Does your graphics card have coil whine?

[spixelspixel]

Coil whine survey

Please note by coil whine I do not mean the obnoxiously loud high screech in game menus or when you quit heaven benchmark.

Here is an example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB9uK-Tnc7I&t=0m26s




Test method - Heaven 4.0 Benchmark at whatever settings you want (since I figure most people here already have it installed).
If you have a low power card do not use maximum settings as extremely low FPS can cause coil whine not to occur.



The survey

1. Do you hear coil whine coming from your graphics card during heaven benchmark?

2. Please list the following components in your system. Graphics card - Motherboard - Power supply

3. What is the rpm of your case fans + cpu cooler.
_______________________________________________


Various Rest of system
Various Rest of system
Various Rest of system


MSI 7970 OC No Rest of system
7970 Yes Rest of system
Reference MSI + XFX 7970 No Rest of system
Sapphire 7970 Yes Rest of system
VTX 7950 X-Edition No Rest of system
Gigabyte 7950 WF X3 No Rest of system
PowerColor 7950 PCS Yes Rest of system
HIS 7950 IceQ Boost No Rest of system
HIS 7950 Boost No Rest of system
XFX 7950 Yes Rest of system
Powercolor 7870 myst No Rest of system
Sapphire 6950 Toxic Yes Rest of system
HIS 7770 iCooler Yes Rest of system


EVGA GTX 680 SC No Rest of system
EVGA GTX 680 No Rest of system
EVGA GTX 670 Yes Rest of system
EVGA GTX 670 FTW No Rest of system
EVGA GTX 670 FTW No Rest of system
Gigabyte GTX 570 SOC No Rest of system
EVGA HD GTX 570 No Rest of system

 

[spixelspixel]

1. Yes
2. HIS 7770, asrock h77/pro4mvp, super flower 500w fanless.
3. 2 x 140mm case fans @ 500rpm. cpu cooler 1 x 120mm @ 500rpm.

 

[spixelspixel]

Not everyone has coil whine as you may think OP. I can stick my head in my case and hear ZERO whine no matter what its doing.

I didn't say they did, please don't take take it off topic What fans do you have at 300rpm? I haven't come across any at that low of a speed (genuine question)

The NON Reference designs are best for no coil issues

My Asus directcu II gtx 660 had.

 

[spixelspixel]

MSI and XFX 7970 reference cards under water, no noise.

Spec in sig, fans somewhere between 1-300RPM

If you're serious about those fan speeds then that's fine. If not then please just don't post it. I don't see anything wrong with getting some reliable info on the most common complaint with graphics cards.

 

[spixelspixel]

No: Powercolor PCS+ 7870 MYST

Rest of your pc?

 

[spixelspixel]

What the hell are you on. There is nothing wrong with his quoted fan speeds as an estimate.

Guess what, some people run fans on controllers and run them at whatever speed they want? Quite frankly if this is the crappy attitude you have I'll just redact my post and screw your thread.

My attitude? :/

Calm down, it was a fair question imo. Not many fans can run at 300rpm even on a controller.

 

[spixelspixel]

Yes, I am serious. I can sometimes see the actual blades I run them so slow. I can actually switch ALL fans of for an hour or more without any massive increase in temp. As I mentioned in the other thread, I water cool for silence, not overclocking. The macbook on my desk is currently making more noise from its fan than my PC is.

Fair enough, btw what fans are they? I've been on the lookout for ones which can run really low speeds.

 

[spixelspixel]

I was thinking you'd show up

 

[spixelspixel]

I'll add my other cards that I've used in recent memory

Evga 650 ti - yes
Gainward GTX 670 - yes
Inno3d iChill GTX 660 Ti - yes
Sapphire 7950 boost (reference 7970 pcb) - yes
Evga GTX 580 - yes
Asus directcuII gtx 660 - yes
Evga HD GTX 570 - yes
MSI GTX 570 reference - yes
Gigabyte GTX 570 reference - yes
Sapphire 6870 Flex - yes
EVGA 560 ti - yes

The 7950 was the worst of them all, even made noises in idle and when moving mouse.


Power supplies used - XFX Core 750w, Be Quiet Dark p10 650w, Be Quiet e9 400w, Corsair cx 400, FSP Aurum Gold 400w


Motherboards - Asus p8z68-lx, Asrock z77 extreme4, Asus p8z77-v, Asrock h77 pro4/mvp, Asrock b75m-itx

 

[spixelspixel]

I would suggest the OP is listening with a stethoscope and does not have what 99% of the percent of the population would call coil whine....or you know.......has tinitus.

Haha, I don't even need to get close to the pc to hear it! It's not deafening but the cards definitely whine the moment heaven starts. Its not high pitched whine, rather a 'cricket' sound. Check the video I posted in OP. Maybe I need to call an exterminator ?

 

[spixelspixel]

You've either got terrible luck, or something else is causing that whine....
I'll add to my list to offset yours...

