Founders Edition Coil-whine - RMA experiances

[xPETEZx]

I have had my 3090FE for about 8 months, and it coil-whines. An under-volt helps, but its still very noticeable to me.

Yesterday I finally 'cracked' and chatted to nvidia support, asking what can be done?
They asked for a video of the whine, which I provided.

They then almost straight away issued me with an RMA and return instructions.

Having had 2x FE cards, both of which whine, and seeing lots of reports of people also having it, I am curious how many have gone through with an RMA and if you got a better example back?

Its also unclear if I should send the original box? (Id like to have the box if I ever sold it in future) Again, they say not to send anything with the card. Suggesting I wont get back a new retail unit. (Which is fine, as long as it does not whine!)

So, asking if anybody has returned an FE card to nvidia for coil-whine? What was you experience?

 

[xPETEZx]

I honestly think every GPU I've owned in the last 15 years has exhibited some form of coil whine, you can mitigate it with undervolting and under clocking but ultimately still there if you run furmark or something very high framerate.

In regards to the 3090fe, I've had two (first one died after 2 weeks) and they both had coil whine.
RMA process for the failure was pretty easy, but they did have to wait for stock to arrive before they could send the replacement so it was about a 3 week turnaround.

I'm doubtful you will see a massive change with the new card. The 3090 is pulling an insane ammount of current and so I think they basically have to use inductors which are a bit more vulnerable to coil whine to achieve the best electrical performance.

What I find baffling is that SOME cards don't whine at all, some a little and others unbearably. How does that happen? Surely if they all have the same components they should either all whine or none of them.

In the last 15 years, I haven't ever had a card that whines at normal game FPS. Only ever at menus that push really high.

Did you send yours to Hong Kong?

Limiting the frame rate to the same value as the maximum hz on the monitor also works often too. Its also subjective with regards to location of your case. If you are one of these people who likes it to be on your desk at ear height then its going to seem louder than under your desk tucked away to one side.

I had a 3080fe before, which also whined. That I could fix by limiting frames. I had a 2K60Hz monitor, so limited to 60 the card was never fully loaded.
Now I have a 3840x1600@144hz screen, I can barely ever hit 144FPS as it is, so cant limit anything here to try and reduce the whine.

I do have my PC on the desk. I did place it under the desk to see if I could hear the whine less, but still bothered me all the same. My PC is very quiet, and I sometimes even game with sound off... so I can hear the whine clearly anywhere in the room really.

 

[xPETEZx]

The 3080FE had very little coil whine that I had you could hardly here any even with the case open and listening. Also helps if you use headphones and dont use speakers

Its also sometimes dependant on your PSU too.

Using headphones just masks the issue...
I personally find headphones uncomfortable after even an hours use. So I prefer using my speakers, or even no sound. Sometimes silence is bliss.

I thought about PSU, but went through 4 different ones due to an unrelated issue. Card whined the exact same on each one.

 

[xPETEZx]

I did wonder if adding/removing pads could affect coil-whine. But when I searched I found nobody posting anything about success on 3090FEs.
I think somebody on here did find that once they water-blocked there FE cards coil-whine went away...

Are the coils which whine on the front or the back of a card generally? It sounds from that thread like the back-plate pads where the biggest cause of issue?

 

[xPETEZx]

Where do you have to return the card to?

Its going to Hong Kong. Direct to nVidida. Via Fedex. They have provided all the shipping and customs labels.

Sometimes when you have a couple of kids a comfy headset is bliss. I've not used speakers for about 12 years.

I just wish headphones didnt bother me. Literally after an hour, I want them off my head. Tried so many over the years...

 

[xPETEZx]

So I got my replacement card back from nvidia today.

Bad news first... the replacement card does have coil-whine. It appears to be better than the card I sent in however. And thats at stock. Ill apply my UV again and see how it is then. Maybe this one's whine will improve? My old one never did, but some peoples has so fingers crossed.

The VRAM temps on the replacement are much much better! Topped out at 92 so far. Mine use to hit 104! After replacing just the rear pads, I dropped that to 94. (Which was enough to prevent the fans going crazy!)

So it seems nvidia have improved the stock pads used!

