Question Used Rx 5700 XT annoying high frequency noise

[Danny4214]

I got a "PowerColor Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB GDDR6" used.
The card works perfectly fine, gaming is super smooth and it performs well according Passmark and HWMonitor.

passmark: 19100
with max temps of:
memory: 78°
hot spot: 102°
VDDC VR: 47°
Global: 83°

Its quite noisy at max usage, which is ok.
But there is some kind of very high frequency noise (overtone ?) the fans produce, swinging around 2000Hz. Its almost unbearable.
If i stop the fans the high frequency noise dissappear so it might not be a issue with the heatpipes.

Changing the little switch to Silent bios on the 5700 xt does not make any difference aswell.
Using air compressor to remove all the dust didnt make a differance aswell.

Is it card damaged ?
Do any of you got a similar issue ? Whats the issue ?
Is it fixable ?

 

[Dmcgee216]

Could it be coil whine?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP73edpQwgc


skip to like 1:45.

 

[Danny4214]

@Dmcgee216 Im actually not sure, as the tone im hearing does not sound very similar to the one in the video.
As soon as the fans start the noise start and is more steady tone, it might get slightly louder when the fans moving faster.

I checked other videos now,

View: https://youtu.be/GUzCXF3oMD0?t=299
here at rx 5700 stock at 4:59 , this is the closest to mine i found and he tags it as coil whine (or rx 590).
Thanks for helping me identify the problem.

Are the tips in the video the best solution for my issue ? (adjusting voltage and fps limit)
I have a be quiet power 11 500w psu and 2 cables going from the psu to my card. (1 cable i had to rebuy )

 

[Avro Arrow]

@Dmcgee216 Im actually not sure, as the tone im hearing does not sound very similar to the one in the video.
As soon as the fans start the noise start and is more steady tone, it might get slightly louder when the fans moving faster.

It might be a fan bearing but yeah, that's usually coil whine.

I checked other videos now,

View: https://youtu.be/GUzCXF3oMD0?t=299
here at rx 5700 stock at 4:59 , this is the closest to mine i found and he tags it as coil whine (or rx 590).
Thanks for helping me identify the problem.

Are the tips in the video the best solution for my issue ? (adjusting voltage and fps limit)
I have a be quiet power 11 500w psu and 2 cables going from the psu to my card. (1 cable i had to rebuy )

There really isn't a reliable way to solve it because some things work sometimes but don't work other times. I had some coil whine in my second HD 4870 and one of my R9 Furies had coil whine but it went away on its own. To this day, I still don't know why it happens. Some cards have coil whine, some don't and it makes no difference what make or model of card it is.

If the card were new, you'd be able to RMA it as they do accept returns for unacceptable levels of coil whine but since you bought it used and it's probably more than three years old, I don't know...

Try gaming with headphones or earbuds, I know it sounds absurd but, depending on how bad it is, they can drown out coil whine and if you can't hear it, it can't annoy you.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Actually, I just remembered something...

Coil whine is usually caused by excessive frame rates (like cut scenes with nothing but text to read) and can sometimes be mitigated by using VSync because VSync prevents frame rates from going past your monitor's maximum refresh rate (usually 60Hz-144Hz).

That can keep the frame rate below where coil whine can occur (of course, it depends on the card).

 

[Danny4214]

@Avro Arrow I am using free sync and have limited normally all games at 144hz. Is there a specific amd setting where i can setup vsync ?
Im also not real fan of playing with headsets as my ears hurt on prolonged use, therefor i invested a lot in quite gear on this build (psu, fans, cooler...)

 

[Avro Arrow]

@Avro Arrow I am using free sync and have limited normally all games at 144hz. Is there a specific amd setting where i can setup vsync ?

Yes, there is a frame limiter in the Radeon Control Panel. The feature is called Frame Rate Target Control (aka FRTC). You can set it to go no higher and no lower than 144FPS.

However, you can set VSync in the games themselves. The thing is that in a non-cinematic cut-scene, the FPS can go stratospheric (500+) because the card isn't doing anything but rendering the same image over and over (which requires almost no effort on the card's part). That is the most common cause of coil whine. If you set FRTC to hold at 144FPS, it may prevent coil whine from ever occurring.

