Coil Whine on Nvidia 4090 and 4080 cards

Sooooooooooooooooooooo, what were they?!?! lol.

My old 3090 is in my X99 PC now, and has 0 coil whine, but had it in my gaming setup. So maybe the power supply could be a cause....
The brand new atx3.0 platinum rated 1300w meg pcie 5 power supply didn't make any difference at all, there is still a faint sound of coil whine during time spy extreme when you take the side panel off and the fans are on low you can hear it if you stick your head inside the rig, otherwise with the side panel on you cannot hear it. Either way the power supply didn't make a difference lol.
 
BLUF: Coil whine happens across all cards from my experience. Doesn’t matter if it’s the high priced ones or cheap ones. It’s rather strange, you’d figure tech tubers or someone would have pinpointed the issue and companies would have marketing material saying how they have anti coil whine tech in their 2500 dollar cards for Uber frames per second.
It is just something companies can't control or guarantee it 100%.
 
It is just something companies can't control or guarantee it 100%.

Yea I get that but surely the actual cause can be explained/pinpointed and at least addressed to combat the issue.

Like someone mentioned above, I think they said apply nonconducting putty or something to capacitors or something as a test.

If I still had some of my older cards that wasn’t worth anything I’d probably try it just to see.
 
Basically any card I've owned coil whines when the framerate gets artificially high. Like if I'm in menus and there's nothign capping the framerate and it's at like 500 FPS I can hear pretty much any card make coil whine. It's the same on my 3060 ti as it is on my 6800 xt.
 
Basically any card I've owned coil whines when the framerate gets artificially high. Like if I'm in menus and there's nothign capping the framerate and it's at like 500 FPS I can hear pretty much any card make coil whine. It's the same on my 3060 ti as it is on my 6800 xt.

Yarp. I have an AMD R9 290 and I only notice coil whine at high frame rates like you are describing.
 
Coil whine stopped - the solution was my card shitting itself while playing a game. Can’t wait to deal with MSI RMA.
Lol. I hope you have a backup rig. Last time my 2080Ti Seahawk EK X crapped the bed it took 6 weeks. I learned my lesson and now always have a almost as good backup rig, heh.
 
You own a 4090 were you playing Diablo 4 ?
4090, no diablo 4. I'm shocked it died as I run it in 3-lead mode at the lower wattage cap. I also frame-cap since I'm running g-sync so it should never go above 200 FPS in any scenario. Ran cool and unstressed unlike my 3090 which was basically constantly overheating, but at least never shit itself. Gotta love paying $1600 for the privilege to pay another $50 for shipping to get a working product.
 
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4090, no diablo 4. I'm shocked it died as I run it in 3-lead mode at the lower wattage cap. I also frame-cap since I'm running g-sync so it should never go above 200 FPS in any scenario. Ran cool and unstressed unlike my 3090 which was basically constantly overheating, but at least never shit itself. Gotta love paying $1600 for the privilege to pay another $50 for shipping to get a working product.
Was there any symptoms prior? Or just "poof", dead instantly in game?
 
Was there any symptoms prior? Or just "poof", dead instantly in game?
I had one instance a few months back where the GPU died and required a reboot to get display again. This time it did the same thing, but it's dead now. Won't even get past POST.
 
I had one instance a few months back where the GPU died and required a reboot to get display again. This time it did the same thing, but it's dead now. Won't even get past POST.
Interesting... I had that happen twice on my 4090, but both times I was pushing clocks to find the max and upon reboot clearly saw the "nvlddmkm.sys" crash in the windows log file.
 
I had one instance a few months back where the GPU died and required a reboot to get display again. This time it did the same thing, but it's dead now. Won't even get past POST.
Well this is rare for a 4090. I believe this is the only case I've heard for a 4090 breaking down. You're replacement should last you years.
 
My TUF 4090 has coil whine and it's even worse with dlss, it's make a weird noise. RMA once, same issue..
I considered changing PSU but not sure if it helps
My motherboard seems to have coil whine as well, especially when I download something at high speed
 
My TUF 4090 has coil whine and it's even worse with dlss, it's make a weird noise. RMA once, same issue..
I considered changing PSU but not sure if it helps
My motherboard seems to have coil whine as well, especially when I download something at high speed
Fyi I bought a brand new 1300 ATX3.0 plat PCIE5 power supply and still has the same light whine sound when you put your ear to it so I would say don't bother if it's just for the sound.
Mine is generally inaudible unless you stick you head in the case and fans are on ultra low rpm almost silent. How about you guys? Can you hear it with the side panel on?
 
Gotta be honest, it seems like my 4090 is calming down quite a bit now in regards to the coil whine. Its been about 1.5 months I've had it and I'm on the PC working 8 hours a day and gaming sometimes for another 2 in the evening. Its not nearly as noticeable as it was when I first got it. TBH, I dont hear it much now unless I am really pushing some high frames... like over 144 FPS. Which outside of benchmarks, im capped at 144 anyway for 4k.
 
I can't believe the bad luck some of you guys have had with coil whine.

I've never had a card do that.

I have been choosing 1000w or more PSU's for over a decade though. If they run at 40% to 50% their rated capacity, it is not nearly as much strain on the unit, and extends it's life. Should extend the capacitors lifespans as well. Weak capacitors result it noise and larger spikes in the current. I don't know if that has anything to do with making a videocards' inductors sing...
But I have always went for "extra watts" in the PSU selection process (plus build quality), and I haven't ever had a card experience coil whine.
I can't say that is why, but it could be, being that the inductors are where the whine comes from, and those are part of the power delivery circuitry.
 
