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Coil Whine

Why is it such a battle for the retailer to accept that coil whine is a fault. Surely if the retailer stopped selling the brand that had the issue then they would find a cure, as there is nothing like lost sales to find a cure.

And if its acceptable why did this very retailer make so much fanfare about its specially designed card that had been designed to reduce / remove it completely.

Just to accept it and try and force the end user to accept it as a "fait d'acompli" is just wrong.
 
Steps to reduce coil noise include:
Damping is a critical step towards reducing coil noise.
Low noise coils are specifically produced to avoid coil noise.
Coil noise can be reduced in some instances by changing the shape of the coil to a figure eight rather than a traditional coil shape.

Coil noise can be reduced by damping and can be minimized by design, but in some cases unacceptable levels will remain. To combat this, the coils are sometimes isolated from the rest of the device. They can be placed in such a way as to absorb and contain the noise and vibration that occurs.
 
Myself, Gibbo & 8Pack discussed Coil Whine in a lengthy thread somewhere in the graphics card forum some time ago.

This detailed the stance and some ways on how to help prevent it.

I am sure some of the forum members could find this.

Bailey
 
But its still accepting it as the norm, when there are things that the card manufactures can do to prevent it, as has been shown by the OcUK 970.
 
DustyMiller said:
But its still accepting it as the norm, when there are things that the card manufactures can do to prevent it, as has been shown by the OcUK 970.
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Coil whine is inherent in technology and shows more and more as clock speeds and FPS increase. I've heard it in graphics cards, motherboards, power supplies etc.

Yes their are methods of reduction or trying to insulate such noise, but it is not actually preventable.
 
Gibbo said:
Coil whine is inherent in technology and shows more and more as clock speeds and FPS increase. I've heard it in graphics cards, motherboards, power supplies etc.

Yes their are methods of reduction or trying to insulate such noise, but it is not actually preventable.
Click to expand...

I 2nd that as well :)
 
Would good quality coils not significantly lower the chances of coil whine. Surely that's the case as some manufacturers seem to be better than others. For instance, on motherboards there is very rarely coil whine even when the CPU is being heavily stressed. I know there probably bit more to it than that.

Good quality coils + glueing to lower chances even further. Can't be that expensive surely? Should be cheaper than having cards returned that squeal like a pig.
 
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ttaskmaster said:
Don't all coils whine, though?
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Yep. 'High quality' coils doesn't stop it though some component choices can help reduce it and glue can dampen it etc. (or you can try to muffle it I guess though this is likely to be less effective) Also some 'coil whine' isn't from coils - it can be capacitor squeal or a few other causes tho mostly it is coils

All electronics make some noise and so long as they do what they say (e.g. show graphics) then they're not clearly faulty - what level of noise is acceptable is not really defined.

Just because one retailer bothered to make a card that aimed at reducing whine doesn't make it a fault in others - just makes it a product differentiator for that one card.

Edit: Were an acceptable level to be defined that'd probably be nice, but it'd likely be high enough that many of us would still not be happy with it.
 
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So if there are measures that can be taken to reduce or insulate it, why don't manufactures do it.

Why do you sell cards from manufactures that don't engineer there cards to prevent it.

Just accepting it is not the answer.

So when the next gen cards come out with 2Ghz clocks will you supply ear defenders as there is nothing that can be done to prevent it. That's just a cop out. There is always something that can be done, its whether the manufacturer sees the cost / benefit.
 
Considering how bad some coil whine is, shouldn't the manufacturer include that testing when they run quality control on the card? Surprised there isn't some sort of standard to define "bad" coil whine. Some cards shouldn't be sold with how much whine they produce.

It's commendable that OcUK went out of their way to help develop a card that has much lower chances of getting coil whine and a guarantee that you can have the card replaced if it whines, but shouldn't that be a burden on the manufacturer and not the retailer? They should just incorporate that tech that helps reduce coil whine into every card.
 
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DustyMiller said:
So if there are measures that can be taken to reduce or insulate it, why don't manufactures do it.

Why do you sell cards from manufactures that don't engineer there cards to prevent it.

Just accepting it is not the answer.

So when the next gen cards come out with 2Ghz clocks will you supply ear defenders as there is nothing that can be done to prevent it. That's just a cop out. There is always something that can be done, its whether the manufacturer sees the cost / benefit.
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You do realise if we took your stance we'd pretty much not sell any high-end VGA cards as we'd pretty much have to de-list every single model.

Also realise that the percentage of customers this effects is so small as well and the card is not always to blame.
 
Gibbo said:
You do realise if we took your stance we'd pretty much not sell any high-end VGA cards as we'd pretty much have to de-list every single model.

Also realise that the percentage of customers this effects is so small as well and the card is not always to blame.
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What would be considered a "good" PSU, 80+ Gold and above?

I have a gold rated Enermax PSU and i still had some pretty bad whining on my old VTX3D 280X.

And also, just because a card doesn't whine on one PSU but does on another that wouldn't make it a bad PSU. Even minor differences in components can cause whining.

Is there any percentage of returns due to coil whine?
 
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