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Coil Whine Query

Soldato
Joined
30 Mar 2010
Posts
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Under The Stairs!
Installed a 7970 last night, fired up Heaven straight off and was greeted by coil whine.:(

It's by no means deafening, but, poor show imo nonetheless considering the marketing spin:

360c043bca124508b92b61487c74a85c.jpg


http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/72/feature2.html

:rolleyes::(

My head is telling me to return it and don't be daft holding onto it as these things aint cheap and I'm presuming it will deteriorate over time.

Thoughts please folks, am I correct that it does indeed gets worse through time, or is that the peak noise it's going to make?

P.s, I was well aware that a lot of gpus have this fault, I didn't purchase one blind in the knowledge of coil whine.
 
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Does it occur on the 3D loop or the 2D loading screen?

Mine whines on the 2D loading screen but not the former.

Leave it on an overnight loop. Dave says that can cure it.

And what Dave says is very rarely right but he seems to have developed a cure for some forms of coil whine here :p
 
Lol, will have to double check Rusty, I think it's the 3D loop though.

It was very late last night when testing began(I'm rough as a badgers **** right now due to severe lack of sleep).

I know about Dave's overnight fix, haven't tried it yet obviously, it was more to find out if the whine deteriorates over time and get worse.

Would end up kicking myself for holding onto it for it only to get worse.
 
Mine only does it on the load screen for heaven when its doing 1200 + FPS, or sometimes when benching at my limit (1275 core), which I don't do any more. Gaming with sync on I have no coil whine at all.
 
I have heard the dreaded coil whine on Youtube and seriously that is a big no no. If it is supposed to get worse, I would DSR it for another.

All that money for good performance at the cost of all that noise....
 
I pay little attention to the marketing spin by Gigabyte.
Same story back with the SOC's. "Gpu Gauntlet" and "Cherry picked GPU's".
And what happend? They failed miserably and were unstable at the oc'ed clock speeds.
IMO I don't think their components are better than those of other brands.
 
I pay little attention to the marketing spin by Gigabyte.
Same story back with the SOC's. "Gpu Gauntlet" and "Cherry picked GPU's".
And what happend? They failed miserably and were unstable at the oc'ed clock speeds.
IMO I don't think their components are better than those of other brands.

I tend to lean your way of thinking also.

I had a Gigabyte 560TI OC which would display "The driver has stopped responding and has recovered error". It was real annoying as it happened every day. Weeks of research and trying various things lead me to email Gigabyte direct about this problem. They sent me a new BIOS for the card which upped the volts slightly and this cured my problem.

My point is, many others on many other forums have had this problem with Gigabyte cards also. Why was it released with too fewer volts in the first place?

I still will recommend Gigabyte though, as it seems they do release cool and quiet cards.
 
To quote myself.

The squealing you hear is most likely as others have mentioned is capacitor/coil whine. This is caused by oscillating action in the currents/voltages.

The cause of this noise/fluctuations are hard to pin down, as they could be from various sources, the PSU, the card, other devices, EMI, mains.
High frame rates often cause sequel, as higher frequencies/refresh rates are passed through the card/PSU increasing the tendency for the unwanted high frequency noise to make the capacitors/coils vibrate in such a manner.

Very often inside PSU's it looks like someone has had a accident with a glue gun. With huge splodges of glue on top of capacitors/coils. I suspect that the reason for this is to dampen the noise generated by these vibrations as well as to electrically insulate the components.

See for example this image of a reasonably respected psu.. "Glue" has been dropped on/around the capacitors/coils.
glue.gif


My understanding is that is not necessarily a sign of poor quality components or a sloppy psu build, the glue is there intentionally to reduce the negative side effects of how components/electricity interact with each other and the resulting effects.

Sometimes a PSU can cause the components on the gfx card to whine, sometimes the gfx card can cause the components of the PSU to whine, sometimes even the motherboard/cpu or dvd drive could have an effect on another component.

Often the part making the noise is not the cause.

So what can you do.. It maybe easier/cheaper to not worry about the cause and try and fix the issue. the end result is the same, no/less noise.

1) Try and filter out these unwanted frequencies that cause the problems using filtered PCI-X/Power cables. Even noise from the mains electricity could be passed on. Some "kettle leads" have these filters, or maybe a UPS/filtered power-strip may help.
2) Locate the "whining component" and slap some "glue" or I have heard people using nail varnish to stop it vibrating. A paper tube held to the ear is a good way to pin point which part is making the noise. (only issue here is that doing so "may" invalidate warranty..
3) It is entirely possible the card or PSU or even another component is just not up to scratch, and replacing it may solve the issue. Or it may just have different tolerances with the other components in the system.. A squealing card/psu won't necessarily behave in the same way when used by another person/system. I'd expect some PSU's have varying tolerances to this, however from experience just because they are high end, has not shown them to be more or less susceptible.
4) Some people can't hear the high frequencies, as we get older this range of high pitch noises should become less of a problem.. try waiting 10+ years.

5) I am no expert, all posted is just from observations. I have little knowledge of the internals of PSU's or capacitors/coils.. The technical terms I have used are no doubt wrong, the meaning however should not be , having had encountered this problem so many times, the above is just my findings. ;)

In my experience replacing the psu often does not solve the issue. Or even replacing the card, as both can be the part of the cause/receiver of the noise.

What I have found is that good quality PCI-E cable has Always have solved the problem.
in the image shown the PCI-E cable has a ferite inductor coil which attenuates high frequency signals, which is where most noise occurs.

You can find 3rd party pci-e extension cables/surge protectors which also work in the same manner. they should cost approx £10, unfortunately I cant find any on ocuk.

P1020357.jpg

To conclude - a squealing component is a result of non "clean" power somewhere along the chain. It can be fixed by filtering, dampening, or replacing the component that causes, or exasperates the noise. However identifying this component isn't always simple, as often it isn't the part making the noise.
 
Thanks for your input so far folks, it's not giving out a lot of whine, it's quite low so far.

When the case is closed, I don't think you can hear it, there was too much background noise last night and I shall test it further over the weekend, but my concern is that the whine increases over time.

If anyone can shed some light on the matter, it would be great.

I also don't know how OcUK deals with this issue, whether it's a case of DSR'ing it and they replace it with another one at the same offer price or whether you have to pay the current price.

If it's the latter, I don't know if I'll be as keen to replace my current setup.
 
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Installed a 7970 last night, fired up Heaven straight off and was greeted by coil whine.:(

It's by no means deafening, but, poor show imo nonetheless considering the marketing spin:

360c043bca124508b92b61487c74a85c.jpg


http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/72/feature2.html

:rolleyes::(

My head is telling me to return it and don't be daft holding onto it as these things aint cheap and I'm presuming it will deteriorate over time.

Thoughts please folks, am I correct that it does indeed gets worse through time, or is that the peak noise it's going to make?

P.s, I was well aware that a lot of gpus have this fault, I didn't purchase one blind in the knowledge of coil whine.

Tommy could you do a recording of it?

My 6950's had a mixture of coil whine and buzzing, however over time they got better and are now silent. You could try leaving heaven on over night. Quite often they just need a good work out to remove the noise.

My 7970 when overclocked makes a slight buzzing noise, but its hardly noticeable. Again i imagine over time this will get better like my 6950's did.

Is it a good clocker? If it is id put up with it and leave it running for a night or two in heaven to see if that will sort it out. If not then send it back and get another one. If the noise is loud then that would get annoying.
 
its normal to have very faint whine,only through the case,not through speakers or headphones

ive even heard it when you scroll the mouse wheel on a web page in extreme cases

i get it in crysis game menu,but no whine anywhere else its 100% silent

i knew it can be a combo of psu/gpu/mb but opening up psu can void warranty ect
 
^
It's not the PSU, it's the gpu 100%.

@Matt, don't know how it clocks, if there was no coil whine, I would have foind out, but as it's maybe going back, I'm not pushing it.

Heard about the coil whine getting louder when you oc, so if it's doing the whine @stock then it's only going to get louder with an oc too which is a concern.:(
 
AMD/Nvidia/TSMC must have done something or AMD/Nvidia are buying parts from the same supplier because although coil has been around for a long time this generation of video cards seems to be plagued with coil whine issues. It's a wonder why AMD/Nvidia or one of their respective board partners hasn't come out and said something regarding this problem given how many cards have been returned.
 
^
It's not the PSU, it's the gpu 100%.

@Matt, don't know how it clocks, if there was no coil whine, I would have foind out, but as it's maybe going back, I'm not pushing it.

Heard about the coil whine getting louder when you oc, so if it's doing the whine @stock then it's only going to get louder with an oc too which is a concern.:(

In my experience it gets better not worse but you need to work the gpu's to remove it. However if its that bad i can understand you wanting to send it back.
 
it can be emi leakage also,some cards/psu's emit more than others,the x58 motherboards suffered bad from whining or electrical noise

depends how well shielded they are
 
most Refrence 7970's have coil whine, Its only a few brands such as the Asus DirectCUII that dont, then again the asus DCII are voltage locked so its good and bad.

People say it gets better over time, leave your pc running something very heavy duty for 48 hours and see if its worse or better when you return
 
most Refrence 7970's have coil whine, Its only a few brands such as the Asus DirectCUII that dont, then again the asus DCII are voltage locked so its good and bad.

People say it gets better over time, leave your pc running something very heavy duty for 48 hours and see if its worse or better when you return

DCII Top's are not voltage locked, just the 7950/7970 none Top versions which are. However, I haven't even played with the voltage on my DCII Top and I am running 1150 core / 1550 memory without problems, zero coil whine.

As Diagro says most Refrence 7970's have coil whine, there's not much that can be done, I spent over 2 weeks of my life sorting out headaches with 2 7970 VTX3D's, they both had hideous coil whine. In the end I RMA'd them both, spent a bit more cash and got one of only 2 models I know typically don't suffer with it (the other being MSI Lightning), both have fully custom PCB's with many upgraded components.

Some people have had luck running a benchmark tool, and leaving it looping overnight, others say the issue dissipates over time. Benchmarking didn't work for me (3 consecutive nights), plugging the card into a completely different PC also made no difference (to rule out PSU and other components) and I didn't want to take that risk of it not going over time, so sent the card(s) back for refund whilst I could.
 
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Just got around to installing my new Gigabyte 7970 Windforce today, no coil whine yet that I really notice and my PC is setup for being as silent as possible :)
 
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