Some cards just whine and nothing can be done about it. Still if you look at reviews there are certainly some cards or models of cards where its much more likely.
 
I can't believe the bad luck some of you guys have had with coil whine.

I've never had a card do that.

I have been choosing 1000w or more PSU's for over a decade though. If they run at 40% to 50% their rated capacity, it is not nearly as much strain on the unit, and extends it's life. Should extend the capacitors lifespans as well. Weak capacitors result it noise and larger spikes in the current. I don't know if that has anything to do with making a videocards' inductors sing...
But I have always went for "extra watts" in the PSU selection process (plus build quality), and I haven't ever had a card experience coil whine.
I can't say that is why, but it could be, being that the inductors are where the whine comes from, and those are part of the power delivery circuitry.
My main gaming rig has a 1200W Power Supply from 2014... every video card I've used in this thing has some degree of whine (across different mobo's too over the years). Meanwhile, my backup PC has a 850W Power Supply from 2021 and that thing is quiet as can be with the same video cards. So MANY things can cause it, sometimes it is the power delivery from the PS, sometimes it is the Mobo, and sometimes it is just straight up the video card, or a combination of all of them together! It's hard to track down the true source, but other than being annoying to some if it is too loud, it's relatively harmless.
 
I can't believe the bad luck some of you guys have had with coil whine.

I've never had a card do that.

I have been choosing 1000w or more PSU's for over a decade though. If they run at 40% to 50% their rated capacity, it is not nearly as much strain on the unit, and extends it's life. Should extend the capacitors lifespans as well. Weak capacitors result it noise and larger spikes in the current. I don't know if that has anything to do with making a videocards' inductors sing...
But I have always went for "extra watts" in the PSU selection process (plus build quality), and I haven't ever had a card experience coil whine.
I can't say that is why, but it could be, being that the inductors are where the whine comes from, and those are part of the power delivery circuitry.
My previous couple of cards before had much louder whine and they were too of the line cards lol. And that was with a 1200W silent pro gold. My current card isn't top of the line and it's almost inaudible. Go figure lol.
 
All graphics card coil whine especially when stressed to the max.

If you think your graphics card does not coil whine, try to run furmark or OCCT GPU stress test.
 
.. every video card I've used in this thing has some degree of whine (across different mobo's too over the years). Meanwhile, my backup PC has a 850W Power Supply from 2021 and that thing is quiet as can be with the same video cards...
That is interesting. If the exact same card has whine in 1 pc but doesn't in another, it sounds like there is some component in the PC that contributes or causes it. PSU being the first suspect, and from your experience it isn't tied to the wattage rating of the PSU. So could be the voltages it puts out, likely the 12v rails. if 1 psu runs lower or higher than the others, that could explain the difference. There is some power delivery on the mobos as well, that feeds the PCIe slot, so that could have an impact.
 
That is interesting. If the exact same card has whine in 1 pc but doesn't in another, it sounds like there is some component in the PC that contributes or causes it. PSU being the first suspect, and from your experience it isn't tied to the wattage rating of the PSU. So could be the voltages it puts out, likely the 12v rails. if 1 psu runs lower or higher than the others, that could explain the difference. There is some power delivery on the mobos as well, that feeds the PCIe slot, so that could have an impact.
Yeah, as I said, thats why it is so hard to pin-point as so many things can cause it, or a combination of them. It's been too long to remember if that X99 board and video card combination had coil whine on this 1200W power supply or not. You could be onto something with the motherboard too. I can actually hear the "coil whine" through the 5.1 speaker setup on my PC if there is no sound and I put stress on the card. It is very possible it is actually travelling through the PCIe bus/power. Why I say this is because if I run an AIDA64 memory benchmark, I can hear whine during some of the CPU Cache and memory tests... which does NOT use the video card at all... So it is very possible that in my specific case, it is the motherboard causing the problem, or the motherboard and PSU together doing it.

Outside of the occasional "whine" though, everything runs solid and is stable.
 
My Gigabyte 4090 definitely whines for several minutes after playing something intense. Once the fans die down, it's definitely noticeable. Sometimes during my normal workday (I keep Teams and Adobe CC open all the time), it's just randomly start doing it, too. My EVGA 3090 never used to be this loud or frequent. It isn't the end of the world and I still wouldn't trade this performance for a weaker/quiet card, but I wish it wasn't as heavy.
 
From what I've gathered reading this thread. I think it is safe to say that all 4090s have some degree of coil whine from barely noticeable to obvious whine. I'd say mine is in the barely noticeable camp. Being that my rig is completely water-cooled and all the fans are spinning at an extremely low rpm you can only hear it sticking your head in the case . If your card is air cooled and don't have a fan controller then you might not be able to hear it over the noise pollution you have going on. 99% of all posts in this thread agree that the 4090 has whine from barely to noticable.
 
How did you calculate 99%?
Lol been following this thread even I was in denial at first but after putting my ear to the card on different loads you can hear a sound. Obviously I was joking about the 99% but seeing a large percentage of 4090s that make sound and under the right conditions I wouldn't be surprised if they all made some level of whine sound.
 
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