Coil Whine

[Tenma White]

I have a Seasonic 650PX and apparently it has coil whine its not loud but its not quiet either. 
Can a PSU with coil whine damage PC components?

[Xtune]

No

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, Tenma White said:

I have a Seasonic 650PX and apparently it has coil whine its not loud but its not quiet either. 
Can a PSU with coil whine damage PC components?

No.

 

It's a sound.  Sound waves don't damage components.

 

 

[Tenma White]

Because I just bought a Seasonic 650PX online and it has coil whine that sometimes disappears and comes back the next day and disappears again. I had this PSU for almost a month now I can RMA it but It will literally take a month. I do have a spare Seasonic S12ii 520W to use but if coil whine does not harm components then I probably wont RMA it.

[Boomwebsearch]

4 hours ago, Tenma White said:

Because I just bought a Seasonic 650PX online and it has coil whine that sometimes disappears and comes back the next day and disappears again. I had this PSU for almost a month now I can RMA it but It will literally take a month. I do have a spare Seasonic S12ii 520W to use but if coil whine does not harm components then I probably wont RMA it.

I understand your situation, I agree that it would be kind of a hassle to need to replace a power supply with a new unit. In most cases of power supply noise that I have seen, it is usually caused from bad fan bearings which are either worn out or defective and will need to be replaced sooner or later. It would be hard to tell if it is coming from the fan or the coils within the PSU, although both signs usually indicate that the unit will fail soon. When a power supply fails, it can take components with it, therefore my suggestion for you would be to RMA the unit and not potentially risk a failure later down the road.

 

Hope that this information was helpful,

        @Boomwebsearch

[seon123]

2 minutes ago, Boomwebsearch said:

I understand your situation, I agree that it would be kind of a hassle to need to replace a power supply with a new unit. In most cases of power supply noise that I have seen, it is usually caused from bad fan bearings which are either worn out or defective and will need to be replaced sooner or later. It would be hard to tell if it is coming from the fan or the coils within the PSU, although both signs usually indicate that the unit will fail soon. When a power supply fails, it can take components with it, therefore my suggestion for you would be to RMA the unit and not potentially risk a failure later down the road.

 

Hope that this information was helpful,

        @Boomwebsearch

Coil whine is different from bearing noise. As mentioned a billion times by now (rounded up), coil whine is harmless, and is not an indication of a PSU that will fail soon.

[Boomwebsearch]

1 minute ago, seon123 said:

coil whine is harmless, and is not an indication of a PSU that will fail soon.

A good quality power supply should present minimal if at all even noticeable sound (not including the fan). Most users find coil whine annoying since the high frequency-based noise, and therefore many reputable PSU manufacturers have dedicated design which will cut down on it. From personal experience, I noticed that power supplies tend to have worse coil whine with more years of operation, and it is not preferable to notice it relatively close to the point that you buy the PSU. Some models (even brand new and never used) suffer from coil wine as due to design, better to play it safe and discuss the problem with the manufacturer at least. 

 

Hope that this information was helpful,

        @Boomwebsearch

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Boomwebsearch said:

A good quality power supply should present minimal if at all even noticeable sound (not including the fan). Most users find coil whine annoying since the high frequency-based noise, and therefore many reputable PSU manufacturers have dedicated design which will cut down on it. From personal experience, I noticed that power supplies tend to have worse coil whine with more years of operation, and it is not preferable to notice it relatively close to the point that you buy the PSU. Some models (even brand new and never used) suffer from coil wine as due to design, better to play it safe and discuss the problem with the manufacturer at least. 

 

Hope that this information was helpful,

        @Boomwebsearch

He has a Seasonic Prime and you're essentially saying it's not a good quality and that Seasonic is not reputable because they couldn't design a PSU without coil whine.  

 

When's the last time you bought a new PSU?

 

Higher efficiency requirements (vampire power, 2% load efficiency requirements, Gold and up, etc.) often use lower switching frequencies that can bring noises down to audible levels.  THAT is why it's more common now then ever before.

 

 

[Boomwebsearch]

9 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

He has a Seasonic Prime and you're essentially saying it's not a good quality and that Seasonic is not reputable because they couldn't design a PSU without coil whine.  

 

9 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

THAT is why it's more common now then ever before.

 

5 hours ago, Boomwebsearch said:

many reputable PSU manufacturers have dedicated design which will cut down on it

Sorry if there was any misunderstanding here, although I would like to make it clear that I am not stating that Seasonic is not considered reputable. The point that I was trying to make was that since coil whine is such an occurring problem and is becoming increasingly common, some PSU makers are making designs which will limit the amount of coil whine which you may hear. Not every power supply ever designed includes this feature/design and that in no way, shape, or form makes the manufacturers of those power supplies considered unrepeatable. Many good power supplies from good manufacturers have coil whine and that is completely acceptable. 

 

Okay, taking this information and going back to the relevance to the original poster's situation, it is true that users find that coil whine affects their computing experience (for acoustics reasons) and would not prefer it, therefore I was trying to suggest to the original poster that if the coil whine becomes an important factor in why you personally would choose one power supply over the other, then you may want to look for specific models of power supplies which were designed in mind for having reduced coil whine such as those within the Corsair RM series of power supplies. I will include a link to Corsair's page which may be able to provide you with further information on this topic.

