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Any official word on the GTX 970/980 coil whine?

I get a mild amount of coil whine on my MSI under heavy load.

You can just about it hear with the case closed if you put your head close to the PC. Whenever it is whining, chance are you'll be gaming with your speakers or headphones on, not the greatest issue.

First time I've experienced it, don't really mind though.
 
Trustdesa said:
Well... keeping a card with loud coil whine it is very very sad... and in this case there are far too many cards not just a "bad card" so yes at the moment about quality they are a piece of c... about performance they are not...

However I feel amused when I read nerdy (in a bad way) comment of people saying "I will keep it and play with my headphone"...that is sad :D
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not true, i have two. one from the very first batch and the second from the 2nd one. The first batch card has no whine, where as the second one does.
 
I went from Corsair CX750 to Superflower 850 and the coil whine disappeared on my MSi 970 so don't panic just yet.

The Superflower PSU is superb. I haven't had the fan turn on yet even when benching :D
 
I've just replaced my PSU with the Antec Edge 750W and I'm currently saving up for a 970. I'll be really gutted if it happens to whine with this PSU, which makes me a bit hesitant to jump the gun. I don't think this particular Antec ( or should I say Seasonic) is quite up there with the likes of Superflower when it comes to ripple suppression or overall DC output quality... Hopefully, the whole whine thingy is not entirely psu-dependent.
 
Just cancelled my rma with ocuk

Had 3 different people listen to the noise, 1 person said they could hear it but only with ear next to case, the other 2 said they couldnt hear it
Dont fancy doing a 78 mile round trip, for ocuk to say (rightly or wrongly) "yeah it does make some noise, but nothing too excessive" and you just hand me back my 970

Suppose its a case of me putting up with it, its not too excessive of a noise but the quality control engineer in me (10 years as a quality manager) think as made me anal to certain things, the noise of this being one of them...

I have now put the pc under the stairs in a cupboard, i sit about 2 metres away from it and cant hear a fan let alone the coil whine/buzzing etc so will leave it
 
mikemod said:
I went from Corsair CX750 to Superflower 850 and the coil whine disappeared on my MSi 970 so don't panic just yet.

The Superflower PSU is superb. I haven't had the fan turn on yet even when benching :D
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I'm going from a cx750 to a super flower hx 750, good to hear, £500 spent on an upgrade I didn't really need lol.
 
Hi guys

Bailey advised I come here to check this out with you all.

I recently bought the Inno3D 970 and as soon as I installed it, I started to get coil whine.

(Video to be posted when I get back home)

In the Bios there is no noise at all (other than fans)
In Windows desktop or menu screens I get a very loud coil whine (closed case from across the room) it's so bad it feels like it's drilling into my brain!
In game there is no noise at all (other than fans)

I can do things to change the sound, for example when I have steam open it makes noise BUT if I click on a game in the list, the background of steam changes. During this animation I get no coil whine (for about 0.5 seconds) once the background has finished loading I get the coil whine back again.

I have 3 screen for 5760*1080 gaming, the one I have a VGA adapter on gives faint but noticeable scan lines? like the screen is having interference.

Also I have noticed some strange graphics issues when gaming, for example when I run a game and have things like GPU-Z open I can see flashing blocks through the applications, its hard to explain. its like having flashing boxes/bars across the screen so half the application is black for a couple of frames a second.

I can also hear the graphics card through my headphones. Like a flea riding a mini motorbike around my headset.

This build has had an ATI5770 then a 450TI then a 660TI and never had any issues before.

Last issue with noise was with my old MSI 5950 ultra which made some strange noises when under load.

Please advise me on the best course of action or any tests you would like me to perform.
 
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So I got home and turned my computer on.

Sound was louder than normal......

Opened the case because now I might be able to find the location of it better and turned my fans down.

Its the PSU making the noise.............

That explains why it was making the noise a bit different to what others experienced.
Tested in friends computer and no noise.

This PSU has lasted me years and now when I get a new gpu its started to die.

time to add it to my backup and get a new one.
 
