Coil Whine on new system with old video card

Hello everyone, I recently upgraded to an i5 2500k and everything is going great, except the unacceptable coil whine I'm hearing.

i5 2500k @ 4.5
MSI P67A-G45 (B3)
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB
Corsair tx650
xfx radeon hd 5850

I used the same video card with an older phenom setup, and only got whine in certain game menu's and was never much of a problem. Now however, the whine is much more often, and much louder.

I need to troubleshoot this to figure out what part needs replacing, any ideas? I already tested with another tx650 and it made identical whining, and the sound is definitely coming from the psu. I would imagine that only leaves the motherboard? unless ram or cpus can cause whine. I'm excluding the vga because it didn't whine much in my last build.

thanks!

Update***

Disabling C1E and Intel c-step in the BIOS seems to have made the whine disappear. Is this normal or should I RMA my mobo?

no more then likely its the psu making the noise but its kind of odd it disapeared because you put more load on it at idle.

Coil Whine just has to do with the natural frequency of whichever piece seems to be producing it, if you change the load up or down it will go away by itself like it happened in this case.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=233094

See post #2

In skyrim for instance, I hear a slight "crackle/humming" coming from the psu that goes silent in menus or if I minimize. I believe that's normal, since playing skyrim maxed out is surely a power hog, and doesn't bother me because it's hardly audible if I'm not right next to it.

When c1e and c-state were enabled however, there was a loud high pitched whine in skyrim, no matter what menu I was in. The whine also appeared while watching videos!!

I've read power saving options can effect psu noise and coil whine, so disabled c state and c1e, and voila noise is gone. Thing is, I liked c-state (it basically sets my clock lower when not using it, right? thats money saved) and would like to keep the power saving options on.

Since while usually coil whine comes from the psu, it can be caused by capacitors elsewhere in the system. That's why I'm wondering if RMAing for a new mobo could solve the issue, and allow me to keep c state enabled.

hope that made sense, thanks for the help!

Coil whine is the result of interplay between two components. While it is usually between the PSU and video card, the motherboard can also be one of the components. If changing motherboard bios settings turns the whine on and off, I would think the motherboard is either the whining component or causing one of the other components to whine.

You may be able to narrow down the source of the whine by having the case open and holding a cardboard tube (such as can be found at the end of a roll of paper towels) to your ear. If you can narrow it down to a small area, you could try using clear acrylic nail polish to cover the inductors, chokes and capacitors in that area to immobilize the parts that are whining.

my old desktop whined like that for a year until the psu finally blew up. my friends gtx 480 whined like that when he bought it and its still working.

its kinda hard to determine if anything will happen, i would just try to ignore it.

Got a new motherboard, same whine. When I disable c1e and c-state, it dissapears.

Since I've tested with different psu's and mobos, it has to be the gpu, right?

thanks!

It wasnt a defect, it is just the way the system interacts, for some reason it is hitting a frequency that resonates with the card, it doesn't physically harm it, so what you are seeing is that when the load is reduced and the cpu is sent to a lower frequency, that frequency happens to be close to the natural frequency of some part of your gpu

To fix it, get the panel of your case open, run anything that makes the coil whine pop up, and with a cardboard tube do try to pinpoint which part is vibrating and generating the whine. Once you do, procede as evilsofa said, put some clear acryllic, let it rest, if you got the right part then the clear acryllic will change the rigidity of the system and thus change the natural frequency at which it will react, fixing your problem.

Natural Frequencies, "harmmonics", are pretty dang interesting to study. Lookup on Youtube "Tacoma Narrows Bridge".

Thanks for the post =) I understand that coil whine isn't a defect, but when it's bad enough to distract me while gaming It's definitely a problem. Only issue I have with the acrylic is that it will void my 5 year warranty =/

Tonight I've tried different PSU's, GPU's, RAM, HDD's, etc. I was surprised when the sound remained even with two completely different gpus. It even remained with the different psu's I tested, BUT they were all MUCH quieter about it. My 650tx is just damn loud. The other PSU's I tested were much, much quieter, making the annoying sounds practically inaudible.

I'm glad I've found a fix, now just how to go about it...I suppose I will need a new PSU, or take a chance using some acrylic...hmm

How did this turn out?

Got a whine issue with my board, too