Superflower or Seasonic?

Associate
Joined
12 Jan 2010
Posts
590
I'm thinking of making a final attempt to cure the coil whine on my Vega 64 with a new PSU.

I've heard that Superflower and Seasonic are the two best brands, so of the two, which is the least likely to cause coil whine?

I won't blame anyone if this doesn't help, after trying three other PSUs I'm 99% certain I'm out of luck!
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2008
Posts
11,616
Location
Finland
Might be simply that particular graphics card being more whiny than others.
When SilentPCreview was still more active, they found some amount of coil whine from most graphics cards...
"It was as if a tiny gremlin had crawled inside the machine and started to play miniature bagpipes."

Also instead of reference design that card uses customized VRM, so who knows if it was tested how thoroughly.
For example I've read that in motherboards some makers use coils more prone to coil whine than others.
So really hard to say if coil whine would even decrease with other PSU.
Especially when you've already tried multiple PSUs.

Though seeing if there was anything common in those PSUs might give hints for what PSU might use different design.
So can you list PSUs you've tried?

Another thing would be that case having zero component noise muffling ability, with direct noise escape paths to every direction.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
90,805
If you've tried more than one PSU and assuming they aren't the same base design rebranded then it probably won't be solved by a different PSU. It could also be the power circuitry on the motherboard itself is part of the issue even if it is coming from another component, etc.

Fortunately it is something I've never really had to deal with on any of my own builds aside from on some builds when the GPU is pumping out 100s of FPS in a game menu, etc.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
12 Jan 2010
Posts
590
Changing the PSU is a long shot I know, and I'm also looking into changing the case. I've never had coil whine like it before and it's doing my head in. The GTX970 I had previously would whine when rendering hundreds of FPS at a menu screen, but never in game. This card whines whenever it's drawing more than idle power, and is louder the more power that its drawing, even if FPS are relatively low.

Anyway, the PSUs I've tried were a competitor branded 850w unit that couldn't even run the card in balanced mode, a Cooler Master Real Power Pro 850w and the Corsair RM850x that's in there at the moment.

With how crazy the prices of graphics cards have gotten I'm having a hard time accepting coil whine as a "feature".
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2008
Posts
11,616
Location
Finland
Anyway, the PSUs I've tried were a competitor branded 850w unit that couldn't even run the card in balanced mode
Unless it's been changed from reference cards "balanced" means overvolted up to 11 costing nearly 50% more power for few percentage performance increase over power save.

Anyway that Coolermaster was Enhance made.
(they love huge heatsinks blocking airflow to components under them)
And Corsair was made by CWT (Channel Well Technology) so both Seasonic and SuperFlower certainly differ in construction.

But at least getting entirely rid of coil whine would be very unlikely.
 
Joined
10 Jan 2004
Posts
9,831
Location
Poland
I'm thinking of making a final attempt to cure the coil whine on my Vega 64 with a new PSU.

I've heard that Superflower and Seasonic are the two best brands, so of the two, which is the least likely to cause coil whine?

I won't blame anyone if this doesn't help, after trying three other PSUs I'm 99% certain I'm out of luck!

Am i being late to the party? but im sure that a good cure for coil whine was dabs of nail polish on the offending coil? Or maybe a thermal pad might lessen it. Im sure there are guides for getting rid of it on the usual tech sites.
 
Associate
Joined
7 Aug 2017
Posts
415
Location
location location
Coil whine is some thing (or things) resonating; if you can work out which component is singing then you can apply some physical measure to dampen the resonance as per Grandmaster's post; finding the bugger is easier said than done.

If you haven't already undervolted your Vega, then doing so will alter the pattern of current draw, perhaps enough to avoid triggering the resonance. Frame rate limiting helps avoid coil whine that crops up fairly often on menu screens. A new PSU is unlikely to help particularly as you've already tried different ones.
 
Back
Top Bottom