[SOLVED] Is loud coil whine OK

[NightHawkRMX]

I have been trying to overclock my 580 and it has been getting loud, even with fan speed set to minimum. I believe this is loud coil whine.
Ok or not?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Is your card under warranty? What brand is it?

Coil whine, if that's what it is, is a warrantable problem and they will usually accept an RMA on them if it's significant. It shouldn't have anything at all to do with fan speed. If fan speed has any affect on it, then it's probably not coil whine. Coil whine usually happens under light to medium loads.

If this doesn't seem like the same thing as what you are hearing, then it's probably not coil whine, and is something else like a problem with a fan bearing or broken cooling frame assembly mounting point, or something other than the card at all.

What Is Coil Whine, and Can I Get Rid of It on My PC?

Modern PCs are ridiculously powerful, so creature comforts like low noise levels have become more important.

www.howtogeek.com

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Its an older Sapphire nitro+ 480 flashed into a 580 pulse for better idle power consumption and higher tdp. It always has coil whined audibly, but turning up the clocks makes it louder.

I have my 480 running at 1400mhz core and 2250 mem with 1.25v and 100% power limit. Runs in mid to high 70s in gta and doesnt crash.

I have no warranty since i bought it refurbished and flashing the vbios probably broke my 60 day warranty, even thoigh it came with a corrupt vbios.

It only happens under a gpu gaming load and setting the gpu fans to lowest doesnt change it. Max fan speed and i cant hear the whine over the fans.

Its not noticable with headphones on, but rather loud without them. Even though my case is closed.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Its an older Sapphire nitro+ 480 flashed into a 580 pulse for better idle power consumption and higher tdp. It always has coil whined audibly, but turning up the clocks makes it louder.

I have my 480 running at 1400mhz core and 2250 mem with 1.25v and 100% power limit. Runs in mid to high 70s in gta and doesnt crash.

I have no warranty since i bought it refurbished and flashing the vbios probably broke my 60 day warranty, even thoigh it came with a corrupt vbios.

It only happens under a gpu gaming load and setting the gpu fans to lowest doesnt change it. Max fan speed and i cant hear the whine over the fans.

Its not noticable with headphones on, but rather loud without them. Even though my case is closed.

Usually what they do is find the choke coils and put an adhesive like non conductive caulk. It's these components that resonate.

A choke coil is ki d if like an inductor where wires loop around in circles. This creates a magnetic field that causes the wires to move as current/voltage surges. When the power fluxes so does the coil movement causing oscillation or humming.

 

[Darkbreeze]

He's talking about this, which you probably already know anyhow.

And I've seen people eliminate the coil whine with a dab of hot glue from a hot glue gun, or blobbing a small amount of 100% silicone between the coil and ring and giving it a full 24 hours to dry, so that the vibration is dampened.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Aarg. I just had this card disassembled to repaste it the other day. Its a pain as sapphire decided to use like 10 screws in like 5 different varieties for the backplate alone, even though the backplate is purely aesthetic.

Ill try it with hot glue.

I will try to look up a video as im not sure where the glue goes on the coils and exactly how much to use.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Normally, just enough to bridge the gap between the wire and the ring. Literally, a small blob between them that is just enough to ensure that the wire can't freely "vibrate" which is what causes the whine. It's much like striking a large bell with a hammer. It will resonate. BUT, if you grab and hold the bell, it stops. Same principle.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

If i remember ill upload a pic of the thermal pads aswell. I think ine might need replaced as it almost looks like it has netting coming out.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yeah, do that. Doesn't sound normal.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Also, in a game the colors went all wonky a few times. Is this core or vram instability? The game still runs fine making me think Vram.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Honestly, I don't know. Generally speaking ANY kind of instability can cause graphical corruption.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Ok, so i just reset the clocks back to a stock 580 and its good.

Now that i finally got around to remove the cooler i think the thermal pad is fine.
Pic of thermal pad:
https://ibb.co/styJCT7

Although, where are the coils? I here the whine even with fans stopped, but i dont see any coils.
Pic of pcb:
https://ibb.co/6Xn1rZ0
And
https://ibb.co/hY8Tv96

 

[Darkbreeze]

IDK, but it looks like SOMETHING has been leaking on the PCB. I thought all modern graphics cards used solid caps and chokes, but IDK. Those don't look like the leakage is coming from the caps, but you're right, I don't see any coils. I think somebody stold your coils man.

