Funny noise under load on WC GPU

[hartacus]

I have an MSI 7970 stock clocks watercooled with a Swftech Komodo. When I open games my card makes a hissing sound almost like a transformer or something. Whats up with that?

 

[ShadyHamster]

What you are hearing is most likely coil whine, a common thing on AMD reference cards.

Two places you commonly hear it is at really high fps, eg: game main menu's or under heavy load, eg: furmark/msi kombustor.

I usually use vsync to minimize the noise at high fps, as for when the card is under load there isn't much that can be done.