 

link to the aforementioned web-page:   https://www.corsair.com/ww/ru/blog/coil-whine

 

Hope that this was able to clear any confusion or misunderstanding,

        @Boomwebsearch

[LukeSavenije]

3 minutes ago, Boomwebsearch said:

 https://www.corsair.com/ww/ru/blog/coil-whine

you do have balls, sending a link to an article that Jon wrote himself...

[Boomwebsearch]

3 minutes ago, LukeSavenije said:

13 minutes ago, Boomwebsearch said:

 https://www.corsair.com/ww/ru/blog/coil-whine

you do have balls, sending a link to an article that Jon wrote himself...

 

No, I did not realize that this article was written by @jonnyGURU, although I do not think that it would be of any relevance/significance since posts I make are never designed to go against an individual member, only for the better understanding of the public.  

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Boomwebsearch said:

link to the aforementioned web-page:   https://www.corsair.com/ww/ru/blog/coil-whine

 

2 hours ago, LukeSavenije said:

you do have balls, sending a link to an article that Jon wrote himself...

LOL!

 

Everyone can make attempts to "dampen" coil whine, as I state in the article I wrote many moons ago... but the core reason why there's coil whine in the first place is unavoidable.

[Tenma White]

Reading all of the replies I understood 2 opposite things.
Coil whine happens in all of devices and is just noisy and nothing else, it does not harm other components and it doesn't mean the power supply is failing/bad.
or
It is a sign that the power supply is bad and failing potentially damaging other components.

I just found out that my old Seasonic S12ii 520W also has coil whine and it served me for almost 3 years(It still works now and is in my old PC) so I'm leaning towards that Coil whine is just there and does no harm except for being annoying. It does somehow concern me that the 650PX that I bought has coil whine even though since it is new and the noise(again it's not loud but quiet either. in the morning I can barely hear it but at night I can clearly hear it) sometimes appears and just disappears randomly. But again if it is actually normal and does not harm other components and it's not a sign that my PSU is bad/failing I'll be keeping my unit.

[Tenma White]

And its back. This is what it sounds like.

 

[Tenma White]

Aaaaand its gone again. 

 

Note: All I do is browse the net and nothing heavy like editing or playing games. In case someone will talk about power consumption.

[Beerzerker]

Coil whine in itself is harmless, nothing more than "Noise" it makes due to oscillation of components while operating.
I've heard of folks using tricks like a dab of glue or something similar to silence it if they zeroed in on what component was causing it but that was with GPU's.

 

However I don't suggest digging around in the guts of a PSU - Can be dangerous due to the capacitors/components within having stored voltage.
I tossed an otherwise good 850W that had a connector plugin that was burnt, could have snipped the wires to it but there was so much "Stuff" in the way I didn't want to chance getting zapped.

 

If it's really bothering you I'd just RMA it.

[Tenma White]

36 minutes ago, Beerzerker said:

Coil whine in itself is harmless, nothing more than "Noise" it makes due to oscillation of components while operating.
I've heard of folks using tricks like a dab of glue or something similar to silence it if they zeroed in on what component was causing it but that was with GPU's.

 

However I don't suggest digging around in the guts of a PSU - Can be dangerous due to the capacitors/components within having stored voltage.
I tossed an otherwise good 850W that had a connector plugin that was burnt, could have snipped the wires to it but there was so much "Stuff" in the way I didn't want to chance getting zapped.

 

If it's really bothering you I'd just RMA it.

just to be sure. In the video I sent does it sound like coil whine?

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Tenma White said:

It is a sign that the power supply is bad and failing potentially damaging other components.
 

No.  You're not hearing two things.  You're hearing everyone tell you that it's normal and harmless EXCEPT FOR BOOMWEBSEARCH who probably should not be interjectng because he's only managing to confuse you.

 

 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Tenma White said:

And its back. This is what it sounds like.

 

That could be anything.  Including the fan hitting a wire inside.  You're 100% sure it's not the fan?

 

i.e.  If the fan is not spinning, is the noise still present?

 

Also:  When does it do this noise?  Only at low loads?  Only at high loads?  Only in standby?

 

If it's not the fan, and it is low frequency vibrations coming from a magnetic's windings and it doesn't bother you, then don't worry about it.  Coil whine is harmless.  It can just be annoying if you can hear it all the time.

[Tenma White]

17 hours ago, jonnyGURU said:

That could be anything.  Including the fan hitting a wire inside.  You're 100% sure it's not the fan?

 

i.e.  If the fan is not spinning, is the noise still present?

 

Also:  When does it do this noise?  Only at low loads?  Only at high loads?  Only in standby?

 

If it's not the fan, and it is low frequency vibrations coming from a magnetic's windings and it doesn't bother you, then don't worry about it.  Coil whine is harmless.  It can just be annoying if you can hear it all the time.

ATM it's not making any noise but it once made the noise when I turned the PSU on and the PC was still off so I'm pretty sure it's probably not fan related because I didn't press the button thing which allows my PSU fans to always spin and iirc it was already making that noise(my PSU fans are always spinning now since I want the PSU to be cooled at all times). I'm not sure about high loads since I'm mostly in low loads(browsing the web and downloading movies) but yeah for now as far as I know It is Coil Whine and it is only making noise and not damaging other components, nothing more and nothing less. I probably wont RMA it.