Annoying Coil Whine

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MichaelTee

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Aug 18, 2014
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My GPU(GeForce 970 SC) has a moderately loud coil whine. It sounds like it is coming from my GPU, but not totally sure. I have been searching the forums here, and saw a recommendation to run a program over night and that it might help it. Anyone know what program I should run? I would be glad to post the coil whine here for someone to hear if need be. I am not an expert so I am not sure it is coil whine, just don't know what else it could be.. About to put my computer under my desk to "solve" the issue lol.

My power supply is fairly high end, I think. It is a Rosewill Capstone 650w 80 plus GOLD
 
Solution
photonboy
Hi,
Coil whine has to do with circuits vibrating so they act like a speaker.

The amount of LOAD significantly changes this, but it's not just power consumption. For example, without VSYNC you might get a lot of coil whine if you open a game and the frame rate is really high during the opening info (like 1000+ FPS). So even though you might be just showing a "PHYSX LOGO" or something because not much is going on you get a really high frame rate so if the part of the video card related to frame rate is causing coil whine you're going to hear it worse as frame rate increases (or rather within a specific RANGE since going too high may cause it to disappear due to resonance with other circuits).

Power Supply coil whine is mainly related to...
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photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
21,567
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Hi,
Coil whine has to do with circuits vibrating so they act like a speaker.

The amount of LOAD significantly changes this, but it's not just power consumption. For example, without VSYNC you might get a lot of coil whine if you open a game and the frame rate is really high during the opening info (like 1000+ FPS). So even though you might be just showing a "PHYSX LOGO" or something because not much is going on you get a really high frame rate so if the part of the video card related to frame rate is causing coil whine you're going to hear it worse as frame rate increases (or rather within a specific RANGE since going too high may cause it to disappear due to resonance with other circuits).

Power Supply coil whine is mainly related to power draw this isn't likely to come and go as much during a gaming experience.

How to FIX coil whine?

First, figure out WHEN it is happening. If it's mainly when GAMING it's likely the graphics card. I would suggest then doing the following:

1) Turn on VSYNC

2) Reduce game settings to really LOW (just to troubleshoot, though VSYNC or Adaptive VSYNC are the best solutions as you don't want to sacrifice visual quality)

If the coil whine disappears by capping the frame rate (i.e. 60FPS on 60Hz monitor) then that's one solution. Again, it can be a combination of power draw AND the frame rate.
 
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Solution
photonboy

photonboy

Titan
Jun 20, 2006
21,567
13
85,015
Other:
Run a program overnight?

I highly doubt that would help. This assumes some manufacturing defect that can be fixed by "break in" which seems extremely unlikely for a device like this. Some circuits on other devices would vibrate if the GLUE came loose but coil whine in graphics cards is generally due to the DESIGN. Changing anything in a design can cause resonance differences that cause audible vibrations.

Capacitors or inductors in modern technology are extremely unlikely to change their characteristics in a few short hours unless they are defective (and even then i don't see what burn-in would do).

Warranty?
Worth investigating.

*EVGA said they redesigned their ACX2.0 models with the coil whine issue in mind and they either eliminated it completely (unlikely) or reduced it so it's very rare (quite possible).

I can't validate other cards or even EVGA's aside from their own statements.
 
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