Is the whine from your power supply the buzzing kind or like the video posted in OP?

Also I have sold most of those cards and not one complaint.

 

[spixelspixel]

Please list your fan speeds if possible. For example if someone is running several high speed fans they're not going to hear anything even if its there. The point of this thread is to try to pinpoint the cause and have a list of info that other people can find helpful either to solve a coil whine issue with their card or to make a decision on what card to get

 

[spixelspixel]

Club3d Radeon 9800 XT - No
Powercolour Radeon x850 XTPE - No
MSI Radeon HD3870 - No
Sapphire Radeon HD6950 - Yes

The sapphire HD6950 toxic did have quite severe coil whine. I solved that problem using clear nail varnish over the coils, now pretty much silent with slight noise on the credits screen at the end of unigine benchmarks. I also had a ground loop from the sound card to my amp which picked up bucket loads of noise from the gpu, like scrolling etc which caused chirping noises through my hifi. Isolation transformers cured that issue.

Other parts that make noise.
6 gentle typhoons @ 1000rpm, 1 enermax t.b silence 140 @ 1000rpm, 1 bequiet silentwings 140 @ 1000rpm, 1 XSPC D5 vario @ 5, 1 seagate barracuda, 2 western digital caviar SE.

My 7770 has those open coils, was considering varnishing them as I heard it can resolve it but it looks like there's already a coating of some sort on it. Almost all newer high end cards have closed coils though so there's nothing you can do.

Could you edit the post to include your power supply + motherboard.

 

[spixelspixel]

My 6950 has enclosed coils. Adding additional varnish fixed the noise issues i was having. You can see the varnish on the coils in this image.

Added extra info to my post above.

Interesting, any idea how the varnish helps?

This thread is hilarious http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2251088

He drilled the coils open on a brand new 670 to apply varnish. It didn't work so then covered them in glue which melted when the card heated up. All for nothing, card still whined afterwards

 

[spixelspixel]

I'm not listening with a stethoscope and I don't have tinitus. I'm simply in a reasonable quiet room with a quiet pc. No matter what graphics card I use, immmediately after starting heaven or any game,it starts making noises that I consider coil whine. An example is posted in the OP.

It's not bad enough that I'd want to return the card, but its 100% there and noticeable. I'm not the only person who complains about this either, not sure why most people in this thread seem to think its almost nonexistant.

I've seen so many people complain of coil whine on various cards they've owned, for example

I returned 2x HIS 7970 Ghz edition for coil whine

I sent 2x HIS 7970 and a Gigglebyte back for coil whine

All my cards whine to some degree. XFX 7970. Asus DC2 7970, MSI TF3 7950, MSI TF4 GTX 660TI.The nvidia one whines the loudest. Changing from Corsair TX 750 to Seasonic X-750 didn't do anything.

We either have different opinions on what coil whine actually is or something else it at play.. but please don't make it seem like I'm crazy cause I'm not

 

[spixelspixel]

Stop Whining, spixelspixel

I can't help it.. I know what I hear

 

[spixelspixel]

You live next door to a shop Spixel? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito

Yes, the shopkeeper stands outside my window 24/7 waiting for a game to launch then switches on his mosquito device. Thanks for finally solving this.

 

[spixelspixel]

You did, in another thread you were aggressively telling everyone that they did have coilwhine as if it was a fact, and you weren't accepting anything but "yes I do" as being valid.

I'm just going based on my own experiences and various reports I've seen from others. Pretty much everyone is telling me that I'm hearing things which I ain't and that coil whine isn't normal which I think it is (to a certain degree) I have to defend my opinion. I do accept that some people's cards don't have bad "coil whine" but it's pretty much impossible for any modern gaming card not to have it to a certain degree. The perceived loudness of it obviously is subjective like many things. Okay I'll stop rambling on now..

So yeah, nobody likes being told they're wrong so obviously arguments happen but there's no need to bring it up unnecessarily in a different thread.

 

[spixelspixel]

Never experienced it on a 6800gt, 8800gts, 4850, 5770, 5870, 6950, gtx670.

Actually I have heard it once, on the first benchmark level of 3dMark, but thats just when the fps in is in the 1000's.

Yeah, that's what coil whine sounds like at super high fps. When fps is at a more reasonable level but the gpu is still stressed, it becomes much quieter and sounds more like a cricket chirping rather than a high pitched squeal. See video in op for what I mean.

If the coils whine at high fps then it only makes sense that they'll whine also at lower fps, it just sounds different and is harder to pickup (or maybe some cards just make no noise at all!)

 

[spixelspixel]

For anyone interested here's the whine on my 7770. (you might need to increase volume to hear it due to crappy camera amplifying other noises)

http://picosong.com/Frpk/

This is with heaven, you can hear the chirp/hiss/ticking coil whine then the high squeal when I exit it.