GPU Coil Whine

[Bruno_A]

Hi all,

 

It is a sad day for me. Following this post, I managed to find out the whiny buzzing sound was actually coming from my graphics card, a GTX 1080Ti with an expensive waterblock in it. I found out by putting the PSU as far away as possible, outside the case, and by putting my ear near the components. This started happening when I first installed my new Ryzen 5 3600, which was an upgrade for my Ryzen 5 1600. I'm guessing the new CPU is pushing the graphics card further than my old one could, which is why I never heard the noise before, with my old Ryzen 5 1600. Anyway, the card is actually an EVGA GTX 1080Ti FTW3 HYBRID, that I took the original cooler off (still have it, however, I do not have the backplate anymore, which means the cooler cannot be *properly* mounted anymore). Can anyone tell me if I can RMA this? I do not have a receipt, and I have no idea when it was purchased.

 

Many thanks, Bruno.

[emosun]

Coil whine isn't an actual issue with the card its a common occurrence in many graphics cards. Essentially one card can have coil whine and be perfectly reliable like any other card. The factors of coil whine simply come from specific combinations of parts and settings and different product batches.

Your BIGGER issue is actually more with how quiet your house is or how sensitive your hearing is more so than the gpu.

[bronsonj]

when playing skyrim in the item menu i get crazy coil whine otherwise it doesnt whine ( not that i can perceive) 

[Bruno_A]

5 minutes ago, emosun said:

Coil whine isn't an actual issue with the card its a common occurrence in many graphics cards. Essentially one card can have coil whine and be perfectly reliable like any other card. The factors of coil whine simply come from specific combinations of parts and settings and different product batches.

Your BIGGER issue is actually more with how quiet your house is or how sensitive your hearing is more so than the gpu.

Yeah, that is a massive issue. I mostly play with no headphones on. I have tuned my fans to be as silent as possible as well, while offering performance, and I'm extremely sensitive to noise. Despite the card being totally reliable, is it still possible to RMA it due to this inconvenience?

[Skiiwee29]

Since you no longer have some of the components, IE The backplate, I doubt you would be able to successfully achieve an RMA, and most manufactures wont RMA for coil whine as its a natural process and has zero impact on the cards performance. 

[emosun]

19 minutes ago, bruny06 said:

Despite the card being totally reliable, is it still possible to RMA it due to this inconvenience?

the card has to be at least complete so no.

also , a new card might actually not fix the issue at all. Again , coil whine can come from specific combinations of parts or whole batches of other parts.

there could be a real situation where you rebuild the entire machine from new parts and still get coil whine simply because your local power companies not perfectly at 60hz or your wall plug passes by the furnace on the way to the room or something. Coil whine is just a funny side effect one one little thing or one massive thing happening in the chain of 100 things the pc needs to run.

[Zando_]

26 minutes ago, Skiiwee29 said:

Since you no longer have some of the components, IE The backplate, I doubt you would be able to successfully achieve an RMA, and most manufactures wont RMA for coil whine as its a natural process and has zero impact on the cards performance. 

EVGA doesn't care about you removing the cooler, but yeah they do want you to send it back with the stock cooler on if you RMA. Their support people are damn good though, OP should at least ask them about it and see what they can do. 

[SpookyCitrus]

Evga's RMA service is top notch and their support is great but if the card does not have the stock cooler on it they will not accept it for an RMA, and as others have said typically coil whine isn't a sign of a bad card and will in most cases not justify a replacement. I know a lot of the time coil whine goes away on it's own or can be caused by a power feeding issue usually caused by a non-quality PSU or Motherboard. Most of the time running a program like MSI Kombustor on the stress test preset for a few hours will "break in" the card and can sometimes alleviate the coil whine. You can give that a shot if you haven't already. If it doesn't go away I think buying a headset over a brand new card would be the better option.

[Bruno_A]

4 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

EVGA doesn't care about you removing the cooler, but yeah they do want you to send it back with the stock cooler on if you RMA. Their support people are damn good though, OP should at least ask them about it and see what they can do. 

It's worth to ask. I already gave them a call, and left a message so they can call me back when it's my turn in the support queue. The whine is very annoying, but buying a graphics card now, really isn't something I wanted.

[Bruno_A]

1 minute ago, SpookyCitrus said:

Evga's RMA service is top notch and their support is great but if the card does not have the stock cooler on it they will not accept it for an RMA, and as others have said typically coil whine isn't a sign of a bad card and will in most cases not justify a replacement. I know a lot of the time coil whine goes away on it's own or can be caused by a power feeding issue usually caused by a non-quality PSU or Motherboard. Most of the time running a program like MSI Kombustor on the stress test preset for a few hours will "break in" the card and can sometimes alleviate the coil whine. You can give that a shot if you haven't already. If it doesn't go away I think buying a headset over a brand new card would be the better option.

It does have the stock cooler on, in perfect condition. It does not, however, have the backplate.

[Skiiwee29]

5 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

EVGA doesn't care about you removing the cooler, but yeah they do want you to send it back with the stock cooler on if you RMA. Their support people are damn good though, OP should at least ask them about it and see what they can do. 

well yea, I know that. But the fact that the OP is missing some of the components it came with, namely the backplate, so it cant be re-assembled as factory defined, it would likely be considered damaged and not something that would be covered under warranty.

[Bruno_A]

1 minute ago, Skiiwee29 said:

well yea, I know that. But the fact that the OP is missing some of the components it came with, namely the backplate, so it cant be re-assembled as factory defined, it would likely be considered damaged and not something that would be covered under warranty.

Seems like someone is fucked. Seems like that someone is me, as well.

[SpookyCitrus]

17 minutes ago, bruny06 said:

It does have the stock cooler on, in perfect condition. It does not, however, have the backplate.

Same thing, if it's missing any components and is returned for RMA not factory default it will be considered tampered with. That's why it is recommended to always keep the stock parts you take off of it, just in case it needs to be sent in. I and others also recommend to always keep the original box/packaging as well. You can maybe look around online to see if you can find a stock backplate for it.