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MSI 7970 Lightning Coil Whine Question.

jewii

jewii

jewii

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12 Jul 2010
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334
i purchased my card from here 22 days ago but due to personal reasons i hadn't had time to test it out til now and the coil whine is ridiculously loud for a £400 card. Why bother paying the premium cost of a card for quiet cooling system if the whine is far louder (to our ears) than the fans themselves?


I've heard running it on heaven benchmark for 12 hours will fix this problem.

My question is that do i have the right to return this product as faulty?


Even on witcher 2 @ max settings @ 30 fps the coil whine is there! however the coil whine does seem to be proportional to the framerate.
 
That sux, i got mine around the same time but I've not experienced this problem. I've read people send theirs back due to this issue.

Others will know better.
 
i had 2 7970 sapphire oc editions with terrible coil whine and i rma them back to overclockers with no hassle at all
now ive a 7970 lightning with no coil whine at all
with the price of these top end cards coil whine should not be there. would cards even be tested at source for coil whine.
 
Surprised the MSI Lightning does it I thought they used decent components in it.

The Asus DCII is your best bet to avoid it afaik.
 
No whine on mine, I have 2 x 7970 under water .

I always suspected PSU with coil whine as my 4850 and 5770 did, not sure but I don't think it was the cards, I blame the PSU's. This is the first time I bought a quality PSU and I can say no whine from either card, under strain or idle
 
i got lucky with my 7850 i get occasional coil whine but the only time i have actually heard it clearly is when im exiting heaven (doesn't do it at all during testing:S) and when im running anti virus scan
 
sorry to hear about your issue. for reference pcb 7970s cards, you would not be able to return your card as faulty, only on dsr since the pcb has been designed with components that cause occasional coil whine. but the lightning isn't reference pcb and i've read a lot about how it uses different components to avoid coil whine, so i do think you have a chance of returning the card as faulty. might as well try?
 
I wonder if it's a corsair/psu issue, as I've had coil whine on my gtx 260 and 560 both with a 750w corsair.
 
I'd be interested to hear what PSU the OP has.

Only my humble opinion, but coil whine can be deceptive and tricky to pin point at times. While not doubting the OP, is he sure it "is" the graphics card!? As per other peoples comments, one of the main culprits is often the PSU and this only becomes noticeable when adding a high load component (EG. a high end graphics card). You can even get coil whine coming from components on the motherboard!

For example... I used to use a top of the range Tagan PSU and this developed bad coil whine when I added in an GTX 580 last year. On recommendations from the forum, I replaced it with a 750w Corsair PSU and lo and behold, noise completely gone. Strange really, as the Tagan was a 1,000w PSU!

At the least, I would want to try the graphics card in another system (I'm sure one of your mates would oblige). At least that way you would definitely be able to point to the card as the problem. Danger is, if you RMA it (DSR deadline obviously passed now) and OCuk try it in one of their test systems and find no issue... this is where the fun (fun!?!?!) starts.

Good luck.
 
i have an antec trupower 650 w: 6 months old.

I tried running the GPU on seperate volt rails & the coilwhine persists. if i'm not mistaken each volt rail is indepedent thus can't be the PSU?

I'm gna jump another psu to power the gpu & see if the coil whine persists...
 
jewii said:
No coil Whine with 2 PSU's... Half :( / :)
Click to expand...

Hi... are you now saying that the coil whine has now vanished when you try another PSU? or are you running two PSU's?

Either way it looks like you are looking at purchasing a better / more powerful PSU (life...).

Some of these multi-rail PSU's are a bit of a gimmick, depends on the circuitry in the power supply from what I've read. My TAGAN, though a multi-rail PSU, stated that for high end graphics cards to switch the PSU into single rail mode. Though I'm the first to admit that I'm no electrical engineer.

PS. Though in theory your current PSU should be up to the job I would have thought. But as already stated, coil whine can be a strange phenomena.
 
Last edited:
mikeo said:
Hi... are you now saying that the coil whine has now vanished when you try another PSU?

If so, then result :):):)
Click to expand...

On one side yes. no RMA however on the otherside:
*gota to rip out all my tidy cable management.
*Switch PSU's & actually test my other PSU on full system load.
*I don't particulary like the other PSU + gta buy CPU plug extender as it's too short so... it's half yey & half ney :) / :(
 
jewii said:
On one side yes. no RMA however on the otherside:
*gota to rip out all my tidy cable management.
*Switch PSU's & actually test my other PSU on full system load.
*I don't particulary like the other PSU + gta buy CPU plug extender as it's too short so... it's half yey & half ney :) / :(
Click to expand...

Exactly what I was expecting :D. Congrats BTW on getting rid of the whine, I remember my X1900XT used to whine like a right b*** playing the witcher back in the day on an Antec 430 Neo.... It was literally a beat you could move to, real cricket in the box or two crickets having loads of fun :D
 
FYI
I have the ASUS GTX580 Matrix Platinum. One of the best and most expensive GTX580s, and it's coil whine is ridiculously loud.
You would expect the get a perfect card but still sometimes you can spend £400+ and get these issues.
 
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