Coil Whine on Nvidia 4090 and 4080 cards

WilyKit said:
If I didn’t play with headphones it would bother me.
Click to expand...
Personally, I don't like to wear headphones for gaming.

It's kind of mind-boggling to me that two identical video cards and can produce such different volumes and characters of sound when used on the same equipment in the same manner. I understand how every piece of silicon is different and every component is going to be slightly different, but what level of tolerance stacking must exist to make this happen is crazy.
 
My MSI Suprim X Air Cooled verison has coil whine... much more noticeable when FPS goes over 160 toward 200+; which I cap at 144 anyway, so it's not a huge deal. I game with surround sound, so when gaming I really do not hear it over my system fans or game noise, but if the room is quiet and the fans are low and I initially start a game, its decently loud.

I could see how people with ultra quiet setups would be annoyed, but im not entirely sure its avoidable these days. My old 3090 and 2080Ti also had some whine, just FPS were never pushed so high at 4K as they are now.
 
Furious_Styles said:
Typically almost all cards have some degree of coil whine, you might just be more sensitive to it.
Click to expand...
I think you are right. Last night I put my ear to the card and sure enough you can faintly hear coil whine. You can't hear it when the panel is on even with the fans on low but yea if you stick your head in you can pick up the sound of coil whine.
 
xDiVolatilX said:
Just ran furmark and I'm putting my ear to the card and it's silent wtf?
Click to expand...
There is probably zero chance that the card is "silent" with your ear next to the card. No high end card is 100% immune to at least some level of buzzing when you are that close to it.
 
When I run the VRS test in 3dmark and get 3000 FPS im afraid my 4090 is going to hit a frequency that breaks the glass in my case.... LOL. At least at frames I game at (sub 200 FPS at 4K) I can't hear it when gaming.
 
jobert said:
There is probably zero chance that the card is "silent" with your ear next to the card. No high end card is 100% immune to at least some level of buzzing when you are that close to it.
Click to expand...
Does it happen at certain times? How would it be silent on furmark? I'll try 3d mark. Any benchmarks that are infamous for creating coil whine?
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
When I run the VRS test in 3dmark and get 3000 FPS im afraid my 4090 is going to hit a frequency that breaks the glass in my case.... LOL. At least at frames I game at (sub 200 FPS at 4K) I can't hear it when gaming.
Click to expand...
Which one is the VRS test? Never heard of it. I just know Time spy extreme?
 
Here to report that I have coil whine on my 4090 asus TUF OC. That said with my case cover on I barely hear it over my case fans. So it might be worse if you are going for a “silent” as some people have mentioned earlier. But for a standard air cooled build with a closed case you should be fine.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
When I run the VRS test in 3dmark and get 3000 FPS im afraid my 4090 is going to hit a frequency that breaks the glass in my case.... LOL. At least at frames I game at (sub 200 FPS at 4K) I can't hear it when gaming.
Click to expand...
Just ran the Tier 1 VRS test and there was defiantly coil whine with it pushing past 2600 fps. The Tier 2 test was pushing past 500 fps did not have any [noticeable] coil whine
 
To be completely adventurous, I would like to suggest that someone buy some non-conductive putty, and initiate the exact source of the coil whine, the specific coil, and then completely cover it in non-conductive putty, to see if simply encasing it in putty would completely silence the high-frequency vibration.
 
1337Goat said:
To be completely adventurous, I would like to suggest that someone buy some non-conductive putty, and initiate the exact source of the coil whine, the specific coil, and then completely cover it in non-conductive putty, to see if simply encasing it in putty would completely silence the high-frequency vibration.
Click to expand...

Send me a 4090 and I'll perform whatever experiments/mods you'd like me to on it. ;)
 
1337Goat said:
To be completely adventurous, I would like to suggest that someone buy some non-conductive putty, and initiate the exact source of the coil whine, the specific coil, and then completely cover it in non-conductive putty, to see if simply encasing it in putty would completely silence the high-frequency vibration.
Click to expand...
I encased it in a PC case surrounded by a 5.1 setup that blasts when gaming. Works pretty well for coil whine... 🤣
 
jobert said:
There is probably zero chance that the card is "silent" with your ear next to the card. No high end card is 100% immune to at least some level of buzzing when you are that close to it.
Click to expand...

Or his case fans are so loud that it's completely masked the sound of coil whine. It reminds me of the high frequency whine of the gas turbine engine of the M1A2 Abrams. It sounds like nails on a chalkboard until the vehicle starts moving, at which point you don't really notice it anymore because the low frequency noise of the tracks obscures the high frequency ringing of the engine.
 
pippenainteasy said:
Or his case fans are so loud that it's completely masked the sound of coil whine. It reminds me of the high frequency whine of the gas turbine engine of the M1A2 Abrams. It sounds like nails on a chalkboard until the vehicle starts moving, at which point you don't really notice it anymore because the low frequency noise of the tracks obscures the high frequency ringing of the engine.
Click to expand...
My case fans have a fan controller that I can set to low they're pretty quiet at low speed. The interesting thing is I can hear a little bit of coil wine if I put my ear to the GPU with the side panel off during some games or benchmarks and then it is completely silent on some games and benchmarks for example for Fur Mark there is no sound at all but on 3D mark there is a little bit of the sound. If the side panel is on it is inaudible so it doesn't really matter. In any case it is probably true that all cards have a little bit of sound and mine is no exception.
 
