EVGA 780 GTX ACX SC coil whine help.

teeejay

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Mar 18, 2013
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10,510
Hey guys,

I am experiencing coil whine on my brand new GPU. Is it anything I should worry about? I never experience it before, that is why I ask.

I cannot hear anything while idle. It is kind of strange.


During Heaven Uningine Benchmark I cannot hear it, I hear it for like 1 second, when I quit it.
During 3DMark benchmark it is really, REALLY noticable in Cloud Gate and Ice Storm test. During Fire Strike no noise.

While playing Metro I cannot hear anything except for some buzzing noise, it is not fans nor coil whine, it sounds like some kind of
electricity noise coming from where the pins are located. But when doing Metro benchmark there is noticable coil whine.

Starcraft 2 no noise.

My PSU is Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 Platinum Certified.

What should I do, should I RMA it or it will get better? I got quite a good chip though. :(
 

mclovits

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Apr 7, 2012
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Coil whine isn't something to worry about, it's quite common on 7000 series AMD cards, though not as common with Nvidia cards, there is always the potential for the issue. If it seems to bother you in game, you could try to RMA the card, but honestly, if it doesn't get worse than it is and you got a good chip, I'd just save the time and keep the card. Also, try running on integrated graphics or another GPU if you can just to make sure it's not a PSU issue. My PSU caused my on board sound card to make a coil-whine like sound, which was easily fixed with an external USB mixer. Just a thought.

 

teeejay

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Mar 18, 2013
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I've never had card, which did it. It was quite new to me. I do not think, that PSU is faulty. I ran the GTX 570 with it and no problems so far and no coil whine either. It must be the 780 GTX card then. I know it is not decisive, but ASIC of the chip is 80%, which is not bad at all. Even stock boost clocks are great.
 

mclovits

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Apr 7, 2012
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Yeah it really makes sense to just keep it then. I mean, if you feel that it's something you want to replace because it annoys you, that makes sense, but if you don't mind, I'd just let it be and enjoy your system.
 

teeejay

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Mar 18, 2013
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I mind a bit, that card was not cheap, it should be perfect for that price.

 

mclovits

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Apr 7, 2012
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Well you are able to RMA it if it seems to be something that irritates you, here's a good answer from this thread: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1721041/gpu-coil-whine-rma.html

"Coil wine comes from the pcb and ceramic on the board vibrating at a certain frequency, it happens on all electronic equipment, randomly. Its not something that can be accounted for in design. The trick is, Tahiti core gpus seem to be victims of this random chance this time around, and you'll find a lot of those cards with coil whine (plenty of nvidia cards have it too, just seems to happen with tahiti cored gpus more often then most right now)

Coil whine will go away with time. or you can return it and roll the dice that the new one won't have coil whine too."
 

Brody Clement

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Aug 23, 2013
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Hey man just letting everyone know that i had this problem i sent it back and they said it diddnt coil whine so i got a new psu a 1200watt gold psu and coild whine is gone. i did have a 900watt bronze antec psu and yea that was the issue

 

tttttc

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Sep 22, 2013
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Hopefully you have resolved the issue, but just let you know that my GTX 670 does exactly the same thing:
When I quit Heaven benchmark and it's displaying the credit screen, I can hear the noise.
When I run Ice Storm, the noise is very noticeable. (I didn't dare letting it finish the Ice Storm part, so I don't know about the Cloud Gate.)
I don't know if it makes sense to attribute that to coil whine when the GPU is under heavy load. During credit screen the GPU should be under less load, and Ice Storm and Cloud Gate are less demanding than Fire Strike. I initially thought Ice Storm is optimized for mobile devices, so there might be some weird compatibility issue with PC. But then you said Cloud Gate does the same, so I really have no idea.