Coil Whine on Nvidia 4090 and 4080 cards

pavel said:
Did you sell them? Switch cards? Is there a problem with most 3080s or 3090s - or just certain ones?

Edit: I read that the AMD reference 7900 XT and 7900 XTX cards also have coil whine and/or produce noise - I just read about those complaints yesterday, FWIW.
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I sold all of them as this was during the card shortage. I camped out at Best Buy for each of those with the intention of keeping them. I did keep a FE 3070 for 6 months and it was probably the quietest card I have ever owned. I wanted more power though and paid out the ass for an Asus Tuf 3080 Ti and its nearly as quiet as the FE 3070.

I just ordered an FE 4080 and if it has coil whine then its going right back to Best Buy. Coil whine is something that I cannot tolerate and its hard to believe they cant find a way to fix this.
 
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jobert said:
I sold all of them as this was during the card shortage. I camped out at Best Buy for each of those with the intention of keeping them. I did keep a FE 3070 for 6 months and it was probably the quietest card I have ever owned. I wanted more power though and paid out the ass for an Asus Tuf 3080 Ti and its nearly as quiet as the FE 3070.

I just ordered an FE 4080 and if it has coil whine then its going right back to Best Buy. Coil whine is something that I cannot tolerate and its hard to believe they cant find a way to fix this.
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Very interesting. I was looking at upgrading my card - I currently have an EVGA 3060 XC and it seems pretty loud at basic use (in a game, not even at load) and so I set a Custom fan profile on Precision X1 and there's a configured quiet profile and it's better - but, the card then gets high temps or what I think is. The custom fan profile is tolerable. I don't think it has coil whine, though. I was worried about that with getting any possible future card as I'm pretty sensitive to noise. That's why I was looking at getting an Asus Tuf 3080 or 3080 Ti - as they are supposedly pretty quiet - some of the quietest 3080/Ti cards? The only other one I was considering is the MSI Gaming X Trio - but maybe there are others that are worth considering?
Anyway, I dunno if I will 'upgrade' now - I'm only looking at used cards - and then I have to worry about ppl who might have cards that coil whine and miners - plus, many want what I think is too much for the card. But, it would allow 4K gaming, better rending times/better performance at the productivity software/tasks I will be doing or planning to do. I don't blame you for not tolerating coil whine - I wouldn't want to deal with it. I guess that is another reason for my hesitation when 'shopping' for a used card. Paranoia of a loud card/coil whine.
 
EVGA RTX 2060, AMD Reference 6700 XT, Gigabyte 6600 XT --- all have had more than trivial coil whine in all games. But, I compared them all In Elden Ring. Even at 1080p. They were all noisy.

The Gigabyte is at least reasonable about it. My 2060 was so screechingly bad----I flashed the bios in desperation----and it helped a lot. But, I lost some max boost clocks.

I have to laugh when people suggest capping framerates and other methods of limiting expensive gaming cards.
 
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pavel said:
Very interesting. I was looking at upgrading my card - I currently have an EVGA 3060 XC and it seems pretty loud at basic use (in a game, not even at load) and so I set a Custom fan profile on Precision X1 and there's a configured quiet profile and it's better - but, the card then gets high temps or what I think is. The custom fan profile is tolerable. I don't think it has coil whine, though. I was worried about that with getting any possible future card as I'm pretty sensitive to noise. That's why I was looking at getting an Asus Tuf 3080 or 3080 Ti - as they are supposedly pretty quiet - some of the quietest 3080/Ti cards? The only other one I was considering is the MSI Gaming X Trio - but maybe there are others that are worth considering?
Anyway, I dunno if I will 'upgrade' now - I'm only looking at used cards - and then I have to worry about ppl who might have cards that coil whine and miners - plus, many want what I think is too much for the card. But, it would allow 4K gaming, better rending times/better performance at the productivity software/tasks I will be doing or planning to do. I don't blame you for not tolerating coil whine - I wouldn't want to deal with it. I guess that is another reason for my hesitation when 'shopping' for a used card. Paranoia of a loud card/coil whine.
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Well if I keep the 4080 that comes next weekend then I can PM to see if you want my Asus Tuf 3080 Ti as it has been so nice and quiet.
 
johnnysd said:
Not sure if true but I have a Gigabyte Windforce and an ASUS motherboard B550. Absolutely zero coil whine and I am super sound sensitive, the sound of refrigerators and flourescent lights can drive me up the wall.
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Interesting though I have been told and it would make sense that it is very unlikely that motherboard would have anything to do with coil whine on a GPU and it would more be the power supply if anything,

Well I could not go to Asus motherboard if I want to stick with DDR5 (2 X 16GB) 6000 to 7200 at XMP as all Asus LGA 1700 mobos including Z790-F Strix, Hero, and APEX I have tried are not fully stable with DDR5 at XMP settings so that option went out the window.

I have heard some other reports that the Windforce of Gigabyte is good with coil whine, but has bad fans. How do you find the fans on it? Are they loud at low RPM or are they the same as Gaming OC fans?
 
Wolverine2349 said:
Interesting though I have been told and it would make sense that it is very unlikely that motherboard would have anything to do with coil whine on a GPU and it would more be the power supply if anything,

Well I could not go to Asus motherboard if I want to stick with DDR5 (2 X 16GB) 6000 to 7200 at XMP as all Asus LGA 1700 mobos including Z790-F Strix, Hero, and APEX I have tried are not fully stable with DDR5 at XMP settings so that option went out the window.

I have heard some other reports that the Windforce of Gigabyte is good with coil whine, but has bad fans. How do you find the fans on it? Are they loud at low RPM or are they the same as Gaming OC fans?
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Fans are pretty quiet so far. Do not really ever notice any sound from the GPU
 
I gave up on getting a 4090 and picked up a founders 4080 from Best Buy. If it has annoying coil whine it's going right back to the store.
 
jobert said:
I gave up on getting a 4090 and picked up a founders 4080 from Best Buy. If it has annoying coil whine it's going right back to the store.
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Sounds like my luck. Every darn 4090 I have tried has too much coil whining buzzing and I have tried 6 of them including FE, 2 Gaming OC, an Aorus Master, and 2 PNY XLR8s.

What kind of motherboard and power supply do you have and did you use direct connect 12vhpwr cable or included adapter?
 
Wolverine2349 said:
Sounds like my luck. Every darn 4090 I have tried has too much coil whining buzzing and I have tried 6 of them including FE, 2 Gaming OC, an Aorus Master, and 2 PNY XLR8s.

What kind of motherboard and power supply do you have and did you use direct connect 12vhpwr cable or included adapter?
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Typically almost all cards have some degree of coil whine, you might just be more sensitive to it.
 
Wolverine2349 said:
Sounds like my luck. Every darn 4090 I have tried has too much coil whining buzzing and I have tried 6 of them including FE, 2 Gaming OC, an Aorus Master, and 2 PNY XLR8s.

What kind of motherboard and power supply do you have and did you use direct connect 12vhpwr cable or included adapter?
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My power supply is EVGA 1300 watts G2. I think it is in its 7th year. However, I also tried the card on a Gamemax power supply of 1050 watts. Motherboard is a MSI Tomahawk X570 wifi. I did use the included adapter and no external cables.

Make sure you have 4 individual power connected to the card (you are not daisy chaining power connectors). Try the included adapter if you are using a custom cable from cable mod or something. Check PSU that it has a combined single rail setup (I.e., it’s total amps are not being split across rails; for example my PSU has about 80 amps available through a single rail; meaning I don’t need to worry about power being split across connections). Some PSU have this button.

Otherwise, with 6 cards that you tested, it seems like PSU is the culprit. Hope this helps. If I had coil whine I would also be losing my mind.
 
Just played around with an FE 4080 and it has only a small hint of coil whine running uncapped in Metro Exodus and Gotham Knights. And that was with me listening closely for it with no game audio on and with the case side panel off. My FE 2060 was worse but I never noticed it while gaming. The FE 3090 and the two FE 3080 Ti cards I tried had completely unacceptable levels of coil whine so I feel pretty lucky at this point.

This was with an MSI Z390 board and Seasonic GX1000 PSU if that matters. I am going to try some more games later before I put this in my new gaming pc that has a MSI Z790 and Corsair RM1000x PSU.
 
KickAssCop said:
My power supply is EVGA 1300 watts G2. I think it is in its 7th year. However, I also tried the card on a Gamemax power supply of 1050 watts. Motherboard is a MSI Tomahawk X570 wifi. I did use the included adapter and no external cables.

Make sure you have 4 individual power connected to the card (you are not daisy chaining power connectors). Try the included adapter if you are using a custom cable from cable mod or something. Check PSU that it has a combined single rail setup (I.e., it’s total amps are not being split across rails; for example my PSU has about 80 amps available through a single rail; meaning I don’t need to worry about power being split across connections). Some PSU have this button.

Otherwise, with 6 cards that you tested, it seems like PSU is the culprit. Hope this helps. If I had coil whine I would also be losing my mind.
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I just got an eVGA SuperNOVA 1600 T2. Those Leadex based Super Flower PSUs of which the eVGA SuperNOVA G2, P2, and T2 are based on are outstanding as yours is as well. The T2 in paryticular per reviews has best ripple suppression. It's a shame they are out of production now as they were some of the best PSUs ever made and they were brand new around late 2013 to 2015 time frame and production kept going of these excellent reliable extreme stability power delivery units until like 2020 or 2021 when in early 2020 it was announced eVGA stopped using Super Flower as the OEM. I was lucky there were still enough left over to grab a 1600 T2 for retail price (still expensive) and hoping so badly this will stop al coil whine.

Though they also had updated G3 and P3 PSUs based on Super Flowers Leadex II platform, though Super Flower Leadex II was not as good as their original Leadex.
 
Furious_Styles said:
Typically almost all cards have some degree of coil whine, you might just be more sensitive to it.
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Well these cards all had too much. I had a Gigabyte Gaming OC 3090 TYi that had very faint to almost none. It was more like a slight quiet change of the pitch in dead air when under full load rather than an annoying buzzing/whine/humming that all 4090s I tried had.

I expect a 4090 with no worse whine than the Gaming OC 3090 Ti I had had.
 
Ferris23 said:
1) It's a DDR 4 mobo
2) I bought this system pre-built for 2,300 dollars from a dude on Facebook who didn't want to scalp but needed to sell for personal reasons. I wanted just the card, but I made an exception because the price was nuts, and now am building my daughter a gaming computer with the computer I had before this. To answer your question, I don't know why maybe because DDR 5 is expensive? Is the gaming performance worth it? I don't see myself upgrading to a DDR 5 motherboard just to run DDR5, but now you have me curious.
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I went the same way on my new build. Looked at a lot of reviews comparing the 2 and atm DDR5 is actually slightly slower in some games because of the poor timings and never more than a couple frames faster. I know it will improve with time but I am just not much into future proofing because 9 times out of 10 whenever I tried to do this, when it was time to use that future proofing some other feature related to it just came out as well, forcing me to upgrade all to take full advantage anyway.
 
chameleoneel said:
EVGA RTX 2060, AMD Reference 6700 XT, Gigabyte 6600 XT --- all have had more than trivial coil whine in all games. But, I compared them all In Elden Ring. Even at 1080p. They were all noisy.

The Gigabyte is at least reasonable about it. My 2060 was so screechingly bad----I flashed the bios in desperation----and it helped a lot. But, I lost some max boost clocks.

I have to laugh when people suggest capping framerates and other methods of limiting expensive gaming cards.
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What power supply do you use? Was it the same PSU for all of these instances?
 
WilyKit said:
Just got my MSI 4090 Gaming X and it has insane coil whine.
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Perhaps it's your PSU? Is it underpowered and sending out an unstable signal?
I've got no idea if that would make coil whine worse though.
 
In the past I have had cards with constant coil whine even at idle.
My 3070TI that I currently have had coil whine when I got it but at some point it just went away.
(y)
 
1337Goat said:
Perhaps it's your PSU? Is it underpowered and sending out an unstable signal?
I've got no idea if that would make coil whine worse though.
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Unstable signal with fully stable system across varying loads? Not likely. It also happens more at main menus when the load is low and fps sky high. Then there’s the Newegg reviews complaining about the same thing. Which I probably should’ve read first.
 
GoodBoy said:
What power supply do you use? Was it the same PSU for all of these instances?
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I build ITX.
In the past couple of years I have used EVGA, Silverstone, Cooler Master, and Corsair SFX power supplies.

Changing to a different PSU, with the same coil whining graphics card, has not even come close to magically curing the coil whine. Sometimes, it has slightly changed the tonal quality. But, not the overall volume or level of annoyance.

I have read user reviews of people changing power supplies and claiming their coil whine completely dissappeared. And I would have to say, if actually true: that was complete, blind luck.
 
chameleoneel said:
I build ITX.
In the past couple of years I have used EVGA, Silverstone, Cooler Master, and Corsair SFX power supplies.

Changing to a different PSU, with the same coil whining graphics card, has not even come close to magically curing the coil whine. Sometimes, it has slightly changed the tonal quality. But, not the overall volume or level of annoyance.

I have read user reviews of people changing power supplies and claiming their coil whine completely dissappeared. And I would have to say, if actually true: that was complete, blind luck.
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I think it's more than blind luck, but only because of another issue I had, which was entirely separate.

Essentially, I had bought the cheapest USB powered speakers I could find, and while I had them powered via my monitor's USB output, it would distinctly hum and whine.
But changing to the motherboard USB slot, or a USB slot from the wall, fixed it immediately.

