[SOLVED] Sapphire RX 590 Nitro+ 8GB coilwhines/makes a buzzing noise

[Biscuite]

Hello everyone!

Recently I bought the RX 590 with a brand new PSU from Seasonic and I keep hearing this coil whine/buzzing noise coming from the GPU while i'm playing games.
The noise is very audible even when I limit the fps to 60.

My specs:
Ryzen 3 2200g
Asrock A320M-DGS BIOS version: 6.00
Corsair 16GB 3000MHZ CL16
Sapphire RX 590 Nitro+ 8GB
Seasonic Focus GX 650W 80+ GOLD

Last month I had an XFX RX 580 8GB (which i returned) with a cheapo chinese PSU and the same kind of noise was happening too.
Maybe the motherboard is causing the GPU to coilwhine?

 

[clutchc]

I have the identical but less expensive Pulse model, and have no wining noise at all. And it is powered by a less expensive Rosewill PSU. So, I'd have to say it is either a bad card or the noise is coming from somewhere else.

 

[Biscuite]

I have the identical but less expensive Pulse model, and have no wining noise at all. And it is powered by a less expensive Rosewill PSU. So, I'd have to say it is either a bad card or the noise is coming from somewhere else.

So I guess the only solution would be to return the card or move the PC further away from me.
Damn, I thought having a better PSU might solve this issue.

 

[clutchc]

Try turning on Vsync and see if it goes away or gets far less noticeable. Might be able to tell if it is gfx card or PSU.

 

[Biscuite]

Try turning on Vsync and see if it goes away or gets far less noticeable. Might be able to tell if it is gfx card or PSU.

I enabled Vsync in a few games like ETS2, Fallout 4, Devil May Cry 5 and GTA 5 but the noise stays at the same level/volume on all those games.
I also checked from where is the noise coming from and it's always coming from the GPU near the Sapphire logo.
The good part is that when I'm using headphones the noise can't be heard anymore.

 

[clutchc]

Then it would appear you have another card with a bad inductor coil. Hard to believe it happened on two cards.
There's a few fixes I'm read about online, but I have never tried any of them. If it is in fact coil whine, it may even go away on its own or lessen as the card gets used more.

 

[Biscuite]

Then it would appear you have another card with a bad inductor coil. Hard to believe it happened on two cards.
There's a few fixes I'm read about online, but I have never tried any of them. If it is in fact coil whine, it may even go away on its own or lessen as the card gets used more.

What fixes did you find online? I hope is not one of those fixes where you have to put hot glue or anything like that on top of the coil.
Anyway, there might be a bad batch of GPUs or I'm just unlucky with those graphics cards.
Honestly, I don't really want to return/refund the card because chances are that I might receive another one that coil whines, and in my opinion I don't think it's worth it to keep searching and searching for the "perfect-no-coil-whine" GPU. Again, this is my opinion but you can correct me if i'm wrong or anything like that.
And..well..in the end I guess I'm just going to keep the card and accept it the way it is and hopefully the noise will go away with time..if not..then that's it. The PC is going to stay in a isolated space further away from me.

I really appreciate your answers and the time you took trying to help me with this very common and annoying issue. Thank you for all the help and advice.
If you have more advice or information, please feel free to post them here in the thread and I will check it out. And again, thank you for everything!

--If this thread will become inactive is it possible for a MOD to close it down? I don't see any option to close it myself and I'm new to the site, sorry.--

EDIT: I found out that we can actually use private message, so..uh..guess you could contact me there if you got any additional information about the "crying" graphics card.

 

[clutchc]

As to shutting down the thread, just click on the trophy (best answer) even if there isn't one. Otherwise the thread will stay open. But you may want to wait a while and see if any others come up with a solution.

If there's any truth to that theory that coil whine might lessen or go away after usage, you might try running a GPU-stress program overnite. Maybe Furmark if you have a well ventilated case and temps look fine after a test run.

Luckily (or unluckily) my hearing isn't good enough to detect most coil whine issues. So I guess it's possible my card might actually have it too, but I just can't hear it.

