Asus GTX 770 DCII inconsistent, odd noise

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
M

Mobius One

Reputable
Apr 20, 2014
43
0
4,540
I've had the GPU since last thursday (5 full days) and it has made the noise ever since every time the fan speed rises above 65%. It happens when playing a game that taxes the GPU enough to bring the fan speed up or by manually setting it anywhere between about 70% to 100%. I used MSI Afterburner for this.


I bought it to replace my aging 5870 (Sapphire Vapor-X cooling), but one thing I liked more about the 5870 is that the fan noise was a constant noise, air being pushed into the fins, whereas my new 770 has this: https://soundcloud.com/mobius2/asusgtx770dcii_odd_noise

I unfortunately didn't have anything better than my smartphone to record this with. The noise is relatively faint compared to the case fans in the recording. Hopefully it's audible enough.
Is this noise normal for Asus DCII cooled GPUs? Should I be worried?

I have an Asus Z87 Maximus VI Hero equipped with an Intel i5-4670k (stock for now) with Noctua's U14S cooler, a Superflower 550W Platinum PSU all in NZXT's H440 in case (not a pun) it makes any difference. The GPU isn't overclocked besides the factory overclock.


Also, on thursday, when I manually set up the fan speed to see how loud it gets, I found that at 87% fan speed the card would cause a noise that sounded as if the fan blades hit something.

On closer inspection I found out that the fan farther from the output interface touched the fan power cable (that run right below the fans) if I gently pressed the blades downward and moved them about. That sound hasn't occurred since even though I've tried to replicate it, which is 'probably' a good thing.
 
Solution
Tradesman1
Could well be, might be a small flaw in a fan blade or something that really only affects it at certain speeds, have seen, as an example ceiling fans that are perfectly fine at high or low speed yet get a wobble or make an odd noise at medium (maybe something one would expect at high speed, but only on medium?
Sort by date Sort by votes
M

Mobius One

Reputable
Apr 20, 2014
43
0
4,540
I've noticed that the RPM of the 770 varies up to ~200RPM on the higher fan speeds, and more than 40 even below 50%.
I also put my old 5870 back in again, and it was just a loud leaf blower of a fan, with very little variance in RPM (less than 15).
Do you know if they're supposed to do that?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

Mobius One

Reputable
Apr 20, 2014
43
0
4,540
The 5870 has always sounded like it did when I put it back in. It uses Sapphire's Vapor-X cooling by the way, one 92mm(?) fan in the middle.
However, the fan speed on the Asus GTX 770 will vary even when it's idling in desktop, with zero GPU usage, monitored with MSI's Afterburner.

Just as a note, I've sent a RMA form to the retailer I bought the card from and will await response. As far as I know, they've replaced cards with coil whine and as such I'd imagine they would replace this, too. I did further examination and the fan(s) might simply be bad.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Tradesman1

Tradesman1

Legenda in Aeternum
Jun 5, 2013
67,883
40
126,960
That would be my thought, as good as any product and/or manufacturer is, you can always get a dud, or one that might have been bounced around a little to much - have gotten numerous shipments with banged up boxes and even if the product box is in good shape, you know the shipping box has been dropped or stuffed tossed on top of it, etc...and with electronic components, that's never a good thing.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

Mobius One

Reputable
Apr 20, 2014
43
0
4,540
The cardboard box and product box were in good condition though. Not that direct physical damage is the only way things can get damaged, especially electronics as you said. If I can RMA it, at least I'll have my old 5870 to do stuff around with in the meanwhile, haha. It has started to show it's age in more than just years lately though I think, some actions (such as changing windows theme) cause a brief white flicker on the screen, which never happened with the 770.

Just as a note, mainly by further examination I mean messing with fan speeds. At certain speeds, there is another odd noise. I guess the best way to describe it is that it's kind of like coil whine except in a lower pitch and only happens in correlation with the fan speed, which pretty much literally has to be a certain percentage. Any higher or lower and it doesn't occur.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Tradesman1

Tradesman1

Legenda in Aeternum
Jun 5, 2013
67,883
40
126,960
Could well be, might be a small flaw in a fan blade or something that really only affects it at certain speeds, have seen, as an example ceiling fans that are perfectly fine at high or low speed yet get a wobble or make an odd noise at medium (maybe something one would expect at high speed, but only on medium?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
M

Mobius One

Reputable
Apr 20, 2014
43
0
4,540
How could I have forgotten this... I just remembered:

When I played Crysis during the weekend with a handful of mods (including a very intensive particle effect one), during one part of the game, where, due to the particle effect mod that also modifies other things than just the particles, a tornado was MUCH more powerful than in the original game. Lots of stuff would get sucked into the middle, colliding with each other and slowing the game engine to a halt. When this happened, odd visual phenomenons did too: The colors became white-washed, sometimes every object, including the gun, AI, trees and... well, everything other than the basic landscape was gone. I blamed it on the particle mod being too stressful on the game engine, and ended up running through without it because I couldn't get past due to aforementioned tornado.

And the GTX 770 temperature didn't even reach above 81°C (the maximum) even though the ambient temperature was about 28°C.

HOWEVER, a moment ago I got an idea: Why not test it with my 5870?
So I did.
Aside from having ~20 FPS (I think the GPU has also been losing performance during the years, not sure) because of higher-than-maximum settings and other stuff and the framerate going to the toilet during the same part where a tornado will suck you in with the particle mod enabled, there weren't any visual artifacts or other visual bugs.

....Which led me to think there's more to it than just the fan noise.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

Mobius One

Reputable
Apr 20, 2014
43
0
4,540
Hmh. It might be the game after all. I just tested the same thing again and the same visual bugs happened with the 5870.
Regardless, I'll be sending the 770 back. Thanks for the time and help!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom