Coil whine?

wazza300 · 27 Mar 2012 at 13:38

are any of you hearing the noise through your speakers or your headphones? if not then its normal to hear slight whine when loading games/game menus

if you are hearing it through speakers/headphones then your psu needs changing,if no cure then gpu needs replacing

i know pretty severe,but its either one of those two components

elrasho · 27 Mar 2012 at 13:41

wazza300 said:
are any of you hearing the noise through your speakers or your headphones? if not then its normal to hear slight whine when loading games/game menus

if you are hearing it through speakers/headphones then your psu needs changing,if no cure then gpu needs replacing

i know pretty severe,but its either one of those two components

How can the noise come through speakers? Is it being emitted at a frequency that your speakers pick it up on, like sometimes you can head a radio station when its really quiet?

wazza300 · 27 Mar 2012 at 13:43

elrasho said:
How can the noise come through speakers? Is it being emitted at a frequency that your speakers pick it up on, like sometimes you can head a radio station when its really quiet?

i dont know,but if its bad you will hear it buzz through the speakers and headphones

these should be silent

if your hearing it from the side of your pc case but not through speakers/headphones then its fine and normal

your speakers will pick it up because its recieving an audio signal so it will mess with it,hence they pop when the lights turned on and radio stations ect

elrasho · 27 Mar 2012 at 13:45

wazza300 said:
i dont know,but if its bad you will hear it buzz through the speakers and headphones

these should be silent

if your hearing it from the side of your pc case but not through speakers/headphones then its fine and normal

OK will try to replicate the noise again tonight, I actually do think the noise is coming from the speakers because I was looking around the back of my monitor thinking "what the heck is that!?". I really hope it's not though, don't want to spend any more money on my rig and a £130 PSU isn't going to help.

Jas1222 · 27 Mar 2012 at 13:47

My noise comes from the side of the case.

Besty · 27 Mar 2012 at 14:02

elrasho said:
OK will try to replicate the noise again tonight, I actually do think the noise is coming from the speakers because I was looking around the back of my monitor thinking "what the heck is that!?". I really hope it's not though, don't want to spend any more money on my rig and a £130 PSU isn't going to help.

Its difficult to recommend here but I will try.

My opinion is that the HX620 is not a high-end PSU, the Corsair AX line is their high-end line.

Is this causing your problem?

Hard to say, if its coming through the speakers, I would recommend you buy an upgraded one anyway.

Its possible that with that PSU and a single card GTX680 setup would be fine, however a GTX680 would draw around 350-400W max while benching which leaves 220W for everything else.

This is borderline for *some* setups.

If you are hearing it through your headphones when playing games, I would swap the PSU and cables for a better one.

If you are hearing it when you put your head next to the card, its more than likely either the card itself or a noisy power line.

Fixing that scenario could be harder.

I would also filter your power socket on the wall, make sure you don't use any 6-way plug extenders.

For the record I run a top-end Silverstone Strider 1500W and even I get coil whine from the cards (not through headphones), even when using a single card (even worse with 3!) but I think its my pretty white 3rd party cables which are probably more form than function.

I use a frame rate limiter to hold the cards back to 60 or 120fps, this helps with the whine.

I ran a Seasonic 500W previously with a single 5850 and got lots of coil whine through the speakers, it drove me nuts.

ALXAndy · 27 Mar 2012 at 14:03

I just did some poking. Apparently the 680 has four inductors (aka coils). The 7970 has six.

From what I can gather the card overvolts itself when it overclocks itself. People are saying it can use up to 1174mv.

That's an awful lot of voltage for four inductors, especially given the 7970 has six.

I guess if this is an isolated incident then it's just your card and bad luck. If it does start to become more widespread it could explain that the card used to be a lower part that has been pushed to the limit to become a higher end one.

wazza300 · 27 Mar 2012 at 14:08

try and borrow another psu/graphic card and test with those just to see if you can elimintae it,you wont stop it completeley no matter what you try,but if its comeing through the speakers and headphones you can stop that

elrasho · 27 Mar 2012 at 15:31

Besty said:
Its difficult to recommend here but I will try.

My opinion is that the HX620 is not a high-end PSU, the Corsair AX line is their high-end line.

Is this causing your problem?

Hard to say, if its coming through the speakers, I would recommend you buy an upgraded one anyway.

Its possible that with that PSU and a single card GTX680 setup would be fine, however a GTX680 would draw around 350-400W max while benching which leaves 220W for everything else.

This is borderline for *some* setups.

If you are hearing it through your headphones when playing games, I would swap the PSU and cables for a better one.

If you are hearing it when you put your head next to the card, its more than likely either the card itself or a noisy power line.

Fixing that scenario could be harder.

I would also filter your power socket on the wall, make sure you don't use any 6-way plug extenders.

For the record I run a top-end Silverstone Strider 1500W and even I get coil whine from the cards (not through headphones), even when using a single card (even worse with 3!) but I think its my pretty white 3rd party cables which are probably more form than function.

I use a frame rate limiter to hold the cards back to 60 or 120fps, this helps with the whine.

I ran a Seasonic 500W previously with a single 5850 and got lots of coil whine through the speakers, it drove me nuts.

I've seen people use GTX580 SLI on a 620HX with no problems, I'm sure its not the PSU. I think its a compatibility thing between the card and this specific PSU. I'm going to do more testing tonight benchmarking, gaming, HD videos and see if I hear the squeal.

Jas1222 · 27 Mar 2012 at 15:32

elrasho said:
OP is the noise anything like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D63NVSHqDv0&feature=youtu.be

No it doesn't, searching through Youtube and nothing sounds similar, they all sound way louder or way different.

The only thing that sounds similar is the first 12 seconds of this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeahtqeTrGo

But it doesn't have that crackly sound. I never had a dedicated GPU connected to this power supply before, it used to use the iGPU. I don't have a spare PSU or GPU to test it with. Enabling or disabling V-sync in the global panel doesn't make a difference at all.

EDIT: This is almost the exact noise! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kl_EYFGd-Q, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_ombDdZi7o, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSmRSvyLy_8

ALXAndy · 27 Mar 2012 at 15:36

That crackly sound sounds like a hard drive lol.

Jas1222 · 27 Mar 2012 at 15:38

ALXAndy said:
That crackly sound sounds like a hard drive lol.

Yeah ignore that, if you check the links I edited in, it's pretty much that same sound.

ALXAndy · 27 Mar 2012 at 15:39

Yeah that's inductor whine. But you really ought to find out exactly where it is coming from.

Jas1222 · 27 Mar 2012 at 15:43

ALXAndy said:
Yeah that's inductor whine. But you really ought to find out exactly where it is coming from.

I'll try that method of rolling up a piece of paper and putting it against each component. Pretty hard at the moment since my cooler's pump is making a racket.

Jas1222 · 27 Mar 2012 at 16:41

Update: So I listened to each of the components and surprising the noise wasn't coming from the PSU or the GPU either. It came from the CPU/Pump area. I think it may be another effect from the faulty pump.

Rusty0611 · 27 Mar 2012 at 17:41

I also get a whiney sound when pressing Exit in Heaven. Only happens on the 2D screen when exiting benchmark to the menu then it's silent. Very strange.

Only happens in Heaven for me.

elrasho · 27 Mar 2012 at 17:59

Rusty0611 said:
I also get a whiney sound when pressing Exit in Heaven. Only happens on the 2D screen when exiting benchmark to the menu then it's silent. Very strange.

Only happens in Heaven for me.

+1 for me. Just tested it three times. The squealing doesn't come from the speakers, im 99% sure it's the PSU. Ran it each time and each time had my ear next to GPU then PSU then GPU and it was coming from the PSU. It lasted about 3 seconds which is the timeout of the Heaven 3.0 credits screen when you exit the application.... very strange indeed.

Well as long as I can't hear it from the speakers I'm OK right?

wazza300 · 27 Mar 2012 at 18:01

elrasho said:
+1 for me. Just tested it three times. The squealing doesn't come from the speakers, im 99% sure it's the PSU. Ran it each time and each time had my ear next to GPU then PSU then GPU and it was coming from the PSU. It lasted about 3 seconds which is the timeout of the Heaven 3.0 credits screen when you exit the application.... very strange indeed.

Well as long as I can't hear it from the speakers I'm OK right?

yes your fine,its normal to hear that,even i hear it with asus z68/2600k and esp in crysis game menu,but not in the game itself

Jas1222 · 27 Mar 2012 at 18:24

I'm fairly certain its my cooler now, tested it both when idle and under load and the GPU doesn't make the sound, move my head abit higher and it gets louder.

Waiting on Corsair to see what they have to say about an Advanced RMA. The only sure way to know its the cooler is if I swap out my H100 back to the stock cooler, but not sure if I have enough thermal paste to do that.