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I emailed OCUK about coil whine on the 970's asking there stance on the issue and RMA, mainly because I don't want to spend £300 on a gfx that whine's unless they're willing to swap it.. I got the below response, which imo is crazy.. I have never had a gfx card whine like the 970's that I have heard do! it may not affect performance but it's still a fault, not to mention annoying!
So I am left stuck with my 6950! unless someone from OCUK tells me that the response I had from them is incorrect, because I'm not willing to risk getting a squealer.

Response from OCUK:
I have spoken to our returns manager regarding the coil whine issue and they have said that it isn't classed as a fault as it has no effect on the cards performance
 
it's the problem all new graphics card releases seem to have these days. 3 things to try are: switching power connectors about (odd one but have had this work before) trying to put it in a different pc to see if you get the same and finally hammer it overnight to see if it calms down. Hammering it fixed my 290 of most of it's whine and now it's totally gone
 
topher said:
I emailed OCUK about coil whine on the 970's asking there stance on the issue and RMA, mainly because I don't want to spend £300 on a gfx that whine's unless they're willing to swap it.. I got the below response, which imo is crazy.. I have never had a gfx card whine like the 970's that I have heard do! it may not affect performance but it's still a fault, not to mention annoying!
So I am left stuck with my 6950! unless someone from OCUK tells me that the response I had from them is incorrect, because I'm not willing to risk getting a squealer.

Response from OCUK:
I have spoken to our returns manager regarding the coil whine issue and they have said that it isn't classed as a fault as it has no effect on the cards performance
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Absolute madness to say that it has no effect on the cards performance. Maybe not directly but these cards are marketed as quiet gaming cards. If it is whining while trying to play a game, I would say that is effecting performance as the noise would send you insane. Poor form in my opinion and it has completely put me off going for a 9 series card i'm afraid.
 
It can be a very high pitch piercing noise so it can be detrimental to your health, look it up.

In my case its just a new power supply, which might take a while :-/

Maybe the newer graphics cards need to come with a possible side effects warning?

In seriousness this issue needs a clear cut policy *Cough* dead pixel policy *Cough*

What is acceptable and whats not.
 
I've been split between getting a Palit or Galax, purely because these cards don't seem to have a plethora of people complaining about coil whine and broken fans. I would have considered a R9 290, but the minimum recommended PSU seems to be around 750w, compared to around 500w for GTX970. Not worth the risk when I'm a corsair 650w.
 
AtticusFinch said:
It doesn't really matter what Overclockers says it considers RMAble coil whine. Unless the product is sold as explicitly stated by the manufacturer to have coil whine then it is a defect, not a part of the items itself. The fact that there appear to be cards that suffer from no coil whine at all illustrate that point - it is not a expected feature of the card to have coil whine - it is an unfortunate and unacceptable side effect. If people want to put up with some whine that's a choice, stating that only cards with "extreme" coile whine are returnable is a nonsense.
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This^
 
Heisenberg said:
Absolute madness to say that it has no effect on the cards performance. Maybe not directly but these cards are marketed as quiet gaming cards. If it is whining while trying to play a game, I would say that is effecting performance as the noise would send you insane. Poor form in my opinion and it has completely put me off going for a 9 series card i'm afraid.
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Agreed, I think OCUK should post an official notice on the website and forum regarding the coil whine issue stating their policy on returns... how hard can it be to get that done!

no point some staff say they will be replaced, and others saying no! simply not good customer service..

The cards with coil whine are faulty so should be replaced, nothing on the MSI, ASUS website stating "your £300 gfx card my come with coil whine, but don't worry performance isn't affected"!
 
My ASUS has slight coil whine when idle but only if you put your ear right up close to it. I'm not fussed about that. It becomes more noticeable in a game but only if you're looking for it. Seems like I've been one of the more lucky ones.

Its been said that a different PSU can fix the issue. But what's the rule with this? Is it just a gamble?
 
topgun06 said:
My ASUS has slight coil whine when idle but only if you put your ear right up close to it. I'm not fussed about that. It becomes more noticeable in a game but only if you're looking for it. Seems like I've been one of the more lucky ones.

Its been said that a different PSU can fix the issue. But what's the rule with this? Is it just a gamble?
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Pretty much yes. Best bet seems to be trying the card in a friends system to see if noise goes away or changes at all.
 
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