My MSI Gaming X 1080 causes my (Old) Antec HCG 750 to coil wine?

[blaytenshi]

Hi Guys,

 

New here so not sure whether to post this here or in the Graphics Cards forums... Am I allowed to double post? Anyways, my problem...

 

Recently updated my 5 year old rig with completely new parts except for the power supply which is a 4/5 year old Antec HCG-750 (non modular) and a Sapphire 7950 OC (Dual-x fans). Then an ebay sale meant I could get a MSI Gaming X 1080 for cheap so i thought what the hell why not. After putting the new card in and maxing out all settings on both GTAV and Firewatch it was amazing to see the FPS go through the roof.

 

Except for the goddamn coil whine.

 

It's constant buzz is killing me. I've never had any coil whine issues before with my old 7950. Even in my old rig there was never any coil whine issues. At first I thought it was the card but then checking further I found it was the PSU... I thought the PSU might've crapped out so i put the 7950 back in to check with the same games. Frame rates were significantly lower but still no coil whine from the PSU. Put the 1080 back in. Coil wine.

 

Can anyone help me figure out what's wrong with my PSU and why only the 1080 is causing it to scream?

 

Old rig and new rig details below:
OLD:
CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K
MB: Asus P8Z68-V LE

RAM: 4 x 4GB Ripjaw 1600Mhz

GPU: Sapphire HD 7950 OC
HDD: OCZ Vertex 3 256GB

PSU: Antec HCG-750

Monitors: Asus VH232 (1080p) / Dell S2309Wb (1080p)

NEW:
CPU: Intel Core i7 6700K

MB: Asus Z170-AR

RAM: 4 x 8GB HyperFuryX 2133Mhz

GPU: MSI Gaming X 1080 8G/Sapphire HD 7950 OC
HDD: Intel 600P 256GB NVMe

PSU: Antec HCG-750

Monitors: 2 x Dell U2715H (1440p)

 

[xitywampas]

I personally wouldn't trust a PSU that old on all that new equipment. The PSU is a very important part of the system. I would upgrade that just to be safe especially if its four or five years old.

[Cla55ifi3xd]

Try limiting your fps especially on menus.

[Cla55ifi3xd]

If your monitor only goes to 60hz anything above 60fps is pretty useless. 

[blaytenshi]

@Cla55ifi3xd A fair call on the refresh rate... Keep that VSync on then? The whine is throughout the games with it being much louder when VSync off than on...

[blaytenshi]

@xitywampas Noted. I know PSUs shouldn't be cheaped out on but I honestly thought it was okay considering it was a pretty good PSU when I got it and have had no problems with my old rig AND new rig with the older 7950.

[Cla55ifi3xd]

12 minutes ago, blaytenshi said:

@xitywampas Noted. I know PSUs shouldn't be cheaped out on but I honestly thought it was okay considering it was a pretty good PSU when I got it and have had no problems with my old rig AND new rig with the older 7950.

The manufacturers warranty is 5 years on that psu should be good for a while. 

[Bleedingyamato]

5 hours ago, blaytenshi said:

Hi Guys,

 

New here so not sure whether to post this here or in the Graphics Cards forums... Am I allowed to double post? Anyways, my problem...

 

Recently updated my 5 year old rig with completely new parts except for the power supply which is a 4/5 year old Antec HCG-750 (non modular) and a Sapphire 7950 OC (Dual-x fans). Then an ebay sale meant I could get a MSI Gaming X 1080 for cheap so i thought what the hell why not. After putting the new card in and maxing out all settings on both GTAV and Firewatch it was amazing to see the FPS go through the roof.

 

Except for the goddamn coil whine.

 

It's constant buzz is killing me. I've never had any coil whine issues before with my old 7950. Even in my old rig there was never any coil whine issues. At first I thought it was the card but then checking further I found it was the PSU... I thought the PSU might've crapped out so i put the 7950 back in to check with the same games. Frame rates were significantly lower but still no coil whine from the PSU. Put the 1080 back in. Coil wine.

 

Can anyone help me figure out what's wrong with my PSU and why only the 1080 is causing it to scream?

 

Old rig and new rig details below:
OLD:
CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K
MB: Asus P8Z68-V LE

RAM: 4 x 4GB Ripjaw 1600Mhz

GPU: Sapphire HD 7950 OC
HDD: OCZ Vertex 3 256GB

PSU: Antec HCG-750

Monitors: Asus VH232 (1080p) / Dell S2309Wb (1080p)

NEW:
CPU: Intel Core i7 6700K

MB: Asus Z170-AR

RAM: 4 x 8GB HyperFuryX 2133Mhz

GPU: MSI Gaming X 1080 8G/Sapphire HD 7950 OC
HDD: Intel 600P 256GB NVMe

PSU: Antec HCG-750

Monitors: 2 x Dell U2715H (1440p)

 

Is it your PSU that has the coul whine or the 1080?  Can PSUs have coul whine?  Idk if they can or not.

 

Anyway, when I got my Gigabyte G1 GTX 1070 I had what I'm pretty sure was coil whine.  I solved it by limiting my fps to the refresh rate of my monitor.  In my case I have my monitor set to 120 so I set the Rivatuner add-on to MSI Afterburner to limit my fps in games to 120.  

 

Idk what the framerate of your monitor is but my suggestion would be install MSI Afterburner making sure to check the box to also install Rivatuner and then in the settings type in your monitor's refresh rate into the fps limit box and press enter.

 

That may fix the coil whine.  Also getting a better PSU if yours isn't good like has been said may help but I'm just guessing about that.

 

Perhaps @STRMfrmXMN can help you pick out a better one if you'd consider doing so?

[STRMfrmXMN]

10 minutes ago, Bleedingyamato said:

Is it your PSU that has the coul whine or the 1080?  Can PSUs have coul whine?  Idk if they can or not.

 

Anyway, when I got my Gigabyte G1 GTX 1070 I had what I'm pretty sure was coil whine.  I solved it by limiting my fps to the refresh rate of my monitor.  In my case I have my monitor set to 120 so I set the Rivatuner add-on to MSI Afterburner to limit my fps in games to 120.  

 

Idk what the framerate of your monitor is but my suggestion would be install MSI Afterburner making sure to check the box to also install Rivatuner and then in the settings type in your monitor's refresh rate into the fps limit box and press enter.

 

That may fix the coil whine.  Also getting a better PSU if yours isn't good like has been said may help but I'm just guessing about that.

 

Perhaps @STRMfrmXMN can help you pick out a better one if you'd consider doing so?

I'd answer this question but usually it's the PSU that causes the GPU to whine, not the other way around. The fan bearing might be going out, I dunno.

[Bleedingyamato]

27 minutes ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

I'd answer this question but usually it's the PSU that causes the GPU to whine, not the other way around. The fan bearing might be going out, I dunno.

I thought coil whine was caused as a side effect of the GPU being used. 

 

I'm not saying you're wrong of course but help me understand this, how does a PSU cause the GPU to have coil whine?  

[STRMfrmXMN]

7 minutes ago, Bleedingyamato said:

I thought coil whine was caused as a side effect of the GPU being used. 

 

I'm not saying you're wrong of course but help me understand this, how does a PSU cause the GPU to have coil whine?  

I don't know the exact science behind it, but in learning about coil whine in GTX 970s (mine has it hardcore) I learned that a lot of people, when the upgraded from, say, a CX500M to an EVGA G2, they'd find that their coil whine was suppressed or it vanished. 

[Bleedingyamato]

22 minutes ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

I don't know the exact science behind it, but in learning about coil whine in GTX 970s (mine has it hardcore) I learned that a lot of people, when the upgraded from, say, a CX500M to an EVGA G2, they'd find that their coil whine was suppressed or it vanished. 

Is your 970 overclocked?  That can cause coil whine right?  

 

Anyway, maybe OP needs a better PSU to help solve their problem?

 

[quan289]

Here's a good post by McSteel of JG.com regarding coil whine and their relationship between the PSU and the VRMs on the MB or GPU.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showpost.php?p=108453&postcount=3

 

Quote

Coil whine usually doesn't affect either the PSU's or the components' operation, at least not to a measurable degree, since the resonant frequencies are typically such that they're easily damped in other components, such as capacitors and other filter coils. I believe all manufacturers are actually aware of this issue, and are doing what they can to deal with it, most of the time.

Namely, there are three ways coil whine will develop. There's "self-whine" to which every coil under the Sun is susceptible (including various types of transformers) by it's very nature, and there's resonant/induced whine, which is a byproduct of resonance between VRMs on the motherboard and/or the graphics card, and the PSU's coil(s) and/or transformer(s). Let me elaborate further:

As the current passes through a coil, it creates a magnetic field, which in turn induces a current in the coil such that it tends to cancel out the change in the initial current. So if there's a constant 1A through a coil, then it jumps to 1.1A, the change in magnetic field will induce a current of -0.1A (meaning 0.1A in the opposite direction), restoring the net flow to 1A. This is how coils remove unwanted ripple/noise from the DC output of a PSU, or a DC input into a VRM.

Both the length of the coiling wire and the coil loop diameter are parts of the inductance equation, and are a variable just like the inductance is, and not constants. Well, theoretically they are constants for a given coil when it's effective inductance is calculated, but in real world, where approximations amount to a wrong result, the coil will shrink and expand under the influence of magnetostriction.

Self-whine or coil noise can be twofold - physical and electrical.

