Is this coil whine ?

[gamingmonkey]

Recently, I've been getting some high-pitched noise from my case and decided to investigate.

I honestly can't pinpoint from what component the sound is coming from, or what is going on, but it seems to be near my GPU, so I thought it might be coil whine since I never had one.

But the thing is, this happens randomly, and it can't be reproduced from gaming, where I game for more than 200+ FPS with VSync Off, as no matter if the PC is idle or at load in game the sounds out of random.

I recorded the sound with my phone (you might turn the volume up a bit to hear it), and in it you can see me touching the GPU and the sound stops, but the thing is that it isn't only when I touch the GPU that the sound stops, literally all that is needed is slight touch on my case (or even a kick on the floor ) and the sound will stop, only to return unless I move my case a little:

Anyone have any suggestions to what this is ?

EDIT: Ok, I read somewhere that running Windows Experience Index can cause coil whine, and I did just that and can confirm that my GPU does have coil whine, although it's a low quiet noise but it's still there.
But hey I still game with headphones and can't say that it will ever bother me.

 

[eidairaman1]

That doesn't sound like coil whine, coil whine is high pitch noise.


Check all of your fans for obstructions to include the psu and gpu fan, clean them too.
Check for loose screws in fans, psu, gpu.
Check for wires hitting the case sides. If you have an hdd ensure it is fully mounted in the rack, same with optical disc drives.

 

[qubit]

That's definitely not coil whine. It's one of the fan's blades touching something as it spins. That's consistent with it stopping when you touch the card. Pull it up a bit instead of pushing down and you might see it get worse, to prove it.

 

[jboydgolfer]

IMO,sounds like a bad fan, but it stopping from the smallest touch isnt indicative of that type of issue.
try removing the Backplate and running the card w/o it to see if the vibration is gone, or just wedge a peice of Paper in between the PCB and backplate to see if it goes away

 

[gamingmonkey]

Interesting, I checked to see if there might be anything blocking the fans and haven't found it. All cables are away from the fans, but there is probably something I missed and will check again.

 

[jboydgolfer]

Interesting, I checked to see if there might be anything blocking the fans and haven't found it. All cables are away from the fans, but there is probably something I missed and will check again.

Id bet a dollar that if you got a small piece of paper and wedged it between the back plate and the PCB it would stop that sound and its a pretty easy solution if that stops it since you could just put some thermal pad/tape on to stop the wiggle. There's often thermal pads on the rear of the PCB that space a backplate , maybe one fell off or became too compressed

 

[eidairaman1]

What brand of case is it?

 

[the54thvoid]

Def mechanical vibration of something as opposed to frequency oscillation.

Could also be gfx card not secured firmly in pci bracket and back of case. Sounds like fan though.

Coil whine test is unigine heaven at end of benchmark when you hit escape. (note: my current card doesn't even whine at that , not one bit, so happy).

 

[eidairaman1]

Def mechanical vibration of something as opposed to frequency oscillation.

Could also be gfx card not secured firmly in pci bracket and back of case. Sounds like fan though.

Coil whine test is unigine heaven at end of benchmark when you hit escape. (note: my current card doesn't even whine at that , not one bit, so happy).

well that's great to know it's only under benchmarking that it does, under gaming it doesnt for mine it's not that noticeable either during the bench marking anyway

 

[qubit]

Coil whine test is unigine heaven at end of benchmark when you hit escape. (note: my current card doesn't even whine at that , not one bit, so happy).

That's great performance. I've looked at your specs, but I can't tell which 1080 Ti you've got. Lemme know which it is, I want that one!

well that's great to know it's only under benchmarking that it does, under gaming it doesnt for mine it's not that noticeable either during the bench marking anyway

Both: a bit of testing has shown me that the sound of the coil whine and its intensity depends on the program that's running as well as the framerate and affects different cards in different ways.

For example, when I was comparing the Palit GTX 1080 GameRock with the Zotac GTX a while back with a CoD game, the Palit seemed to have the edge. However, changing to Unigine then favoured the Zotac. Tried a few more scenarios and found out that the noise nuisance was about the same on both cards on average, although different sounding for each program being tested.

 

[Divide Overflow]

Definitely not coil whine. Sounds like fan noise of some sort, probably the GPU fan, but possibly another fan in the case that is reacting to subtle vibrations.

 

[MrGenius]

Valley does the same thing as Heaven. But for coil whine 3DMark 03 is definitely the king in my book. The first 4 tests are basically a 5 minute long whinefest. With default settings and a modern card anyway. Makes kind of a neat soundtrack to an otherwise silent benchmark.

 

[the54thvoid]

@qubit - luck of the draw but it's an FE from MSI.

 

[Vayra86]

Do you have mechanical HDDs in there? They can resonate and vibrate in the case, more so than fans cause vibration. They can also cause other components to 'emit noise'.

 

[gamingmonkey]

Welp,

Do you have mechanical HDDs in there? They can resonate and vibrate in the case, more so than fans cause vibration. They can also cause other components to 'emit noise'.

Yeah, but it's at the optical drive bay, since I removed all HDD cages for better airflow.

 

[jboydgolfer]

@gamingmonkey Are you implementing any of these fixes that people are suggesting?

Just havent seen any mention of the original issue being resolved

 

[gamingmonkey]

@gamingmonkey Are you implementing any of these fixes that people are suggesting?

Just havent seen any mention of the original issue being resolved

I did, now I'm just waiting to see if it will appear again sine as I've said, it appears randomly and I can't reproduce it.