MSI Twin Frozr OC Edition R9 280x Coil Whine?

[Guest]

Hey everyone. I bought an MSI r9 280x OC edition and installed it, everything worked perfectly. I run battlefield 4 and other games at max settings and I noticed a very audible and quite annoying coil whine. I've tried lowering the settings, didn't help. Tried reseating the card to make sure it got the full connection in the pci-e lane, and that didn't help. Last thing I want to do is send it back and wait awhile for a replacement.

Anyone else noticed this, and if so, how did you fix it (if you did)?

 

[dholster]

This is something i have been researching quite a bit as i am about to puchase a 280x. One thing that seems to be a trend is setting Vsync on, try that and see if it fixes the sound issue. As long as you generally get FPS equal to your monitors refresh rate you wont notice a difference in your frame rates.

Let me know if that helps as like i said, im very interested in buying this card but noise levels matter alot to me.

Thank you,

 

[Guest]

This is something i have been researching quite a bit as i am about to puchase a 280x. One thing that seems to be a trend is setting Vsync on, try that and see if it fixes the sound issue. As long as you generally get FPS equal to your monitors refresh rate you wont notice a difference in your frame rates.

Let me know if that helps as like i said, im very interested in buying this card but noise levels matter alot to me.

Thank you,

Actually, you're right! I turned on Vsync and the whine dropped significantly. I absolutely recommend the 280x, by the way.

 

[Christopher Shaffer]

Hey everyone. I bought an MSI r9 280x OC edition and installed it, everything worked perfectly. I run battlefield 4 and other games at max settings and I noticed a very audible and quite annoying coil whine. I've tried lowering the settings, didn't help. Tried reseating the card to make sure it got the full connection in the pci-e lane, and that didn't help. Last thing I want to do is send it back and wait awhile for a replacement.

Anyone else noticed this, and if so, how did you fix it (if you did)?

These cards have coil whine because they use a PWM connector to control fan speed.

There are no driver settings that will change this, unless they result in the fan running at a speed which doesn't produce the whine, but that's not actually a solution. At best, you can try a custom fan profile in Afterburner or another OC program, but this will probably result in a hotter card as these cards run a bit hot anyway.

What I'd suggest is trying to mod or seat the fan connector so that the PWM control is not attached (limit the number of pins to 3) so that it is only voltage-dependent. You'll probably have to remove the cooler and mod the pin connector by removing the "lip" that clips it in place so that you can plug in just 3 pins, or use a 4-3 pin adapter (2nd one would be my choice).

Turning on Vsync simply means you're card is working less due to producing a lower frame rate, thus running a bit cooler, but that won't always be the case depending on the game. This isn't a long-term solution.

The other choice would be to use an aftermarket cooler from Arctic, as Tom's has suggested.

This article focuses on the 290, but you should be able to find one (or this one may be compatible) for 280X as it's essentially a 7950.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/r9-290-accelero-xtreme-290,3671.html

 

[dholster]

Actually, you're right! I turned on Vsync and the whine dropped significantly. I absolutely recommend the 280x, by the way.

Mind tell me more about your rig? and what kinda frame rates and quality you get out of some games and BF4? I run a 3570k @4.2 and have just now saved up for a new GPU and am eagerly awaiting graphical goodness.

 

[ZeusGamer]

See I thought it was my R9 280x DCUII Top that was making this coil whine. But no, it was actually my PSU that was doing this. I tried to use my old PSU to power the card on by itself and the fans turned on, but no coil whine. I jumped my current PSU on, it made this buzzing sound. So I figured I'd RMA the product.