 

[Exploding PSU]

Mind if I chime in?
I had this coil whine issue before, but it was on a Vega 56 Pulse (also by Sapphire, yeah I know it's an entirely different GPU but bear with me). I noticed it after I replaced the PSU to a Seasonic 650W one (the old 500W $30 PSU I had couldn't even power the card on full load).
The coil whine would appear when I play 'demanding' games (Forza 7 was the most demanding one I had)., and when benchmarking using 3Dmark. Furmark would make the noise so loud I didn't dare running it on my system. I tried many things (using power-save mode, turbo mode, driver updates, reseating the card, blowing at it (not a tech guy so what do I know)) and the noise was still there. I thought of returning the card, but I'm just too lazy to do it so I was like "ah to heck with it". I don't play games very often anyway.

After owning it for some time, the noise.... disappeared. I did nothing. It went away by itself. I rarely push the card, only a few 3Dmark and whatnot (100 hours at this point). The card is completely silent now (bar the fans, obviously). Even an hour of furmark, and only the fans are audible (and it used to whine by just starting up furmark). So yeah, coil whine can disappear, at least in my experience.

And boy I'm glad it disappeared. I'm very sensitive to noise. Heck, I replaced my stock cooler not because it was loud or it couldn't cool well, but because it made this specific noise that I'm uncomfortable with. Weird reason to replace cooler, but oh well.

What I'm saying is, all is not lost.. Just give it some time hmm..

 

[tennis2]

Coil whine in GPUs is fairly common. Not sure if that's covered under warranty, but it wouldn't hurt to ask.

Consequently I've also seen a fair number of reports of coil whine from Seasonic PSUs

 

[Biscuite]

@clutchc I might try doing that GPU stress test to see If it helps with the noise, but the problem is that I have only 2 case fans(one in the back for exhaust and one in front for intake) which I doubt is enough for cooling the system during the test. And I also have a custom fan curve for the GPU that might keep the temps stable and safe.

@exploding_psu That really sounds like a miracle to be honest. I'm glad that you don't have that coil whine anymore, but I'm curious to know how long it took for the whine to completely disappear.
Thank you for sharing your experience with this issue, I really enjoyed reading your post, it gave me some hope.

@tennis2 My PSU came with a 'psu tester'(small plastic cap which you connect to the 24pin cable) I used it to see if the power supply works fine. And of course, everything was working fine, the only thing that I could hear was the fan spinning, there was no coil whine or other strange sounds. And like I said in post #5 the noise is coming from the GPU near the Sapphire logo. I literally had my ear very close to the GPU. I'm no expert with PSUs or PCs in general, so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Sorry if my text sounds rude, I didn't mean to offend you in any way. I appreciate your answer.

 

[clutchc]

You can always leave the side panel off during Furmark stress testing if you're concerned that the case will make the card get too hot. If your case has a vented top panel, chances are the front and rear fans will be enough anyway. Warm air rises.

 

[Biscuite]

You can always leave the side panel off during Furmark stress testing if you're concerned that the case will make the card get too hot. If your case has a vented top panel, chances are the front and rear fans will be enough anyway. Warm air rises.

I started Furmark and somehow the GPU doesn't seem to coil whine that much anymore, is barely audible. The usage was at 100% and I had around 80 FPS on 1080p resolution with no anti-aliasing. If I increase the anti-aliasing to 8X MSAA, the fps is around 14/17 and noise stays at the same level 'barely audible' which is very acceptable for me.

Now here comes the sad news...when I start running games the old and noisy coil whine comes back immediately.
So..I guess there's no point in running Furmark anymore during the night, if the card doesn't even coil whine likes it does in games.
I'm very confused.

 

[clutchc]

Just because the coil whine is less audible during Furmark doesn't mean the idea won't work... necessarily. The frequency bandwidth of the whine during Furmark may have just changed to be mostly out of your hearing range. Coil whine is always present wherever there are electrical components operating at high frequencies; usually choke coils in the case of our PCs. Most of the time it is out of human hearing range (roughly 20-20K Hz).

Or, just play the game(s) at highest settings w/your headphones. Either way, maybe (as exploding_psu says) the whine will gradually decrease for you as it did for him.

 

[Biscuite]

Well then, thanks to everyone who answered this thread.
In the end I'm going to use the card the way it is and hopefully it might get less audible with time.