Of course, I don't expect that an RX 5700 XT will always be capable of 144FPS so maybe just set 144FPS as the maximum allowable. After all, if your monitor can't display it, the effort involved in rendering it is literally a waste of electricity so it would probably be good practice to do it anyway. My display is 4K60Hz and I have FRTC set to allow no more than 60FPS because there's no point to it. It will cause your card to dip to 140FPS from time to time (it sometimes causes my 6800 XT to dip to 58FPS at 1440p ultra or higher) but it's not the least bit noticeable.

Im also not real fan of playing with headsets as my ears hurt on prolonged use, therefor i invested a lot in quite gear on this build (psu, fans, cooler...)

I wasn't being completely serious about that. I didn't really expect that you would (I know that I sure as hell wouldn't!).

It was more of an "If all else fails and it's still driving you nuts..." kind of solution.

 

[Deleted member 2947362]

High frequency will cause coil whine it's not to worry about nothing you can do about it unless you want to hunt down the little chirping offender and try replacing it.

It will not effect anything other than your patience, you will just get used to it in the end.

I had a graphics card that done it while gaming or if i scrolled up or down on a web page.

used to annoy the ____ out me but i just got used to it in the end.

 

[Danny4214]

The seller would be as kind and take it back, so i would have lost only small amount of money for shipping fees...

What would be the chances my second 5700XT does have coil whine aswell ? For me this card is the best card price/performance + worth improvement over my rx 580 (amd free sync) bought used, so id like to stick with it.

My build:
Be Quiet Pure Power 11 500W
Ryzen 5 7600
Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE
32gb Corsair Vengeance DDR5 32GB 5600 MHZ
Tuf Gaming b650 - plus
Samsung 980 pro ssd 2tb M.2, Crucial P3 Plus 1TB M.2, 250gb samsung ssd

RX 5700XT

 

[Deleted member 2947362]

Do a search for brands that are known to have coil whine and don't buy that brand lol
It depends if there where loads out there that have coil whine then loads of chance you getting another one
if there aren't many out there then yup you guessed it you wont have much chance of getting a second one with coil wine.

so I cant really answer that question for you.

 

[Avro Arrow]

The seller would be as kind and take it back, so i would have lost only small amount of money for shipping fees...

Just out of curiosity, what did you pay for it?

What would be the chances my second 5700XT does have coil whine aswell ? For me this card is the best card price/performance + worth improvement over my rx 580 (amd free sync) bought used, so id like to stick with it.

There's literally no way of knowing. I have twin Sapphire Radeon R9 Fury Nitro+ OC cards that are the same in every way. One had coil whine for about three months and the other one never did. Coil whine is one of the most maddening things about video cards because it's impossible to predict if your card will have it or not, it's impossible to predict just how badly it'll be if your card does have it and it's impossible to predict if it will just go away on its own or if it's permanent.

If you're able to make the card that you have stop whining through the use of the Radeon drivers, I would stick with what you have because the next card might be even worse. Never forget that the RX 5700 XT was a darling of the mining community and that's probably what you're buying if the seller has many of them. If you got it for a great price, I would just be glad that it works if I were you.

 

[Danny4214]

@Avro Arrow i paid for it 165€ (shipping included).
I just noticed my card is overperforming a lot aswell, passmark lists "16941" for it and mine gets crazy values of ~ "19500".

I have a little switch on the side for "oc" and "silent mode", which apperantly does not do anything. Maybe its broken and stuck at oc ?
I also tried to downclock it with adrenaline, at around -35% the whining is still present but not as annoying hell it currently is. Im getting headache playing an hour a high load game.

 

[Deleted member 2947362]

Thing is I couldn't determine if it was the graphic's card was making the PSU whine or if it was just the graphics card whining or both? it was almost as if it was coming from the PSU 1 min then the graphics card the next lol

I was poking my head around the case like a chicken pecking at corn on the ground lol

 

[Danny4214]

@Plumet that would not so cool, returning this card and having coil whine on the second aswell oO. Im not sure aswell where the sound comes, those high frequency noises are very hard to locate.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Do a search for brands that are known to have coil whine and don't buy that brand lol

That won't work because no brand produces more or fewer whiny cards than any other. Coil whine is often impossible to test for because it rarely occurs right away. Some cards take months to develop it.