Physically, high frequency switching used in PSUs (50-150 kHz) will make the coil vibrate (from all the rapidly succeeding shrinking and expanding) at a lesser frequency, typically from one quarter to one eight of the switching frequency. This is sometimes well inside the audible range (~20 Hz - ~20 kHz, typically 30 - 18k). The lower frequency vibrations are a consequence of the finite velocity of current (rather, electrons) and the finite speed of expansion/shrinkage propagation through the coil. Not only that, but both the wire and the core are shrinking/expanding, and at a different rate and amplitude, so until everything aligns properly (rate and speed of shape change with the rate of propagation of the deformations), there will be no audible vibrations. This is part of the story.

Electrically, as the coil loops are moving and the core changes shape, both travel inside a varying magnetic field, which causes additional self-induced currents to appear. These are mostly damped out by other filtering elements, due to their very low magnitude and their relatively high frequency, but sometimes they manage to get to an amplifier in a sound card, for example, and show up as audible noise in the sound (sub)system. Additionally, every coil is a (poor) antenna for high-frequency signals (voltage changes), and it radiates those signals out into wires and PCB traces. There they are induced back from electromagnetic emissions into current and possibly amplified as per above.

The kicker is that physical noise can (and does, in larger inductors) cause electrical noise, and vice-versa. Further, any wire or other form of conductor (like a PCB trace) is also an inductor, albeit a poor one.

Resonant whine can develop between any two oscillatory systems, which coils are all by themselves, as is practically any circuit that contains them. VRM circuits on motherboards, graphics cards, hard drives, etc. pretty much always contain at least one. In order to have an electrical oscillator, you need an inductor and a capacitor. All inductors are also (poor) capacitors, and this doesn't present a problem at low frequencies, because they "see" capacitors as open circuits. Self-capacitance is a problem at high frequencies, exactly the situations where you'd want to use coils in the first place... When two coupled coils (either connected via wires and traces or magnetically coupled, or when the EM radiation of one permeates the other) reach very similar electrical self-noise frequency, the parasitic signals they produce may be (and usually are) amplified exponentially. This can, in rare cases, actually pollute the DC input/output, and there are actual cases in practice. There are some Sirfa-made PSUs in which simply moving output wires away from a regulator coil makes the PSU output voltage significantly less noisy. I still consider this a rarity, though, and it can be solved by putting a simple EMI shield (a piece of isolated metal sheet) around the offending coil or between it and the "polluted" area.

Coil whine can be lessened to an acceptable degree with a relatively simple fix. Just dampen the physical side of it by gluing or caulking down the coil, so that it's vibrations are absorbed. Another way is changing the current/voltage frequency, which is never easy, as it affects the electrical design of the device in question, or use a different coil. This could be a coil made of different materials, or of a different size, or even a different shape. I've seen coils made in the shape of the number 8 (or the infinity sign, if you need to be geeky about it), that produce significantly less noise than standard toroidal coils. I can't say how much this would add to the price, however. And let's not forget that transformers are, in effect, simply big-ass coils, and their whiny nature is much harder to deal with...

As for why coil whine would develop in time, instead of right from the get-go, well... Perhaps the dampening glue/caulk "breaks in"? Or maybe the coils very slightly change their basic (at-rest) shape, such that their resonance pattern shifts into the audible range? Who knows, it's a very complex phenomenon.

 

[blaytenshi]

@Cla55ifi3xd It's five years warranty? I'll go and look deeper into that.. maybe I still have a bit of warranty left lol...

[blaytenshi]

@Bleedingyamato As I understand it, coil whine is the electrical hum/buzz/squeal emitted by electrical components during operation. I hear about it on predominantly high performance systems with top tier cards. Seeing how my 7950 was on the medium end, I can see why it may not have exhibited anything until I whacked the 1080 into the mix. Unless I'm completely wrong about that theory.

 

It just doesn't make any sense to me for two cards to have such a large variance in audible noise... Vsync is one solution. And as cla55ifi3xd mentioned, my u2715hs are only 60hz so anything above is wasted processing.

 

As I mentioned before, switching on Vsync drops the frames down to 60fps and the noise being emitted by my PSU reduces significantly (though still noticeable if you took your mind off the game for a few seconds)

 

I don't have RivaTuner installed so I'll give that a try later and get back you guys about it.

[blaytenshi]

@STRMfrmXMN yeah I was always under the impression that PSUs caused the GPU to whine. That actually makes more sense except the PSU is the thing that's humming/buzzing at the the GpU is pushing high frame rates/clock speed/Power draw/whatever.

 

Perhaps it's the high power draw by all the components in the system that causes it to behave that way?

 

I'll install my 7950 back in and an old game with unlocked fps and see if I can get the PSU to whine as well.

[blaytenshi]

@quan289 thanks for the detailed quote. Was an interesting read even though I think I only understood half of it lol...