The inherent nature of it makes it a phenomenal PITA to isolate the root cause. I think all my video cards for a long time have always had it to some degree and as these cards push higher frames, it becomes more noticeable. Some cards are better than others allegedly, but I also wonder how much is related to specific PSUs and the power feed, or motherboards pushing that noise over the PCIe bus too, the EMF effecting nearby components, etc... it can be a mess because a computer itself is a noisey mess electrically.
 
WilyKit said:
Just an update on this. Swapped my PSU for a Seasonic Vertex 1200 and the coil whine is gone.
Click to expand...
Which power supply did you switch from? I've been thinking of upgrading my power supply to something larger, specifically a Seasonic Vertex. Currently using a Seasonic Prime Gold 850.
 
kamikazi said:
Which power supply did you switch from? I've been thinking of upgrading my power supply to something larger, specifically a Seasonic Vertex. Currently using a Seasonic Prime Gold 850.
Click to expand...
750 watt evga supernova G3. Had no issues with it other than coil whine.
 
WilyKit said:
750 watt evga supernova G3. Had no issues with it other than coil whine.
Click to expand...
I've seen the argument that a power supply can fix coil whine, but then I've seen lots of people say it didn't work for them. Glad it worked out for you. Of course, you were a little underpowered with a 750 to begin with.
 
kamikazi said:
I've seen the argument that a power supply can fix coil whine, but then I've seen lots of people say it didn't work for them. Glad it worked out for you. Of course, you were a little underpowered with a 750 to begin with.
Click to expand...
I was monitoring power usage closely. Other than stress tests like furmark and static benchmarks like timespy extreme my 4090 only pulled about 20 watts more on average than my 3080 for actual gaming. The 750 was plenty. Even at 106% power target and maxing out v core it pulled about 460 watts in furmark. Which still leaves nearly 300 for everything else.

I wasn’t expecting the psu to do anything for the coil whine. I just happened to notice one day that it wasn’t occurring after having installed it. I’m sure I’m in the minority with that result. I only got the PSU becassoe of another thread with some performance anomalies and wanted to cover my bases. In the end, it was absolutely not needed from a performance or power usage perspective.

Now if you have one of the 600 watt TDP 4090s and plan on hitting that target, then yes, 750 is under powered but on the 450 watt units, a quality 750 is more than enough.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
The inherent nature of it makes it a phenomenal PITA to isolate the root cause. I think all my video cards for a long time have always had it to some degree and as these cards push higher frames, it becomes more noticeable. Some cards are better than others allegedly, but I also wonder how much is related to specific PSUs and the power feed, or motherboards pushing that noise over the PCIe bus too, the EMF effecting nearby components, etc... it can be a mess because a computer itself is a noisey mess electrically.
Click to expand...
I'm going to be upgrading from a PC Power & Cooling 1050 To the brand new released hot off the press 1300W MSI Meg Ai Platinum ATX 3.0 unit in the next couple weeks. I'll report my findings.
 
WilyKit said:
I was monitoring power usage closely. Other than stress tests like furmark and static benchmarks like timespy extreme my 4090 only pulled about 20 watts more on average than my 3080 for actual gaming. The 750 was plenty. Even at 106% power target and maxing out v core it pulled about 460 watts in furmark. Which still leaves nearly 300 for everything else.

I wasn’t expecting the psu to do anything for the coil whine. I just happened to notice one day that it wasn’t occurring after having installed it. I’m sure I’m in the minority with that result. I only got the PSU becassoe of another thread with some performance anomalies and wanted to cover my bases. In the end, it was absolutely not needed from a performance or power usage perspective.

Now if you have one of the 600 watt TDP 4090s and plan on hitting that target, then yes, 750 is under powered but on the 450 watt units, a quality 750 is more than enough.
Click to expand...
Aren't all 4090s 600watt with the pcie 5 600w cable? Or are they nerfed? Not that there is much performance above 450w anyway.
 
xDiVolatilX said:
I'm going to be upgrading from a PC Power & Cooling 1050 To the brand new released hot off the press 1300W MSI Meg Ai Platinum ATX 3.0 unit in the next couple weeks. I'll report my findings.
Click to expand...
Let me know... my 1200W Thermaltake from 2014 is due for an upgrade... if your coil whine gets better, I want to know!

xDiVolatilX said:
Aren't all 4090s 600watt with the pcie 5 600w cable? Or are they nerfed? Not that there is much performance above 450w anyway.
Click to expand...
They are all capable of 600W, but a lot of them have vBIOS that limits to 480W or 520W, but you can always flash to a 600W vBIOS, at the risk of voiding a warranty (as the AIB may have used components not rated for the current draw). My MSI Suprim X 4090 is a 520W vBIOS, but even when I max the slider out, I barely go over 500W at 4K, even in benchmarks, so I'm not sure what people are running that do... lol.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
Let me know... my 1200W Thermaltake from 2014 is due for an upgrade... if your coil whine gets better, I want to know!