It doesn't matter if the card is an ASRock, ASUS, Biostar, Club3D, Gainward, GALAX, Gigabyte, Matrox, MSi, Palit, PNY, Powercolor, Sapphire, Sparkle, XFX or Zotac. Any of their cards can become whiny and, as you can tell by the brands that I listed, it doesn't matter if the card is an Arc, GeForce or Radeon. It can happen to any of them.

If you were to ever solve this mystery about coil whine, you would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice....

It's been over 20 years though and coil whine is still a thing.

 

[Deleted member 2947362]

@Plumet that would not so cool, returning this card and having coil whine on the second aswell oO. Im not sure aswell where the sound comes, those high frequency noises are very hard to locate.

I could of pulled everything out of the case and built it on a table keeping the PSU as far away from the motherboard as poss but that just seemed like to much hassle and pointless because I was stuck with the card anyway lol

The shop has the right not to take the card back because it's not actually a fault or faulty, it's just bloody annoying.

some\any decent shops will exchange just for good customer relations though.

 

[Avro Arrow]

@Avro Arrow i paid for it 165€ (shipping included).
I just noticed my card is overperforming a lot aswell, passmark lists "16941" for it and mine gets crazy values of ~ "19500".

I have a little switch on the side for "oc" and "silent mode", which apperantly does not do anything. Maybe its broken and stuck at oc ?
I also tried to downclock it with adrenaline, at around -35% the whining is still present but not as annoying hell it currently is. Im getting headache playing an hour a high load game.

Well, you can rest assured that overclocking doesn't cause or remove coil whine. If you limit the frame rate in the Adrenalin Control Panel (ALT+R and select gaming) to 144FPS, it should stop coil whine from occurring in games.

Of course, there's also the possibility that it's not coil whine and that my secondary suspicion that one of the fan bearings is failing is what's actually going on. You did say that the sound got louder when the fans spun faster and that's not consistent with coil whine which isn't affected by the fans at all and a failing fan bearing does make a bit of a racket:

 

[Deleted member 2947362]

Well, you can rest assured that overclocking doesn't cause or remove coil whine. If you limit the frame rate in the Adrenalin Control Panel (ALT+R and select gaming) to 144FPS, it should stop coil whine from occurring in games.

Of course, there's also the possibility that it's not coil whine and that my secondary suspicion that one of the fan bearings is failing is what's actually going on. You did say that the sound got louder when the fans spun faster and that's not consistent with coil whine which isn't affected by the fans at all and a failing fan bearing does make a bit of a racket:

yeah the card is from 2019 and if has had heavy gaming or crypro mining use it could be the fan bearing rumbling

I have that on my one of the fans with my old asus strix GTX 980

 

[Avro Arrow]

I could of pulled everything out of the case and built it on a table keeping the PSU as far away from the motherboard as poss but that just seemed like to much hassle and pointless because I was stuck with the card anyway lol

The shop has the right not to take the card back because it's not actually a fault or faulty, it's just bloody annoying.

some\any decent shops will exchange just for good customer relations though.

Absolutely you're right. The problem is that Danny would have to pay shipping again and, as you say, the next card could have the exact same problem or, as I said, a problem that's a lot worse than just coil whine (like a VRAM error).

After all, there's no question in my mind that Danny's buying former mining cards, it's an RX 5700 XT for christ's sake, one of the two darlings of the mining community (the other being the RTX 3060)!

At the end of the day, Danny got a working RX 5700 XT for 165€ including shipping. Even if he got it from AliExpress, the card seems legit and other than some coil whine, the card just works.

If it were me, I'd just be thankful that coil whine was the only problem it had. Before I found that Holy Grail Powercolor RX 6500 XT for $161CAD brand-new, I tried my luck with AliExpress and ordered some strange JXZ Jisoonzer-branded RX 580 2048SP for $70CAD:

^^^ REMEMBER KIDS, BAD QUALITY IS STILL QUALITY!!! ^^^

I would've been very happy with coil whine because, instead, this thing will send a signal to the monitor about 5-10% of the time and the other 90-95% of the time, it won't. I was lucky in that I did get a full refund but I knew that this was a mining card. I didn't care though because it was for my mother's HTPC and she doesn't use 3D acceleration for anything.

