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Coil whine - Anything a manufactuer will do ?

Drake5

Drake5

Drake5

Soldato
Joined
12 Dec 2005
Posts
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I've had my 970 for about a month now and never really heard any coil whine until recently but maybe that's because I've been playing different games

When you hear it it can be quite loud and distracting, OcUK won't do anything about it as it doesn't effect the performance of the card, if I did an RMA with the manufacturer would they have the same response? Any way to get rid of coil whine?
 
If the card is making noise that is not associated with the fans then it is (imo anyway) faulty. Contact the manufacturer and see what they say first.

If it's making enough noise that it's distracting your from your gaming sessions then i would send it back. You can easily argue that coil whine is down to poor QC by the manufacturer, it is not advertised as potentially having coil whine and is not of satisfactory quality. I refused a GPU once for having bad coil whine, initially they refused as they said the card was working fine but after i quoted the SOGA and threatened to take it to small claims court they replaced it. That wasn't with OcUK though i should point out!

The Sale of Goods Act 1979 says that any item you buy from a trader must be:

of satisfactory quality
fit for purpose
match any description given.
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https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/c...lty-goods/if-the-goods-you-bought-are-faulty/
 
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That would be my stance to, especially as the card cost me £270. At this price point I want perfection. Taking a look at the sale of goods act could be a good idea
 
What psu do you have? We had a thread in the psu section a month ago with a GTX970 that had coil whine while running a Antec Truepower 650w bronze rated psu. He bought the Superflower Leadex Platinum 550w (the price has gone up again now though as the promotion has ended) and the coil whine disappeared.

Another thing to try, especially if it's worse when looking around, is to turn your audio volume up to full in Windows and control your volume with the speaker controls. I have seen that work on other forums too.
 
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You can try running you computer from a Power-conditioner. they reduce the noise on the power coming into your pc. sometimes the whine is caused by noisy power from your psu/powerlines

you can get a fairly cheap one from amazon.

or if someone you know has a UPS, try using that to test it. they tend to have a power conditioner built in.

a conditioner will also remove crackle on your speakers and improve overall lifespan of your components.
 
Not sure I'd go as far as 'the law is on your side' ... all computer components make some noise, and most often it's a certain combination of components that causes one of them to make lots of capacitor squeal rather than a defect with one so the manufacturer isn't under any obligation as if when returned they test with a different mobo & psu and get no noise then it's non-faulty and you foot the shipping bill.

Having said that, it may still make the noise when they test it plus depending how much they want to keep you happy will determine how much they care about the noise in the first place - you may well have a great outcome and if you don't ask you'll never know! So ask them and see I'd say, but don't go in all 'I know my rights' as then they're unlikely to believe you'll be a happy customer anyway so what do they gain by being nice?
 
Mauller said:
You can try running you computer from a Power-conditioner. they reduce the noise on the power coming into your pc. sometimes the whine is caused by noisy power from your psu/powerlines

you can get a fairly cheap one from amazon.

or if someone you know has a UPS, try using that to test it. they tend to have a power conditioner built in.

a conditioner will also remove crackle on your speakers and improve overall lifespan of your components.
Click to expand...

I`ve seen this theory before. I still don't believe that "noise" on the mains supply would cause coil whine, or any other noticeable issue with a PC, unless the "noise" was extremely severe.

A decent PC power supply will have mains filtering on it's input, and the circuitry of the power supply itself will eliminate any mains interference that may be present.

BTW, these "mains conditioners" used to be (and may well still be) recommended by TV retailers, as they improve the picture quality on your new TV, apparently.
 
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Dervious said:
I`ve seen this theory before. I still don't believe that "noise" on the mains supply would cause coil whine, or any other noticeable issue with a PC, unless the "noise" was extremely severe.
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Nothing to do with tv's from my experience with power conditioners, i have more experience with audio and computer equipment and their use. And they have worked for others with coil whine issues. some people even getting a few extra KB-MB out of their router when using one.

More than not it is due to a psu having inadequate filtering on the PCI-E 12v lines since the manufacturer knows the GPU has its own power circuitry. Even decent brand name psu's can suffer from this. So when a person has a mix of certain psu and they live in an area with noisy power lines (usual from radio and microwave transmitters in the area) you end up with coil whine on the gpu.

or sometimes the power supply is failing causing the whine to occur. it is always worth just trying a different power supply.
 
I think someone from here applied glue to the transistors to address the issue. Not sure how well it worked and you'll void the warrantee.

Powercolor apply glue to their r9 290/x cards to help stop it, as well as the 970 infinity black cards.
 
Drake5 said:
It wasn't coil whine, it was a new fan I installed
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