Weird High Pitch / Coil Whine / Electrical Buzzing Noise From PC (Louder Under Load)

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Mitosis_

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May 11, 2017
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510
For as long as I can remember my system makes a sort of high pitch/whine/electric noise. I think it's referred to as coil whine?

Anyways, when under load, such as playing a video game (e.g Far Cry 4), I can hear a loud ass high pitched whine and I'm not sure what causes it. I recently upgraded my PSU from a Corsair VS550 to a Corsair RM650X. Is it possible that both of these power supplies are responsible for generating the noise? If not, could
it be my GTX 960 GPU?

I'm not sure if I should be worried or not but this system was made about 2 and a half years ago. The old VS550 died on me recently (whilst playing CSGO / PC was under load. Not sure if this information helps) and I had to purchase the new RM650X PSU.

Here's a full list of my PC's specifications:

CPU: i5 4690
GPU: Palit GTX 960 (1 fan)
RAM: 1x DDR3 8GB HyperXFury
PSU: Corsair RM650X 650W
CPU Cooler: HyperEvo 212
HDD: 1TB Seagate
Motherboard: Forgot the name but I can find out if someone needs it solve my question.
Case: NZXT H440 Red

In summary, any expertise on this topic would be greatly appreciated. I'd just like to know what is most likely causing it (because I can't isolate the noise / sounds like it comes from my PSU at times) AND if it is considered dangerous? According to some of my research coil whine is a common problem but isn't considered to be dangerous?

Under topic Components (hope thats relevant enough since I don't know what generates the noise).

I can provide photos/videos if requested.
 
Solution
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I'm pretty sure it's the GPU, my 970 is the same and unfortunately there aren't many ways to fix this, basically the card runs at a frequency that makes the coil tremble and therefore the whining sound, it depends from game to game and situation to situation, it mostly happens to me when the game is not too demanding and the fps shoot over the 90/100; usually a fix would be to play the game with vsync on, this kind of keeps the card under control without it trying to achieve the most framerates when not needed. Then again, I tend to cope with the whine cause I hate the slight input delay that most games get when activating v sync..
Or you could also try and fix the max framerates within the game or through some software such as msi...
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xcrusherx13

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Jan 31, 2016
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I'm pretty sure it's the GPU, my 970 is the same and unfortunately there aren't many ways to fix this, basically the card runs at a frequency that makes the coil tremble and therefore the whining sound, it depends from game to game and situation to situation, it mostly happens to me when the game is not too demanding and the fps shoot over the 90/100; usually a fix would be to play the game with vsync on, this kind of keeps the card under control without it trying to achieve the most framerates when not needed. Then again, I tend to cope with the whine cause I hate the slight input delay that most games get when activating v sync..
Or you could also try and fix the max framerates within the game or through some software such as msi afterburner. Hope this helps!
 
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Solution
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Mitosis_

Prominent
May 11, 2017
2
0
510


I'll keep that in mind! Thanks for the help.



I'm not 100% sure if it's the PSU AND GPU. I am however 100% convinced it's the GPU right now since it changes sound depending on what I'm doing in game. Anyways, I can't be bothered to take out the PSU, package it, and wait for a new one.

If it becomes too much of an annoyance I'll definitely consider sending it back for RMA (as of now it's not as noticeable / extreme as yours was). Thanks for you help!
 
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