Hell, she was quite happily using a passively-cooled XFX Radeon HD 6450 ONE Edition 1GB video card but then she got a 4K OLED TV and that card could only do 1080p at most. So, now she has an RX 6500 XT, a card with a PCIe v4.0 x4 interface in a PCIe v2.0 motherboard. I cringe to think what would happen if she actually tried to game with it. Fortunately, even an IGP can do 2D video and web-browsing so it was no big deal.

In any case, Danny ended up far better off than I did.

 

[Avro Arrow]

yeah the card is from 2019 and if has had heavy gaming or crypro mining use it could be the fan bearing rumbling

BINGO! Along with the RTX 3060, the RX 5700 XT was one of the two best cards for mining Ethereum in 2020-2022. This was definitely a mining card.

I have that on my one of the fans with my old asus strix GTX 980

You can buy replacement fans for cheap on eBay:
Replacement Video Card Fans

I can only gain access to ebay.ca when I'm at work. All other ebay sites are blocked, but you get the idea.

 

[Danny4214]

Well, you can rest assured that overclocking doesn't cause or remove coil whine. If you limit the frame rate in the Adrenalin Control Panel (ALT+R and select gaming) to 144FPS, it should stop coil whine from occurring in games.

Of course, there's also the possibility that it's not coil whine and that my secondary suspicion that one of the fan bearings is failing is what's actually going on. You did say that the sound got louder when the fans spun faster and that's not consistent with coil whine which isn't affected by the fans at all and a failing fan bearing does make a bit of a racket:

It does not sound like this. It sounds more like "coil whining" from the video i have sent but with a swinging pitch from like 1800hz to 2000hz to 1800hz in short amount of time... According research another thing could be a leaked capacitor but i dont think thats the case here.

There are a few RX 5700 XT sold at around this price used, i think its quite normal price, most cards are ~10-20€ more. But its true the cheap price probably comes from oversaturated mining cards. The seller assured me the card was not used for mining, but you will never know when buying used stuff.

The seller has a second 5700 XT, Saphire pulse and was so kind to offer me a replacement. I think i was pretty lucky with the person, hes very friendly and nice.

 

[Avro Arrow]

It does not sound like this. It sounds more like "coil whining" from the video i have sent but with a swinging pitch from like 1800hz to 2000hz to 1800hz in short amount of time... According research another thing could be a leaked capacitor but i dont think thats the case here.

Ok, so that must be it then. It never hurts to make sure.

There are a few RX 5700 XT sold at around this price used, i think its quite normal price, most cards are ~10-20€ more. But its true the cheap price probably comes from oversaturated mining cards. The seller assured me the card was not used for mining, but you will never know when buying used stuff.

You know what's funny? I would be far more likely to buy a card from a seller who says that a card was used for mining than one who says that it wasn't. The reason is that I know the seller who says that the card was used for mining isn't a liar.

The seller has a second 5700 XT, Saphire pulse and was so kind to offer me a replacement. I think i was pretty lucky with the person, hes very friendly and nice.

He may be friendly and he may seem nice but don't forget that he did sell you a card with coil whine. That in of itself isn't necessarily bad but the fact that he didn't tell you about it beforehand tells me that he's a bit slimy. If I was selling a card that had coil whine, I would be up front and honest about it but he wasn't. Don't be so ready to trust people just because they seem nice. Remember that even psychopaths can behave like the nicest people in the world if they have something to gain from it.

I'm curious though, did setting the Radeon frame-limiter fix the problem?

 

[Danny4214]

@Avro Arrow The frame limiter did help and did not. If the card reaches "high load" at 144hz then the coil whine is still there at its worst.
For example in PUBG the coil whine was still absurdly annoying, while in overwatch 2 it was a lot better, almost fine.
In that case of PUBG the only thing working was to reduce the performance (downclock) for about -35% - -50%, but the whining was still there just not as loud.

