Coil Whine Fixed, Solved, explained?

I thought I would post this based on my most recent experience with Coil Whine.

We all know what coil whine is, we all hate it, RMA stuff because of it, or learn to accept the high pitched buzzing, sizzling sound.

Coil whine generally comes from the GPU when your FPS is higher, usually much higher than your monitors refresh rate or when stress testing. It can also come and go during loading screens etc. V-Sync, G-Sync, Freesync will usually remove it all together.

We know that your GPU can coil whine as well as your PSU and in some cases the relationship between these two components can make one or the other coil whine. I don't know the science but from what I read it's the frequency at which the coils of the GPU and PSU vibrate in relation to one another?

This was my case and I just learned to accept it because most of the time I use V-Sync anyway so it wasn't a huge issue. My new EVGA 970 coil whined during stress testing and gaming when FPS was much higher than my 60hz monitor and with my previous GPU's, AMD and NVIDIA both, my PSU was also sometimes the culprit when doing the ear inside the case test. Usually it was the GPU's that coil whined.

Well...boxing day came and I couldn't pass up the deal on my new EVGA 1000 PS. I've been thinking about upgrading for future hardware upgrades, SLI etc and my Corsair is past warranty and has a few years under it's belt.

I just installed the new PSU and ran some Heaven, Valley, OCCT and what do I hear? Nothing...nothing at all, no coil whine...none...well, I'm lying, there was some slight whine when loading Heaven and Valley and exiting them but that's it, absolutely no coil whine during any of the tests, complete blissful silence! The minimal whine I heard during loading etc was nothing compared to what I used to hear.

I decided to write this short post because through my years of using my Corsair PSU, which was great, no issues, and learning about doing a burn in test with OCCT which can sometimes remove the coil whine from a PSU, I just stopped caring after a while and accepted that something in my system was out of whack or I just had the unlucky draw of components.

Next time you consider RMA'ing that new GPU, consider that it might be your PSU causing the issue, even if your PSU doesn't whine at all, it could be the relationship of the coils between the two components.

In any case, coil whine is not dangerous but can be extremely annoying to say the least.

Happy New Year to everyone!

What was the size of your old psu and how loaded was it?

Corsair HX750 Gold Professional Series, only one GPU ever inside and most of the components listed in my signature were there or less.

Thanks for sharing.

There are other reasons for coil whine (like why it happens on the hardware regardless of FPS etc), and frame rate can certainly change the pitch or eliminate it.

I have also heard of swapping out PSUs can fix it as well... 'dos resonant frequencies.

EarthDog said:

Thanks for sharing.

There are other reasons for coil whine (like why it happens on the hardware regardless of FPS etc), and frame rate can certainly change the pitch or eliminate it.

I have also heard of swapping out PSUs can fix it as well... 'dos resonant frequencies.

Click to expand...

Many including Corsair themselves suggested I swap out the PSU or RMA it but I just left it as is since it wasn't a danger, plus who knows if getting the exact same one would fix it and I'd have to tear apart my system at the time to try.

I'm definitely happy with this new purchase