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Is coil whine just a way of life now?

For what it's worth in my own experience, coil whine happens on most graphics cards depending what's happening. An unlocked frame rate on a menu screen for example where a gpu might hit 200fps will generally cause serious coil whine on the majority of graphics cards.

With a lot of cards now where the fan remains idle until it hits a certain temperature it can make any coil whine more noticeable. I'm quite ocd and if I open the side panel and put my ear up to the card I can normally make it out. The issue's are the cards that have coil whine so bad you can hear it from normal usage.

In "normal" usage, there is definitely variance between even multiple units of the same card, let alone different manufacturers. So it's often worth going through an exchange.

My own solution to anything like that, which might not be considered a fault as such is to buy from a retailer with a good returns policy so you have peace of mind and can return the unit hassle free.

Ultimately I find trying to gauge noise online is quite difficult due to the amount of variance, people have different environments, seating positions, hearing, and more importantly tolerance levels, so someone on a forum saying their card is noisy or quiet often doesn't mean much. The most important thing is the user themselves, if it's unacceptable send it back :)

I remember being annoyed with the noise of my reference 980ti and a work colleague telling me their's was really quiet on full load, yet when I seen it for myself it was arguably noisier than mine lol. Perception and tolerance makes a big difference.
 
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I had an OCZ 1000 gold PSU that would whine more than Martini does about his Vega purchase, I have a 860W seasonic unit now which is much better.

As others have said, it's trial and error, try your GPU/PSU in other PCs and see what happens, maybe you can narrow it down and a certain combo may produce less coil whine than another.
 
I had shocking whine when I used my COrsair PSU (on many different GPUs) but when I put those same GPUs with my EVGA G2 1300W PSU, the most annoying sound in the world was gone. I would seriously look at the PSU and give something like Super Flower or EVGA a try.
 
AdladUK said:
The cards function absolutely perfectly aside from this. A lot of suppliers won't even accept the card back just for coil whine, plus even if I did get replacements, it might be another component causing the issue and I'd be back to the start and then what? Send them again for replacement?
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Assuming you bought it online, you can always return an item within 14 days and they have to refund you. You dont have to specify coil whine or any problem, just say you changed your mind about the purchase.
 
As above it's near on impossible to get a card without it. Especially if your gaming at 100/144/165hz.

I've gone through nearly every Ti and every one had coil whine under load. With multiple PSU's and boards.

Some had it worse than others. The MSI's being the quietest. Part reasoning I went with the lightning. It's practically inaudible in game.

Its just a part of it I guess when your putting 200 amp through a VRM.
 
tyler_jrb said:
As above it's near on impossible to get a card without it. Especially if your gaming at 100/144/165hz.

I've gone through nearly every Ti and every one had coil whine under load. With multiple PSU's and boards.

Some had it worse than others. The MSI's being the quietest. Part reasoning I went with the lightning. It's practically inaudible in game.

Its just a part of it I guess when your putting 200 amp through a VRM.
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Is that using your Corsair HXi though? My Vega AIO had loud coil whine with my HXi, There was no whine when I tried the card with an old TX and an EVGA G2, so maybe Corsair are still having quality control issues? I remember reading that Corsairs original RM range which replaced the old TX range had dodgy capacitors and not long after that Corsair replaced the RM range with the updated RMi and RMx models which they state uses different Japanese capacitors so maybe that's where there's an issue and some lesser quality capacitors were also used in other models.
 
As Jay34 says, Coil whine is only noticeable for me on unlocked frame rates. 3D Mark 2003 has insane choil whine with FPS over 1000. Changing PSUs though really helps. I Have 0 coil whine on my GTX 1080 Ti's running anything under 200 fps
 
I've noticed another problem today... I'll have VSync on and my FPS will stay at a solid 60 when in games, but when I look down a scope, or go around a corner, or quickly move my view around it will jerk. It's like a 1 second stutter, but with the FPS staying at 60.

Also, I believe this is tied to the coil whine issue as I can hear the card as if it's loading. Maybe someone will know what I mean, but remember the noises you'd hear on hard drives pre-SSD? That's what I hear when I get this lag. A brief sort of clicking/whining from the graphics card.

I'm thinking it's some sort of power throttling or Windows 10 power setting? Any ideas? It's actually more annoying than the coil whine itself
 
I get clear coil whine since my Strix 1080ti has been water blocked when it is working at max (I have it clocked to an unwavering 2062Hz at full load). When I am mining I know it's gone over to Sols because it starts to whine as that is the only mining algorithm that takes it to max.
It's very possible that the whine was always there but the fans when at load drowned it out. The whine is not loud but the otherwise almost silent system gives it nothing to compete against.
 
The only time my EVGA 1080 whines is in game manues that run at 200+ fps, I'm sure I could probably cap it but it doesn't bother me. Never notice a thing in game.
 