However, that only worked in that one instance, and that wasn't even coil whine. It could be that coil whine IS due to a power issue, but the issue might inherently take place within the card, and has no connection to the PSU's supply. In either case, this is at least some information that might help someone else crack the coil whine issue.
 
My 4090 coil whine increases both with higher framerate and higher power consumption independently. So even on a 200W load, if the fps is 1000, it will coil whine. So my solution is both a 116fps framerate cap with gsync on and also undervolt + power limit to 285W. Above that the buzzing sounds like an angry hornet's nest. I still get around 33.5k in timespy with a 285W power limit, versus 36k at 100% power target, so it's only a 8% performance loss for 80%+ reduction in noise.
 
Wolverine2349 said:
I have been looking so hard for a coil whine free RTX 4090.

I have tried 4 different cards. 2 Gigabyte Gaming OCs, a PNY XLR8 and a Gigabyte Aorus Master.

All unfortunately have too much coil whine like buzz during a high end AAA game even at only 80 to 120 FPS.

Not insanely bad, but definitely more than a faint hush amount. And it is too audible in quiet parts of a game and I always use speakers never head phones.

I have an MSI Z690 Unify Z Motherboard and Corsair HX 1200 PSU and using the 12PWHR Corsair adapter

One thing I wonder is if the motherboard plays a role. I have found from 3 different replies on Tech PowerUp and Overclock.net those with no coil whine on Asus motherboards. 1 Asus Z790 Apex, an Asus X570 Dark Hero, and an Asus Z790 Rampage Extreme. They all say they have no coil whine with a Suprim X on both Z790 boards even with their ear next to the card when it is under load on a test bench and the other has a Giga Gaming OC on the X570 Dark Hero.

Maybe Asus after all produces motherboards that mitigate coil whine for attached components. Though their motherboards maybe excellent at mitigating coil whine, their video cards are the worst offenders of it.

Coincidence or something to it regarding Asus high end motherboards being better at mitigating coil whine of GPUs??
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My Asus x570 Hero VIII and Asus 3090 Strix says otherwise. I rebuilt my system to be silent with a MO-RA3 radiator in push-pull, but I also built in a Primochill Wetbench SX so that I can always get to everything easily. I originally had an EVGA FTW Ultra 3080 in it that was silent. I "upgraded" to an Asus Strix 3090, already waterblocked for $775 just because it was such a good deal and I had a buyer at $500 for my 3080. This was November 2022, BTW. The Strix is annoyingly loud with coil whine. I measured it at around 60 dB right at the card. Where my head is while sitting at the computer is in the upper 40s. That's while running Heaven Benchmark with no frame limiter. I've toned it down by limiting FPS to somewhere between 100 and 120, but it's still annoying. The seller said they never heard the coil whine, but it was in a case with fans at 1200 rpm. It sucks to build a silent system, then ruin it with coil whine.
 
Yeah, I have also switched motherboards/CPUs a few times, over the past couple of years. One of those motherboards was an Asus B550 itx board. My coil whining GPUs still coil whined just as bad, when installed with that board.
 
kamikazi said:
My Asus x570 Hero VIII and Asus 3090 Strix says otherwise. I rebuilt my system to be silent with a MO-RA3 radiator in push-pull, but I also built in a Primochill Wetbench SX so that I can always get to everything easily. I originally had an EVGA FTW Ultra 3080 in it that was silent. I "upgraded" to an Asus Strix 3090, already waterblocked for $775 just because it was such a good deal and I had a buyer at $500 for my 3080. This was November 2022, BTW. The Strix is annoyingly loud with coil whine. I measured it at around 60 dB right at the card. Where my head is while sitting at the computer is in the upper 40s. That's while running Heaven Benchmark with no frame limiter. I've toned it down by limiting FPS to somewhere between 100 and 120, but it's still annoying. The seller said they never heard the coil whine, but it was in a case with fans at 1200 rpm. It sucks to build a silent system, then ruin it with coil whine.
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Yes I have heard Asus cards in Asus boards have terrible coil whine both 3000 and 4000 series. The reports of no coil whine RTX 4090s were with Asus mobos, but non Asus 4090s including even some MSI cards. But the non Asus 4090s were in Asus motherboards at least that's what lots of people have said when I searched around.

Though ironically and you included I have not had a single person mention Asus card on Asus board with no whine.

Is like Asus has no clue on GPUs to make them quiet but does well with mobos. And Asus mobos are very good generally unless you want to run DDR5 at XMP in which I have had nightmare stability issues.
 