A few comments on the RMA process, for those that are interested:

I contacted nvidia via chat, they asked for a video of the whine. Then within a couple of hours I had a RMA number and shipping label from them.
Booked the card for collection via FedEx.
It was picked up on the 21st, and arrived in Hong Kong on the 24th
Had confirmation of shipment of replacement on the 29th, with FedEx tracking. It showed due for delivery on the 5th Jan.
Arrived this morning on the 4th. So day early
It was a retail boxed card. I was expecting a refurb or something in a brown box. But nope, new in box card.

As mentioned, I had changed the thermal pads on the back of my card. With all the fear mongering about this voiding the warranty, I was slightly concerned if this would be detected or come up.
Thankfully it didn't Not sure if as I kinda expected they don't bother to open the cards up before issuing replacement, or if they did they just didn't care.


So on the RMA process itself, Id give nvidia a 10 out of 10. Very easy, very quick. No issues with changing address/name to return the card to.

Sadly, as said... the replacement does have coil-whine. It does however appear to be less. As a bonus, the VRAM temps seem better so far.

 

[xPETEZx]

Applying my undervolt from before of 1815@850mv has reduced the coil-whine further. I can still hear it, probably because I am listening out for it.

Its very faint in GTA V and CP2077, but more apparent in FC6. Which is odd... as CP2077 is using RTX, DLSS etc.

Still, its an improvement.

I do now have an odd head-scratcher which is fan-stop on idle seems not to be working... I cant figure out why!
I have MSI Afterburner, MSI Center, iCUE and HWInfo running. I figure one of those is doing it....
Managed to get fans to stop by closing all of them. Trying to narrow down which one... thought I had it with MSI center... but on reboot without it installed... still fans wont stop :/
Then I figured it was iCUE... removed that... reboot... again fans wont stop.

Im like a dog with a bone when I find an issue like this... so although its minor, I want to 'fix' it!

 

[xPETEZx]

So I got my replacement card back from nvidia today.

Bad news first... the replacement card does have coil-whine. It appears to be better than the card I sent in however. And thats at stock. Ill apply my UV again and see how it is then. Maybe this one's whine will improve? My old one never did, but some peoples has so fingers crossed.

The VRAM temps on the replacement are much much better! Topped out at 92 so far. Mine use to hit 104! After replacing just the rear pads, I dropped that to 94. (Which was enough to prevent the fans going crazy!)

So it seems nvidia have improved the stock pads used!

A few comments on the RMA process, for those that are interested:

I contacted nvidia via chat, they asked for a video of the whine. Then within a couple of hours I had a RMA number and shipping label from them.
Booked the card for collection via FedEx.
It was picked up on the 21st, and arrived in Hong Kong on the 24th
Had confirmation of shipment of replacement on the 29th, with FedEx tracking. It showed due for delivery on the 5th Jan.
Arrived this morning on the 4th. So day early
It was a retail boxed card. I was expecting a refurb or something in a brown box. But nope, new in box card.

As mentioned, I had changed the thermal pads on the back of my card. With all the fear mongering about this voiding the warranty, I was slightly concerned if this would be detected or come up.
Thankfully it didn't Not sure if as I kinda expected they don't bother to open the cards up before issuing replacement, or if they did they just didn't care.


So on the RMA process itself, Id give nvidia a 10 out of 10. Very easy, very quick. No issues with changing address/name to return the card to.

Sadly, as said... the replacement does have coil-whine. It does however appear to be less. As a bonus, the VRAM temps seem better so far.

@xPETEZx Did you ever figure it out, I don't like being left hanging

See above

TLR ... the RMA process was very smooth and easy.
The new card coil-whines ever so slightly less than the old sadly... It does have better VRAM temps though, so just going to keep it and under-volt. Which improves it slight more... still the loudest part of my otherwise silent PC.

 

[xPETEZx]

Ah sorry!

Sadly I am no closer :/
It seems very random when fan-stop kicks in now. After a clean boot, with nothing open, it wont stop the fans after even 20+ minutes of idle.

Oddly, if I connect to my work VDI (Azure hosted virtual machine), after about 5-10 minutes of working on that, the fans stop. Sometimes they randomly start again...

Having fresh-installed just about everything I can think of that would have anything remotely to do with fans, nothing seems to have 'worked'

Im fairly sure it is software related... as if I leave the computer at the login screen, the fans will stop then too.

Obviously between sending my GPU away, and getting this one back... nothing at all changed on the software. The PC wasnt started at all.
So I cant work out why fan-stop worked perfectly before the swap.

I am out of ideas for now :/