ATX3.0 psu’s and coil whine

Jay85 · 4 Feb 2023 at 15:25

So straight to the point, i’ve tried 2 SFX-L Asus Loki PSU’s so far and both exhibited Electrical buzzing and Coil Whine, quite extreme as well to the point of being irritating. From what i know these are the ~~Seasonic OEM’s~~ Edit: spoke to someone else and i am now told that the 850w variants are made by Great wall! It would be great if someone could confirm this.

I’m wondering if any of you who have had Atx 3.0 psu’s had the same issues?

Just to clarify, the whine only happens during GPU load, whether gaming or gpu stress testing. Cpu intensive loads had no whine and idle is also fine.

My system specs are:

12700K
Asus ROG Z690-I itx board
RTX 3090 Palit gaming
Couple of SSD’s and Nvme drives

Short video:

mickyflinn · 4 Feb 2023 at 15:53

Are you sure it's psu and not the gpu ?

Jay85 · 4 Feb 2023 at 16:36

mickyflinn said:
Are you sure it's psu and not the gpu ?

It's defo the psu, the noise is clearly coming from something within the psu itself. The GPU sits to the left of the psu and behind the motherboard tray and there is no noise coming from that region whatsoever.

Jay85 · 4 Feb 2023 at 16:47

Added a video to the original post

mickyflinn · 4 Feb 2023 at 17:35

Jay85 said:
Added a video to the original post

Yes you can clearly hear that.

Guessing you got a replacement , any chance of changing it to a different manufacturer ?

Jay85 · 4 Feb 2023 at 18:37

mickyflinn said:
Yes you can clearly hear that.

Guessing you got a replacement , any chance of changing it to a different manufacturer ?

I got a second unit to try and it still had the same coil whine but much less. This new unit seems to not exhibit the same symptoms during benchmarking and stress testing but still does have some coil whine during gaming.

I don’t think there’s any other SFX atx 3.0 psu’s available right now?

momo56 · 4 Feb 2023 at 19:38

Jay85 said:
I got a second unit to try and it still had the same coil whine but much less. This new unit seems to not exhibit the same symptoms during benchmarking and stress testing but still does have some coil whine during gaming.

I don’t think there’s any other SFX atx 3.0 psu’s available right now?

Replying from the watercooled case gallery. It's hard to tell on mine because the GPU has coil whine. So it either doesn't have any whine or it's being drowned out by the GPU. I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary though.

Worst case scenario below. Running heaven at 400-700 fps.

4090 + loki coil whine

www.youtube.com

Other setups for reference.

3090 Suprim + Corsair SF750

IMG 6734

www.youtube.com

3090 FE + Seasonic Prime 1000W

Coil whine

www.youtube.com

Thermaltake have SFX 850W and 1000W versions but haven't seen any reviews on them yet.

Jay85 · 4 Feb 2023 at 20:20

momo56 said:
Replying from the watercooled case gallery. It's hard to tell on mine because the GPU has coil whine. So it either doesn't have any whine or it's being drowned out by the GPU. I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary though.

Worst case scenario below. Running heaven at 400-700 fps.

4090 + loki coil whine

www.youtube.com

Other setups for reference.

3090 Suprim + Corsair SF750

IMG 6734

www.youtube.com

3090 FE + Seasonic Prime 1000W

Coil whine

www.youtube.com

Thermaltake have SFX 850W and 1000W versions but haven't seen any reviews on them yet.

Maybe im being too sensitive since ive had not had any coil whine for any components in such a long time so this is really stirring up my senses.

I’ll try a few things tonight including undervolting the gpu to see if it helps.

Jay85 · 4 Feb 2023 at 22:02

Abit of testing tonight, tried a few things including returning the cpu overclock to stock and resetting bios to see if it does anything.

The only thing that worked and made a real difference was power limiting the gpu to 85% which reduces the wattage down to under 300w from 360w. Noise is basically gone now!

Not ideal but there's very little difference in fps between 85% and 100% so will stick with this for now.

mickyflinn · 4 Feb 2023 at 22:30

Jay85 said:
Abit of testing tonight, tried a few things including returning the cpu overclock to stock and resetting bios to see if it does anything.

The only thing that worked and made a real difference was power limiting the gpu to 85% which reduces the wattage down to under 300w from 360w. Noise is basically gone now!

Not ideal but there's very little difference in fps between 85% and 100% so will stick with this for now.

A postive result and saved a few pounds on electricity.

Jay85 · 4 Feb 2023 at 22:39

mickyflinn said:
A postive result and saved a few pounds on electricity.

Yeah true lol especially with todays electric rates! Will try a few more games but certainly with the ones im playing currently there's very little difference.

Too Tall · 5 Feb 2023 at 14:16

Can’t say I’ve noticed any coil whine from mine, but then as above the 4090 drowns it out if there was any.

Jay85 · 5 Feb 2023 at 14:19

Too Tall said:
Can’t say I’ve noticed any coil whine from mine, but then as above the 4090 drowns it out if there was any.

Silly me didn't realise how bad the 4090 coil whine was, im really contemplating going for something like a 7900 xtx instead as an upgrade but then some research tells me they don't fair well either with coil whine.

Too Tall · 5 Feb 2023 at 14:29

Jay85 said:
Silly me didn't realise how bad the 4090 coil whine was, im really contemplating going for something like a 7900 xtx instead as an upgrade but then some research tells me they don't fair well either with coil whine.

I think every gpu from the last two generations has had significant coil whine.

Jay85 · 5 Feb 2023 at 14:39

Too Tall said:
I think every gpu from the last two generations has had significant coil whine.

Unfortunate, this might not be avoidable it seems. A combo of psu and gpu might cause it as well so just because x person doesn't get it with their system, doesn't mean i won't if running different psu's, specs etc.

hms_jas · 5 Feb 2023 at 16:41

Too Tall said:
Can’t say I’ve noticed any coil whine from mine, but then as above the 4090 drowns it out if there was any.

I must be lucky, my 4090FE has no coil whine that i can notice...then again i have an EK water block on it, in comparison my previous 3080FE did have some coil whine while gaming.

Jay85 · 5 Feb 2023 at 17:12

hms_jas said:
I must be lucky, my 4090FE has no coil whine that i can notice...then again i have an EK water block on it, in comparison my previous 3080FE did have some coil whine while gaming.

What psu have you paired it with?

hms_jas · 5 Feb 2023 at 17:22

Jay85 said:
What psu have you paired it with?

Just using my 5 year old Seasonic Prime Platinum 850. And no, no coil whine from the psu.

Jay85 · 5 Feb 2023 at 17:40

hms_jas said:
Just using my 5 year old Seasonic Prime Platinum 850. And no, no coil whine from the psu.

I do wonder if the older psu's have more built into them that helps prevent coil whine. It seems a lot of new stuff is more geared towards "just live with it" rather than fix it so it doesn't happen again.

Regret selling my Corsair SF750 somewhat but it was always abit limited in terms of future power proofing. Tempted to try the older SX1000 from Silverstone to see how that fairs but ocuk is out of stock right now.

JollyJamma · 6 Feb 2023 at 08:16

Too Tall said:
I think every gpu from the last two generations has had significant coil whine.

Can confirm my 3080 FE screams like a banshee.