Question GPU screeching, artifacting and eventually a black screen ?

[XX_RedDragon_XX]

Hello All,

I have an NVIDIA reference GTX 480 GPU that is acting a bit strange. No matter the build (MB, CPU, MEM combination), the card will power on with a very loud high pitch tone (coil whine) which ascends in pitch for approximately 2 - 5 seconds. This tone is loud enough to be easily heard outside the room. During those few seconds the GPU will output a display which is artifacting significantly. Eventually the tone reaches its peak and suddenly stops, causing the screen to either become one solid color or entirely black.

Minus the screeching noise, the display behavior reminds me of what happens when you pass the stable limit of your card when overclocking. This makes me think the card could be saved and that the previous owner flashed an unstable configuration to the card's VBIOS.

Some details of the case:

• GPU-Z detects the card and receives telemetry. The card behaves normally to an equivalent card at idle.
• Card threw several code 43 errors on Windows 10, though once it was in the primary PCIE slot, this disappeared.
• GPU-Z can read the VBIOS, I was able to save it once the code 43 errors stopped. NVIDIA NVFlash 5.128.0.1 can also save the VBIOS (newer versions cause a blue screen).
• NVFlash threw a invalid offset error when I attempted to flash the latest NVIDIA VBIOS for this card which I downloaded from TechPowerUp. Maybe this indicates that someone may have installed a modified VBIOS previously?

So now I'm on the forum that's helped me many times asking a few questions:

1. What component on the board could cause this screetching ? How does this component usually fail? Why does the tone (coil whine) which it emmits ascend in pitch? How would a failure of this component affect the GPU?
2. Any additional ideas of how to help stabalize the card or what could be going wrong?