Also, it's possible that you're hearing capacitor squeal, rather than coil whine. Could make sense given the leakage I see on that PCB, IDK for sure though.

Capacitor squeal & coil whine explained | Articles from UK Gaming Computers

We discuss why computers can sometime make a strange whine or squeal and how to solve it

www.ukgamingcomputers.co.uk

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Thats "leakage" is just dust hardened onto the pcb over the years, not a damaged cap. I suspect this was an ex-mineing card.

Id figure a nice sapphire model would have solid caps.

Ill check out that article.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Went ahead and used some alcohol to clean the dust off of the board. The dust is gone, but the board looks oily in the spots where the dust was.

I dont think the caps are the issue as they all look fine. No bulging or anything.

Any other ideas?

 

[Darkbreeze]

IDK man. I'm getting to the point where I'm out of my element now.

 

[alceryes]

Are you 100% sure the 'coil whine' is coming from the GPU? To check get the inside tube of a paper towel roll, hold one end up to your ear, and move the other end around to the different components (without touching, of course) while the whining is happening.
I recently would've swore up and down that the coil whine I heard was coming from my new Vega64. Until I found that it was coming from my power supply. Turns out the extra draw for the new card caused the PS to become noisy. It was an old PS and needed replacing anyway.

To answer your original Q, some coil whine is okay but it shouldn't be super loud.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

I did suspect a psu fault, but this is a decent psu that is only 1.5yrs old.

Ill try that meathod.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Doesn't matter. A brand new Seasonic Prime Ultra Titanium could be bad right out of the box, or a week later, or two months down the road, while a Raidmax garbage can dumpster unit COULD theoretically never encounter a problem. Obviously, that is an extreme and unlikely set of possibilities, but anything can happen.

CX units are better than they used to be, but they are still not particularly high quality units.

 

[Satan-IR]

Those stain/blobs are either solder flux or stains from the wash they gave the PCB after manufacture. Some manufacturers, Asus among others, wash their PCBs once they're done to get rid of that flux residue and some are well-known for having big stains on PCBs.

That said, if stains from flux or waching they're harmless and if you cleaned them with alcohol it's OK too.

Your board is actually the newer model where they changed from 6 to 5 phases for the GPU you can see the empty place for an inductor, the IR mosfet and a cap. Also those I think are solid capacitors.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

I cant seem to pinpoint where the noise is coming from.
When playing GTAV when my system is stressed all around, its loud. I notice when my game stutters because of my cpu, the buzz goes away as my gpu util drops.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Honestly, I can't hear anything EXCEPT for the aquarium pump and your fans.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

OK, I got it to pick up a lot better.

This is the camera closer to the gpu with the side panel off. This is at the GTA pause menu where the gpu goes from idle to 100% like 2 times a second

https://soundcloud.com/user-747764472%2Fpaused-whine

View: https://soundcloud.com/user-747764472/paused-whine

This is with the camera at gpu at first and then psu pointed at the gpu towards the end. The noise is definitely coming from gpu, not psu. This is in gta with steady gpu load where the fans are faster than at the pause menu.

https://soundcloud.com/user-747764472%2Fwhine-steady

View: https://soundcloud.com/user-747764472/whine-steady

The squeaking at the end in the last clip is my office chair.

Does this sound like coil whine? Maybe a fan? This doesnt change no matter if I lock the fan speed at min.
The noise is louder the closer the camera goes to the 8 pin pcie plug, making me think an issue with the card.

 

[Darkbreeze]

That DEFINITELY sounds like a fan bearing to me.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

If i manually set the fan speed to theminimum the sound persists. If i heavily underclock the card with min fan speed the sound goes away, making me think its power related.

Speeding up or stopping the fans in afterburner doesnt change this. Its for sure coming from the GPU. Stopping any case fans or cpu fan doesnt change it.