Could my PSU be causing coil whine/buzz in my video card?

Hey all,

I have an Antec TruePower Quattro 1000, which I've had for about two years.

Running 560 ti SLI, it never missed a beat. But, trying multiple GTX 580s (one at a time) I had bad coil whine/buzz.

Fast forward to the other day, when I bought a Sapphire 7970.

Tried a total of 3 cards and all had terrible coil buzz (despite insane overclocking results).

Basically, I'm wondering if my PSU is causing this problem? The noise is definitely coming from the video card, but it didn't do it in the test system at the store I bought it from, which had a Corsair AX1200.

I don't have access to any other PSUs that can power my system atm. If it's most likely my PSU I'll go pick up a Seasonic 1000w Platinum.

As one last thing, my PSU has 4 12 volt rails, apparently. No idea if that's relevant.

Thanks so much to anyone who can help! You may be ending a multiple year long frustration!


EDIT: Thought I should add that the buzz has eased up slightly over the past day and a half (although it's nowhere near gone), since I heard running a stress test 24/7 can help to eliminate it. I've been running the Crysis GPU benchmark.

Possible, but it does not seem likely to me.
Did you try the same settings on the same card in the test system as in your system?

So far I've used three 7970s, one had wild inductor whine, two didn't (unless I was abusing the current sensing setup, but that's another story).

Bobnova said:

Possible, but it does not seem likely to me.
Did you try the same settings on the same card in the test system as in your system?

So far I've used three 7970s, one had wild inductor whine, two didn't (unless I was abusing the current sensing setup, but that's another story).

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In the test system at the store we used Kombustor, which at the time produced a lot more noise in my system than that system (although still nowhere near as much as gaming)

The store basically said they wouldn't swap it over again because they think it's my system.

I just think it's gotta be more than coincidence that I get this with any high powered card.

Just to clarify on the noise; it's an electrical buzzing sound. It gets REALLY loud in Crysis (way louder than all the fans in the system, which are running at max), and it still buzzes but not so much in Furmark/Kombustor.

It's not a squeal like traditional coil whine.

If I can avoid going back to the store and being charged labor to test parts etc that would be great...

The PSU can cause coil whine. As to why, its anyones guess (bad design? bad components?). My motherboard is well known to have coil whine, that can change depending on power settings in the bios, as well as what PSU is being used. Certain combinations would cause the coild whine to be ever present, while other combinations would have zero coil whine. Same with PSUs. I had coil whine with my previous PSU when trying to use certain power settings. When I swapped PSUs, I could now use those power settings and have next to no coil whine at all (at least not all the time, and even the few times there is some whine, I have to be listening for it to notice).

So yes, the PSU can be a factor in coil whine from components.

Mpegger said:

The PSU can cause coil whine. As to why, its anyones guess (bad design? bad components?). My motherboard is well known to have coil whine, that can change depending on power settings in the bios, as well as what PSU is being used. Certain combinations would cause the coild whine to be ever present, while other combinations would have zero coil whine. Same with PSUs. I had coil whine with my previous PSU when trying to use certain power settings. When I swapped PSUs, I could now use those power settings and have next to no coil whine at all (at least not all the time, and even the few times there is some whine, I have to be listening for it to notice).

So yes, the PSU can be a factor in coil whine from components.

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So the PSU could cause the inductor buzzing on my video card?

Are there any bios settings for my Mobo that could affect such a thing in my video card?

I'd imagine that since my PSU is 80+ Bronze, old tech and has 4 12 volt rails it wouldn't be as stable as the 7970 probably needs...

If I can avoid buying a new PSU that would be AWESOME, because I could then put in another $200 and get a 2nd 7970. But if I need a new one to get rid of this buzzing... yeah.

I guess the final question is that if there aren't any bios settings or things I can do to stop the card buzzing, do you think switching to something like a Seasonic 1000 Platinum would solve it? Because that's what I'll get if I have to swap out my PSU.

So frustrating, I have a really silent rig apart from this damn coil buzz


EDIT: It only buzzes when it's actually rendering something. So in any form of game or game menu it's buzzing and it's directly related to the framerate. Buzzing gets slower if the framerate dips.

You could try disabling C1E if you haven't already.

I can't say either or. When I searched for my board and coil whine, I found alot of threads of complaints about the coil whine, and even one where people started to compile a listing of what PSU did not cause any coil whine at all (or caused very little). Gigabyte even went as far as to make a custom Bios that was supposed to fix the coil whine because it was such a problem, and even recommended certain PSUs because of the problem.

All I personally have found, is that the coil whine has to do with the power being supplied to the board and components. Even my video card indirectly would cause coil whine with the old PSU if I had certain power savings features on in the Bios, even though the motherboard was at fault for produce the noise, and the PSU was at fault for (imo) not producing good clean voltages when needed.

Speaking of that, the way I could eliminate the coil whine was in the Bios disabling power saving features for the CPU. EIST, C1E, C3/6/7, look for those or similar and try disabling to see if the noise goes away. Normally the coil whine is from the inductors that are supplying the CPU power, and it's what I needed to disable in order to be noise free.

After the PSU swap though, I could enable all those features, which allows my CPU to access a 2nd Turbo multi when a single core was being utilized. I couldn't do that with the old PSU because the C3/6/7 setting was disabled which controls that function.

It's possible, but like Bobnova said, unlikely.

Video cards have a lot of filtering on them.

Coil whine would be possible if there's some significant noise on the 12V line after filtering that just happens to, after some frequency transformation, be at the resonant frequency of the coils. The only way to make sure of that is to scope the 12V line.

