Bad coil whine as soon as a game loads!

[Prophet]

I have a MSI 7950 and a Corsair HX 620 PSU which should be more than enough to power the GPU. On idle there is slight coil whine when opening web browsers where there's a change in colour (Black screen to white scree etc)

As soon as I fire up Far Cry 2 for some retro gaming I get a symphony of coil whine from the graphics card...

Would replacing the PSU for something more powerful solve or reduce this or is it just something I have to live with?

 

[TheGentry]

No GPU is perfect if it's not bad you won't get a replacement if it is send it back an they will test it

 

[Gibbo]

Hi there

Sometimes a PSU change helps, not always and its not to do with the size, but the quality of the power.

An original Corsair HX 620 were pretty good units, so could just be the card, trying running it from two separate rails.

 

[Minstadave]

Try limiting your FPS, I get some whine when on loading screens and the FPS is sky high but it's fine when the game is running.

Will also save you power and reduce heat too.

 

[DR_Pingu]

Try limiting your FPS, I get some whine when on loading screens and the FPS is sky high but it's fine when the game is running.

Will also save you power and reduce heat too.

Never understood this myself - I just set FPS_Max 120 or 200 or whatever - nothing excessive (i.e. FPS_Max 0) which seems unnecessary for games IMO.

 

[Prophet]

Thanks for the replies I'll give the FPS a try and see what happens.

 

[Gibbo]

Hi there

Try this.
Heaven 3.0 or 4.0
720P res
Tessalation/AA/AAAF all OFF or minimum

Absolute lowest settings. Will be 400-600fps region.

Also power the card via one rail.

This should cause any card to whine, doing this even made my Galax Infinity whine, though only audible with my head next to the card and the fans off. But literally after ten minutes all the whine was gone, card warm etc.

So doing the above can help bed a card in and eliminate the whine for sure.

Then once done, power the card via two separate rails, benchmark at normal settings, 1080P, normal/high details and you should be whine free on most cards apart from the worse offenders.

 

[Prophet]

Thanks Gibbo I'll give that a go tonight

 

[Gibbo]

Thanks Gibbo I'll give that a go tonight

Leave it running as long as possible, have dinner, go watch TV come back to card see if its reduced.

Then connect card up with two separate rails (less load on PSU and cleaner power) and re-run benchmarks at normal 1080P settings and high details, should be whine free.

 

[Prophet]

Hi Gibbo,

Everything seems to be going OK although I thing the PSU has some whine too So will be looking to replace that..

One question regarding the FPS at lowest settings while running Heaven 4.0. It's maxing out at around 120FPS not 400-600 as you mentioned. I've installed the latest drivers (14.7 IIRC) on a fresh Windows 8.1 install but have left the motherboard drivers (ASUS P7P55D Intel) as the bog standard ones which 8.1 installs.

Any ideas if that's why the FPS is so low or can you point to another cause?

 

[Gibbo]

Hi Gibbo,

Everything seems to be going OK although I thing the PSU has some whine too So will be looking to replace that..

One question regarding the FPS at lowest settings while running Heaven 4.0. It's maxing out at around 120FPS not 400-600 as you mentioned. I've installed the latest drivers (14.7 IIRC) on a fresh Windows 8.1 install but have left the motherboard drivers (ASUS P7P55D Intel) as the bog standard ones which 8.1 installs.

Any ideas if that's why the FPS is so low or can you point to another cause?

400-600 on a 970 with a fast processor, like 5960X. 7950 won't be as fast for sure, sorry for confusion.

 

[xix6xix]

I've noticed in some titles and particularly older stuff, if vsync isn't enabled or your FPS isn't limited, you end up getting like 5000fps on menu screens etc, hence the coil whine. Though even on some new stuff like Far Cry 4, it still happens.

When enabling vsync in the game, some titles will only limit the FPS in the actual game and not on menus etc, in these cases I use RivaTuner to limit the frames