notes:
Sometimes the whine will be really loud when I first load a map but after a minute will get noticeably quieter and never return to that same loudness, but still has the persistent whine that changes pitch when moving the camera.

Whine will stop if I tab out of the game while it's still running.

More about : psu coil whine

a c 2488 ) Power supply
March 26, 2014 5:12:30 PM

You need to RMA that power supply it won't get better or go away , get the same one , it's a high quality supply.
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a b ) Power supply
March 26, 2014 5:54:01 PM

This is a fairly common issue and though it won't hurt the PSU itself, it's definitely grounds for an RMA, . My GPU has a whine, and i decided just to keep it since games drown it out anyway and XFX's RMA process is so awful.

Anything with a wrapped coil can have a whine, but PSU's and GPU's are the most common culprits.
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March 27, 2014 9:49:28 PM

Update on the situation, I RMAed the HX850 for a refund, picked up an HX750 at MicroCenter (I only got the 850 because I was planning to build an i7 six core, but decided on a quad core at the last minute). The whine was still present with the HX750, although a little less loud. After this point I decided to stick my older 650 ti into the system and the whine has completely disappeared. Of course since the 650 Ti can't produce the same amount of frames as a 780 ti it's hard to say if the PSU was really at fault, but at this point it seems like the video card was the culprit, but we'll see in a couple days when a new one gets shipped out to me if the whine persists.
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a b ) Power supply
March 31, 2014 10:06:01 PM

Sounds like your GPU was the offending part...in which case, the PSU is unlikely to make a difference. Try tweaking the voltage and clock speed, sometimes this gets the coil to resonate outside of what you can hear, or stop altogether.
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