Wolverine2349 said:
Yes I have heard Asus cards in Asus boards have terrible coil whine both 3000 and 4000 series. The reports of no coil whine RTX 4090s were with Asus mobos, but non Asus 4090s including even some MSI cards. But the non Asus 4090s were in Asus motherboards at least that's what lots of people have said when I searched around.

Though ironically and you included I have not had a single person mention Asus card on Asus board with no whine.

Is like Asus has no clue on GPUs to make them quiet but does well with mobos. And Asus mobos are very good generally unless you want to run DDR5 at XMP in which I have had nightmare stability issues.
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I didn't do any research before I bought the 3090. I didn't even think about coil whine. I've never had a card with coil whine before. At least, no coil whine with normal usage. The only time I'd ever heard coil whine before was when closing Heaven when the credits screen shows for like 5 seconds while it's shutting down.
 
chameleoneel said:
I build ITX.
In the past couple of years I have used EVGA, Silverstone, Cooler Master, and Corsair SFX power supplies.

Changing to a different PSU, with the same coil whining graphics card, has not even come close to magically curing the coil whine. Sometimes, it has slightly changed the tonal quality. But, not the overall volume or level of annoyance.

I have read user reviews of people changing power supplies and claiming their coil whine completely dissappeared. And I would have to say, if actually true: that was complete, blind luck.
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50Hz or 60Hz AC power?

It is power related.. somehow. The coils are part of the power phases.

I've never had coil whine, yet others seem to almost always have it.

Could be environmental (maybe humidity and/or barometric pressure),
AC source power (50Hz vs 60Hz, maybe shape of the waveform which should be a sine-wave. Square-wave power would definitely be a suspect but only cheap UPS's should output that,
power supply or powersupply+mobo combinations,
components on the card,
or some combination of these.
 
Wolverine2349 said:
Yes I have heard Asus cards in Asus boards have terrible coil whine both 3000 and 4000 series. The reports of no coil whine RTX 4090s were with Asus mobos, but non Asus 4090s including even some MSI cards. But the non Asus 4090s were in Asus motherboards at least that's what lots of people have said when I searched around.

Though ironically and you included I have not had a single person mention Asus card on Asus board with no whine.

Is like Asus has no clue on GPUs to make them quiet but does well with mobos. And Asus mobos are very good generally unless you want to run DDR5 at XMP in which I have had nightmare stability issues.
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Are you sure? I have mostly read good reports (anecdotal, but still) of Asus Tuf 30 series cards - 3080/3080 Ti/3090 etc. The Strix - probably has more reports of coil whine - these are the more high performance cards which have higher power limits and tend to be overclocked by buyers - who bought them for that purpose? I haven't read too many reports of coil whine with Tuf cards. The 40 series OTOH - that's different. I've read anecdotal reports here and on other sites of the entire Asus 40 series - occasionally having coil whine - but, a bit too frequent to ignore.
I read on another site - a few ppl rank/rate the (40 series) AIBs in terms of most likely to least likely to have coil whine - Asus -> MSI -> Gigabyte (least likely - Gigabyte cards especially the Aorus and Master). Take that for what it's worth.
Lots of ppl who have owned Asus Tuf 3080 and 3080 Ti/3090 have reported that their cards are quiet or can be kept quiet (fan curves) even at high(er) performance levels - that is, e.g. at load etc. That's why I've been looking at/considering a used Asus 3080 / 3080 Ti - plus, they have a transferable warranty.
 
Isn't there technically a procedure you can do in order to treat the coil whine in order to make it quieter? Like by applying some kind of puddy or cement to the components that are hyper vibrating and causing the whine?
 
My MSI 4090 Gaming X doesn't have any coil whine. Even with an open side panel I can't hear a peep outta this thing.
 
xDiVolatilX said:
My MSI 4090 Gaming X doesn't have any coil whine. Even with an open side panel I can't hear a peep outta this thing.
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I find that hard to believe as every high end card out there has at least some level of coil whine under load especially if you open the case and listen for it. And if anything that model has some of the highest complaints about it and have avoided it even though it has been available at best buy.
 
jobert said:
I find that hard to believe as every high end card out there has at least some level of coil whine under load especially if you open the case and listen for it. And if anything that model has some of the highest complaints about it and have avoided it even though it has been available at best buy.
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That's interesting. I just ran time spy extreme on 106% power usage in afterburner and I couldn't hear any coil whine at all with all the fans on low and the side panel open with my ear to the card.

Funny thing is my past 3080Ti hydro copper was the noisiest card I've ever heard. It was unbearably loud that that was an evga ftw3 ultra edition.

It's about time i hit the silicon lottery with my gpu and cpu because my last few purchases were not good overclockers and had coil whine, so this is my time to shine lol.
 
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