How common is Coil Whine?

[Late]

So as the title suggests, I want to know how common it is for a GPU to have coil whine among the people in this forum.
In the past few years I have been using; RTX 2060, HD 7770, RX 590, RX 5700 xt and recently both an RX 6750 xt & RX 6700.
All cards have had pretty audible coil whine, which in the past was pretty easy to ignore as the case fans were loud.
But now, upgrading to Arctic's P12 it's too noticeable.
So how many of y'all have had very loud coil whine?

 

[Tired9]

Psu.

 

[Alt0153]

never had it, cards make a buzzing sound if you get close and crank frames up but never like the people who say its so loud they can hear it over the game they are playing

 

[mikeo]

Current card makes a tiny bit of noise if FPS hit several hundred + in menus, otherwise quiet as a church mouse (aluminum case sat at ear height a foot away on my desk).

I've just been lucky maybe. But never had a noisy card in 20+ years of building my own PC's.
Though I only ever use a top of the range PSU and do my research on whatever GPU I'm thinking of buying. Though aware that this doesn't necessarily guarantee peace and quiet.

 

[Mr Evil]

They all have coil whine. It's a matter of how loud. And one thing I've learnt over the years is to never trust another person's opinion of how loud a sound is, as what's "silent" to one person may be unbearable to another.

 

[Alt0153]

They all have coil whine. It's a matter of how loud. And one thing I've learnt over the years is to never trust another person's opinion of how loud a sound is, as what's "silent" to one person may be unbearable to another.

yeah ive seen videos on here with people saying how bad it is and i cant hear it till phone gets up the cards arse

 

[ltron]

It's very common on high end cards in my experience, or perhaps I've just been unlucky.

 

[eeii]

The only time I have heard coil whine was when my PSU packed up and the replacement seasonic was outragous. The two cards I had a vega 64 and an Nvidia card made a horrific noise or so I thought. The kitchin roll test proved the PSU was to blame. I do wonder if there is some elec-trickery going on between the psu and the cards we dont understand.

 

[dave28]

like every high power GPU i ever owned, seems to get really bad at about 280+ watts

 

[Tired9]

HD 7770 and RTX 2060 are low end cards.

You have to realise you need to compromise somewhere. You will have noise regardless in a system built for performance.

I would turn your fans up and see where you are comfortable for a normal background noise as your noise floor. Then see how much louder coil whine is.

Fact: if you fall to sleep with high noise around you, you won't wake up if a loud noise happens this is due to your mind getting used to it

If you keep a reasonably audiable noise floor the coil whine may be less noticeable or irritating.

 

[SPG]

Had to return a PSU but never a GPU

 

[Dave2150]

Depends how old you are. Lots of coil whine is in the higher frequency spectrum, where it's the most annoying. Plenty of folk 40+ that have lost 30-50% of their hearing, many either don't realize this or they are in denial.

Test you hearing here >

I've used around 6 3080 and 3090's in total and currently have a 4090. All have coil whine in some form. My strix 4090 is quieter, but still audible.

 

[Alt0153]

Depends how old you are. Lots of coil whine is in the higher frequency spectrum, where it's the most annoying. Plenty of folk 40+ that have lost 30-50% of their hearing, many either don't realize this or they are in denial.

Test you hearing here >

I've used around 6 3080 and 3090's in total and currently have a 4090. All have coil whine in some form. My strix 4090 is quieter, but still audible.

40 and lose track around 14.9 ish

 

[Eddie99]

Depends how old you are. Lots of coil whine is in the higher frequency spectrum, where it's the most annoying. Plenty of folk 40+ that have lost 30-50% of their hearing, many either don't realize this or they are in denial.

Test you hearing here >

I've used around 6 3080 and 3090's in total and currently have a 4090. All have coil whine in some form. My strix 4090 is quieter, but still audible.

I can hear from the beginning to 18000 Hz and don't have noticeable coil whine on my 3070.

 

[Quartz]

Test you hearing here

I'm in my late 50s and I hear up to about 9000 Hz.

 

[Meddling-Monk]

One thing to remember with the Youtube video audio tests, is that some videos have their audio capped and don't actually play anything above a certain threshold. Whilst when you do have an audio file that can play all the way, that sometimes the speakers that are being used may not reproduce the sound properly either.

 

[Dave2150]

I can hear from the beginning to 18000 Hz and don't have noticeable coil whine on my 3070.

Is 18,000 the same volume as 10,000 for you?

 

[Eddie99]

Is 18,000 the same volume as 10,000 for you?

No, 10,000 is much louder.

 

[Quartz]

Whilst when you do have an audio file that can play all the way, that sometimes the speakers that are being used may not reproduce the sound properly either.

Very good point. I've just checked and Creative Labs say the Katana v2 has a range of 50 Hz to 20 kHz. However, I started hearing noise at around 30 Hz.

 

[Cadder]

Quite loud on my 3080 at stock settings. A tad quieter but still obvious when undervolted. Only when running demanding games though. Sound & music drowns it out for me.