Out of video cards that whined for me it was my 8800GT, GTX280, and some ATI card around the same time frame. Rather annoying if you ask me. I lived with it for a while but I can understand the frustration. Some people took clear nail polish (if not mistaken) and put it over the coils. Helped them not vibrate which eliminated or reduced the whining. Could check to see if there is something hidden in the forums or search the web. Can't remember where I saw it exactly.

Originally as well thought it was my PSU... actually then swap the cards no issues. Strange strange thing, though you say it happens when rendering mainly. If its an AMD there is very limited applications that use the actual GPU for 3D Rendering applications, which would almost point to the motherboard then (CPU power). For mine it was GPU, menu's in 3D Games tripped it especially when its hitting 300+FPS in the menu. Dips as frame rate drops though.

deathman20 said:

For mine it was GPU, menu's in 3D Games tripped it especially when its hitting 300+FPS in the menu. Dips as frame rate drops though.

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Yeah mine's directly related to the FPS. And it's definitely coming from the video card. It didn't do it with my 560 ti SLI setup, but I did get it with a 580.

If the mobo could cause it to happen in the video card I'll disable some of the features on it and get back to the thread...

Some benchmarks cause inductor whine on almost all GPUs. 3d03 for example causes it on anything capable of decent FPS (decent is over 1k in that situation). I suspect that rendering each frame is a noticeable spike in usage so the current draw pulses at the frame rate.

Bobnova said:

Some benchmarks cause inductor whine on almost all GPUs. 3d03 for example causes it on anything capable of decent FPS (decent is over 1k in that situation). I suspect that rendering each frame is a noticeable spike in usage so the current draw pulses at the frame rate.

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Oh this is on ANY game or bench. Even Deus Ex 1. It's worse the more power it uses.

It's worse in games than benches.

So I just switched my video card to a GTX 670... and now all hell breaks loose when I tried running ATITool.

A lot of crazy audible noise from the speakers (disappears if I disconnect the speakers), and wavy patterns on my LCD (it's still on VGA... don't ask). Since speakers are on motherboard (integrated), there must be something extremely bad going on on the voltage rails. I wish I can see what the heck is going on... but no scope with me right now . Will definitely send the power supply back if scope shots show that it's going out of ATX specs. If not... I guess I'll just find a better PSU.

3DMark11 also produces audible noise through speakers (though it doesn't make display wavy), so it happens with reasonable frame rates, too (30-60).

I know it's not too little power because GTX 670 only draws 170W max, and I used to run GTX 560 Ti SLI (those drew about that much each), and have played pretty demanding games on them.

Since it seems the general consensus is that the card just has a defect (improperly mounted inductors), and the card says on the box it's designed to be quiet, this counts as a defect and by law the store has to give me a refund or exchange (my choice). So I'll just chip in some more and get an EVGA 680, and put off silence till I go W/C. Won't be going back to the red team!

Thanks for the help everyone.

cyberfish said:

So I just switched my video card to a GTX 670... and now all hell breaks loose when I tried running ATITool.

A lot of crazy audible noise from the speakers (disappears if I disconnect the speakers), and wavy patterns on my LCD (it's still on VGA... don't ask). Since speakers are on motherboard (integrated), there must be something extremely bad going on on the voltage rails. I wish I can see what the heck is going on... but no scope with me right now . Will definitely send the power supply back if scope shots show that it's going out of ATX specs. If not... I guess I'll just find a better PSU.

3DMark11 also produces audible noise through speakers (though it doesn't make display wavy), so it happens with reasonable frame rates, too (30-60).

I know it's not too little power because GTX 670 only draws 170W max, and I used to run GTX 560 Ti SLI (those drew about that much each), and have played pretty demanding games on them.

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That sounds significantly more like a noisy GPU than a noisy PSU. Electrically noisy, that is.
If I recall the power bits on the 670 were creatively placed right next to the GPU connectors and such, it's a terrible place from an EMI standpoint. Shielded plugs help, but apparently not enough.

my 6970 had coil whine really bad before i switched psu's though i was using a 350w for my motherboard and one of those cdbay psu's for the card that little cd bay psu was a little beast handled two 4870's oc'd pretty hard but i guess it wasnt really clean power when i switched to my corsair psu it went away, then i fried the 6970 trying to put it on water ugh :'( rip

That sounds significantly more like a noisy GPU than a noisy PSU. Electrically noisy, that is.

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I have confidence in NVIDIA's EMI testing procedures .

Also, this EVGA board has a big metal plane thing that covers all the back side of the GPU, so that would more or less be like a Faraday cage.

I'll probably bring it into the lab to test it out to make sure it's not the GPU.

I tested mine in the lab, and it's all good. There is SOME visual interference when running ATITools at 2000fps, but it's barely noticeable.

And no audible noise at all no matter what I ran on it.

Definitely something to do with my PSU. I'm guessing the load on 12V is crosstalking with 3.3V or 5V, and that powers the audio buffers, hence the audible noise.

I just found a STM32F4Discovery board lying around. I think I'll make a little USB scope-like thing out of it (it's something I've always wanted to do anyways) to see the voltages.

Do it.
Post it.
We want to see it

Should drag your whole box into work.

EDIT:
Contemplating it, an IB at 4.8GHz and two OC'd GTX560Tis is pushing that PSU a bit, it only has 480w of 12v. 2x560ti is 340w before any OCing and fermis react pretty wildly to the voltage slider.
If they were OC'd and the CPU was OC'd I bet the PSU was being overdrawn. It may not have appreciated it much.

Test that sucker at the lab, if anybody gives you grief tell 'em you're getting your continuing education points for the year.