That stutter issue sounds odd, as you say could be power related? Perhaps try performance mode in Win 10 power settings?

I've been lucky with coil whine, had no issues aside from when I coupled a replacement reference MSI GTX 680 with my Antec Truepower 620, FPS over 100 was awful (this made Dead Space 2 almost unbearable as v-sync wasn't an option being limited as it was to 30hz).
 
AdladUK said:
I've noticed another problem today... I'll have VSync on and my FPS will stay at a solid 60 when in games, but when I look down a scope, or go around a corner, or quickly move my view around it will jerk. It's like a 1 second stutter, but with the FPS staying at 60.

Also, I believe this is tied to the coil whine issue as I can hear the card as if it's loading. Maybe someone will know what I mean, but remember the noises you'd hear on hard drives pre-SSD? That's what I hear when I get this lag. A brief sort of clicking/whining from the graphics card.

I'm thinking it's some sort of power throttling or Windows 10 power setting? Any ideas? It's actually more annoying than the coil whine itself
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Have a look to see what the frame times are like with MSI AB, see if you get any spikes when you notice the stutter. Is it game specific or does it happen with every game you've tried?

Does it also happen with V-Sync off? depending on what kind of V-Sync you use the frame rate may be dropping from 60 to 30 and returning to 60 again very quickly and you may not notice it or the overlay may not pick it up.
 
nashathedog said:
Is that using your Corsair HXi though? My Vega AIO had loud coil whine with my HXi, There was no whine when I tried the card with an old TX and an EVGA G2, so maybe Corsair are still having quality control issues? I remember reading that Corsairs original RM range which replaced the old TX range had dodgy capacitors and not long after that Corsair replaced the RM range with the updated RMi and RMx models which they state uses different Japanese capacitors so maybe that's where there's an issue and some lesser quality capacitors were also used in other models.
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I've tried HX1000i,hx1200i. Seasonic prime Titanium 850w. Also have tried my old TX750w. No change :(.

barely audible (like a ticking) at 60hz but 100+ they start to buzz a fair bit.
 
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Went to look at a friends machine today and he was chuffed as punch to show it off.
When he fired it up it was a nice quiet system but the coil whine was horrendous.
After taking the card out and reseating it I put the two power connectors in the opposing slots due to a cabling issue's and low and behold the coil whine had vanished.
I have no idea why but maybe it's down to which cable is used first or something.
It was a MSI gaming X 1080 and a super flower 700W PSU for reference.
 
nashathedog said:
That's a shame, Hopefully you'll have better luck on the next gpu upgrade.
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I'm hoping the next gen cards will be quieter.

I've practically noise dampened the whole case now and covered the rear of the card in foam. Where quite a fair bit of noise was coming from. Made a huge difference.

Been playing origins and as long as there is atleast a tiny bit of sound coming from the speakers it's completely inaudible :).
 
I've got an MSI armor 1080 and an Asus Strix 1080 and neither have coil whine. However I did have it on a 7950 in the past. It's damn annoying for sure.

My psus are a Seasonic and a Corsair.
 
tyler_jrb said:
I'm hoping the next gen cards will be quieter.

I've practically noise dampened the whole case now and covered the rear of the card in foam. Where quite a fair bit of noise was coming from. Made a huge difference.

Been playing origins and as long as there is atleast a tiny bit of sound coming from the speakers it's completely inaudible :).
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I think there's a type of glue you can use on the coils to decrease the noise, The 970's suffered from coil whine & I remember that OCUK partnered with Galax to offer a special edition version of the 970 (Black edition?) that were built to improve several things including coil whine and it said in the description that coating the coils in glue was one of the improvements, I'm not sure what glue but Gibbo should know as I'm pretty sure that he was the chap who designed that version.

bru said:
lo and behold the coil whine had vanished.
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Quick fix :D.
 
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nashathedog said:
I think there's a type of glue you can use on the coils to decrease the noise, The 970's suffered from coil whine & I remember that OCUK partnered with Galax to offer a special edition version of the 970 (Black edition?) that were built to improve several things including coil whine and it said in the description that coating the coils in glue was one of the improvements, I'm not sure what glue but Gibbo should know as I'm pretty sure that he was the chap who designed that version.
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It's surprising they don't do it from the factory or the coils aren't dampened somewhat from the inside rather than just set in concrete or whatever they use. It's not a costly feature if like you say that glue works and would certainly help stop many RMA's.

I'm not too bothered about it now. As my quick noise dampening job has done the trick, it's silent now (unless I turn my speakers off :D).

One of the pains of having your case close on the desk. If it was under the desk I doubt I would be able to hear it.
 
I don't change cards often but so far i have never had a card with coil whine.

Over the years I have had a 8800 gtx, 265 gtx, hd 5830 and a nitro 390 and they have all been used on the same psu which is a corsair builder series gx 750w psu.

Dont think anyone should have to live with coil while as it would drive me nuts.
 
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