Im not sure if he even noticed the coil whine, it seems like this problem does not occur in each setup (there seem to be more factors to it, psu, mainboard, cable...), maybe he wasnt that sensitive or didnt noticed it because of no quiet gear or never reached very high loads. I dont know.

But its true i dont trust him 100% aswell as he sells a lot of cards, he might get them used cheaper and resells them with some small surcharge and lies about few things to get them away easier, or even stolen goods or what ever.
Usually i did good experience buying used stuff from private persons, bought already ~20-30 different things over years and everything was working perfectly fine until now, but its always a risk.

Lets see if he even sends the second card and if that one is fine, will report if is has coil whine aswell and there might could ba another issue with my setup.

 

[Avro Arrow]

@Avro Arrow The frame limiter did help and did not. If the card reaches "high load" at 144hz then the coil whine is still there at its worst.
For example in PUBG the coil whine was still absurdly annoying, while in overwatch 2 it was a lot better, almost fine.

Im not sure if he even noticed the coil whine, it seems like this problem does not occur in each setup (there seem to be more factors to it, psu, mainboard, cable...), maybe he wasnt that sensitive or didnt noticed it because of no quiet gear or never reached very high loads. I dont know.

Yeah, that's the most annoying thing about it. So much about it is completely unpredictable so every fix for it is nothing more than a shot in the dark.

But its true i dont trust him 100% aswell as he sells a lot of cards, he might get them used cheaper and resells them with some small surcharge and lies about few things to get them away easier, or even stolen goods or what ever.

I don't know if he would be selling stolen goods but there's no question that if has a lot of RX 5700 XT cards, they're ex-mining cards because that's where most of them went.

Usually i did good experience buying used stuff from private persons, bought already ~20-30 different things over years and everything was working perfectly fine until now, but its always a risk.

Well Danny, you're smart. It's true that buying second-hand stuff is always better in the long-run and most people are good and honest people. Sure, something went wrong this time, but when you look back at the big picture, it was still the right path to choose.

Lets see if he even sends the second card and if that one is fine, will report if is has coil whine aswell and there might could ba another issue with my setup.

I would be truly shocked if you experienced coil whine a second time. Also keep in mind that the brand of a card doesn't matter because ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSi, Powercolor, Sapphire and XFX all perform about the same as long as they're all RX 5700 XT.

I hope that this works out for you. You seem like an intelligent guy and you do things the right way. There's nothing wrong with that!

 

[Danny4214]

@Avro Arrow Thank you for your kind words and friendly and helpful attitute, its rarely seen these days online.

Now i have finally recieved the new card.
Well, he asked me if he can send a "xfx thicc 2 5700 xt" instead of the mentioned sapphire. I agreed but in the end he sent a "XFX RX 5700 DD Ultra" (non XT) ...
Overall it wouldnt have been that worse as it reaches still ~16500 passmark instead of ~19000 from 5700XT powercolor and a lot lower temps (~ -10-20°c) and noise (coil whine is gone aswell).

Even it does look pretty new i have some annoying issues. One of the fans stops spinning and i have to use pressure on it to make contact and spin again (happens often on high rpm) and i get black screens while running passmark (~1 passmark was sucessful from 7 attempts). I have not tested it for work or games, maybe its fine there though.
Maybe i broke something with running DDU shortly before installing xfx 5700 to get rid of 5700 XT drivers.

I think i was pretty unlucky this time. Probably the card gots damaged while transport, or he sent me damaged card i dont know. Whatever, im trying to fix the fan tomorrow maybe it helps with the black screens aswell.


Edit: I tried amd adrenaline stresstest, i noticed max consumption of Rx 5700 is only around 100 watt. Maybe there is an issue with pciE cables or psu.

Edit2: i calculated the max wattage of my build, it should be fine: ~333W
PURE POWER 11: continuous 500W, peak 550W
Ryzen 5 7600: 88W, RX 5700: 180W, Asus Tuf Gaming b650 - plus: ~10W, 5 fans ~15W, Corsair Vengeance DDR5 32GB 5600 MHZ ~20W, M.2 ~15W, SSD ~5W.