RMA: Store or Factory? What would you do?

Hi,

So I have this MSI GTX 1080 Armor 8G OC card that has really bad coil whine. I sent one back already for a replacement and the second one is worse than the first.

The problem is the card is not refundable. Newegg has offered me a store credit for the purchase price, but the 1080's are pretty much out of stock except for 3rd party sellers selling them for upwards of $800-$1000. Besides that, I got it on sale for $504 so I would be short for a new card even if they were in stock at a normal price.

Would you get the store credit and wait it out (the credit doesn't expire) or send it back to MSI to be fixed? I'm kind of afraid of getting another bad one from MSI and end up paying a bunch of shipping (the return to Newegg is free).

Keep the card and replace your PSU, Coil Whine it's mostly caused because some GPUs just doesn't like certain PSUs, Pascal typically doesn't suffer from Coil Whine, except with very few PSU models.

Sell, the replacement for tons of money

Rather surprised the OP didn't perform the diligence on ruling out the PSU first, before returning the GPU.
This issue is as old as time and has always pointed back to the PSU. I encountered this when I combined my GTX260 with a Seasonic unit (HX620). Once I swapped out to a non-Seasonic unit (TX750, CWT unit) - the coil whine went away.

The issue reappeared again for me when I gave Seasonic a 2nd chance, when I bought the SS-660XP. Three RMAs later and I gave up on a quiet gaming experience with that PSU as well. I switched to a Superflower unit (eVGA 750G2) and it was back to silence once again.

*Note the above my sound all bad, but I used Seasonic a 3rd/4th time in other builds. The M12II 620 Bronze and the S12II 520 Bronze and didn't hear squealing in those. Really hard to predict what will happen, but simply requires testing/replacement. It sucks, but that's how it is.

That sucks... I have a Seasonic PSU too (an XFX Black series). I haven't had this problem with any other graphics cards though...

Any combination of GPU, MB or ps can cause coil whine. I have coil whine with a corsair 850 and recently upgraded to a Seasonic cause the corsair died and still get coil whine. It only happens when my foster goes through the roof like between loading screens. I can barely hear it over my fans if I put my ear up to the case. Either keep it or sell it for when Volta comes out. Even if you get a new 1080 there is no guarantee you will not get coil whine. Frankly I don't get why people even bitch about it.

vegeta535 said:

Any combination of GPU, MB or ps can cause coil whine. I have coil whine with a corsair 850 and recently upgraded to a Seasonic cause the corsair died and still get coil whine. It only happens when my foster goes through the roof like between loading screens. I can barely hear it over my fans if I put my ear up to the case. Either keep it or sell it for when Volta comes out. Even if you get a new 1080 there is no guarantee you will not get coil whine. Frankly I don't get why people even bitch about it.

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That's another type of coil whine and will be present 100% of the time regarding GPU brand, model, vendor, when going over 800fps (typically..) and it's caused due the extreme high frequencies causing extremely fast vibrations on quartz, ceramic, coils and/or oscillator.. this can be even present in motherboards and CPUs.

The other type of coil whine it' typically present regarding of FPS and it's caused due electric noise/frequency incompatibilities, it is pretty hard to determine which PSU will cause GPU coil whine, or which PSU will have coil whine, some GPUS simply have coil whine due designs..

limit your fps to that of your display and it will get way quieter....

pendragon1 said:

limit your fps to that of your display and it will get way quieter....

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only if the coil whine it´s caused by ultra high FPS.. some cards can whine at low loads, and even idle.. and some really start to scream like a pig at high load (doesn´t matter FPS amount)

so it might help...

Darklen said:

Keep the card and replace your PSU, Coil Whine it's mostly caused because some GPUs just doesn't like certain PSUs, Pascal typically doesn't suffer from Coil Whine, except with very few PSU models.

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I have a 980 TI and the only time I have coil whine is when fps exceeds 500, usually in a game menu. I hadn't heard of this being caused by PSUs before..

Deserving said:

I have a 980 TI have the only time I have coil whine is when fps exceeds 500, usually in a game menu. I hadn't heard of this being caused by PSUs before..

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you are fine, it's a typical behavior at very high amount of FPS.

Filtered Pulse Width Modulation is what regulates the voltage. Your PSU, GPU, and motherboard all use PWM, The PSU is obviously pushing out the same combined wattage to the motherboard, GPU, and other hardware. But the PSU is providing power at higher voltage (primarily 5v and 12v) which equates to lower amperage flowing through the PWM voltage regulation filters in the PSU, Inductors in the voltage regulator circuitry are coils of wire which are part of the output filtering which vibrate due to pulsating magnetic fields generated as current flows through them. You can hear them vibrate like a speaker if they do at a high enough amplitude.

Preventing coil whine is ultimately up to the manufacturer when they design the hardware. They can either use higher quality components which are less likely to make audible noise, or add more power phases so that less current is flowing through each specific phase thereby reducing the amplitude of the sound.

Maxwells 970 and 980 suffered from lot of Coil whine issues, in fact I think coil whine started to get noticed the most since Maxwell, but also on the AMD side Fiji specially R9 Nano suffered from badly Coil whine which also helped the community to pay attention to high pitched noise coming from the GPU at any load.. as was mentioned above, it just depend on a combo of PSU/GPU, if you are getting it at high FPS then that's how it should be.

Deserving said:

I have a 980 TI have the only time I have coil whine is when fps exceeds 500, usually in a game menu. I hadn't heard of this being caused by PSUs before..

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what's worse, sometimes it can be present in the motherboard, or the case fans and sometimes in weird scenarios in the speakers, but as Araxie said above, if it's happening at high FPS everything it's normal.

It's happening at any framerate, and this isn't a slight hum. With 11 case fans on full, and the speakers playing at a reasonable level, I can hear it over everything. It sounds like a buzz like the fan is hitting a wire or something (except it varies with what's on screen - the brighter the overall image, the louder the sound). It's incredibly annoying.

my plasma does that. full white screen makes it really loud. haven't had a card do that though.

I’d take the Store credit

Good news! I'm an idiot!

So, when trying to figure out the problem with the first card (the one I sent back) I attached a ferrite choke to the PCI-E power cables to see it would help. It didn't help, but I forgot to take it off. With this second card, the fan vibration was making the choke rattle because the clamp that holds it over the cables doesn't clamp down very tight. I'm glad I grabbed the cables while it was under load or I wouldn't have noticed it.

Good to go. lol