They are all capable of 600W, but a lot of them have vBIOS that limits to 480W or 520W, but you can always flash to a 600W vBIOS, at the risk of voiding a warranty (as the AIB may have used components not rated for the current draw). My MSI Suprim X 4090 is a 520W vBIOS, but even when I max the slider out, I barely go over 500W at 4K, even in benchmarks, so I'm not sure what people are running that do... lol.
Click to expand...
I'll most definitely report back. Look out for my findings. 😃
 
xDiVolatilX said:
Aren't all 4090s 600watt with the pcie 5 600w cable? Or are they nerfed? Not that there is much performance above 450w anyway.
Click to expand...
Gaming X Trio is 450 watt vbios which can be flashed to the Suprim (520w) or even the Strix (600w) but you lose a display port connection with the Strix. After doing a reasonable amount of research, I determined it’s a negligible performance boost.
 
WilyKit said:
I was monitoring power usage closely. Other than stress tests like furmark and static benchmarks like timespy extreme my 4090 only pulled about 20 watts more on average than my 3080 for actual gaming. The 750 was plenty. Even at 106% power target and maxing out v core it pulled about 460 watts in furmark. Which still leaves nearly 300 for everything else.

I wasn’t expecting the psu to do anything for the coil whine. I just happened to notice one day that it wasn’t occurring after having installed it. I’m sure I’m in the minority with that result. I only got the PSU becassoe of another thread with some performance anomalies and wanted to cover my bases. In the end, it was absolutely not needed from a performance or power usage perspective.

Now if you have one of the 600 watt TDP 4090s and plan on hitting that target, then yes, 750 is under powered but on the 450 watt units, a quality 750 is more than enough.
Click to expand...
My 5950x and 3090 can pull close to 700 watts for the whole system. Of course, 2 DDC pumps and 18 fans add more than an insignificant power draw if I run all of it full tilt. The 3090 alone hits around 390 watts.
 
WilyKit said:
Gaming X Trio is 450 watt vbios which can be flashed to the Suprim (520w) or even the Strix (600w) but you lose a display port connection with the Strix. After doing a reasonable amount of research, I determined it’s a negligible performance boost.
Click to expand...
That's what I figured. Derbauer determined the numbers. There is heavy diminished returns the higher you go. Not worth the extra heat and roasting your chip for 1 or 2 fps lol
 
xDiVolatilX said:
Aren't all 4090s 600watt with the pcie 5 600w cable? Or are they nerfed? Not that there is much performance above 450w anyway.
Click to expand...
Not all are 600W. The Founders, Strix are 600W for sure.

See: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1461611-rtx-4090-vrm-meta-analysis-and-feaib-comparison/

Not sure how to turn those current numbers into W. probably mutiply by 12. So 70x12 = 840, and the lowest one on there is 50x12 = 600... hmmm maybe they are all 600W, or higher. but the bios just limits it. Those will be long lasting cards.
 
My 4080 FE definitely has coil wine now. It's actually the first card I've ever had with coil wine that I could easily notice. What seems odd to me is that it's most noticeable when my system is completely at idle, not playing any games or doing anything with any significant GPU usage. It does seem to be getting worse over time, so I hope that it's not indicative of a larger problem. I really didn't notice it at all when I first got the card other than very very occasionally at a level where I could barely hear it, whereas now it's much more often and much more audible. It's not constant, it's almost like slow-motion Morse-code - a mix of either brief or longer segments of coil whine. It's possible that it's doing it while I'm gaming also and I'm just not noticing it then because of my aggressive fan curves as well as typically having my headphones on. I'm really not sure why it's doing it at idle other than maybe because I'm running 4 monitors from that card (6 total)?
 
GotNoRice said:
My 4080 FE definitely has coil wine now. It's actually the first card I've ever had with coil wine that I could easily notice. What seems odd to me is that it's most noticeable when my system is completely at idle, not playing any games or doing anything with any significant GPU usage. It does seem to be getting worse over time, so I hope that it's not indicative of a larger problem. I really didn't notice it at all when I first got the card other than very very occasionally at a level where I could barely hear it, whereas now it's much more often and much more audible. It's not constant, it's almost like slow-motion Morse-code - a mix of either brief or longer segments of coil whine. It's possible that it's doing it while I'm gaming also and I'm just not noticing it then because of my aggressive fan curves as well as typically having my headphones on. I'm really not sure why it's doing it at idle other than maybe because I'm running 4 monitors from that card (6 total)?
Click to expand...
That's interesting. Try just using one monitor to see if it's gone at idle?
 
xDiVolatilX said:
That's interesting. Try just using one monitor to see if it's gone at idle?
Click to expand...

I might try that at some point just for curiosity's sake, but even if it fixed the problem, it's not like I'm going to start using fewer monitors just because of coil whine.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
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....
Click to expand...
That's right I forgot lol I'll try it tonight or tomorrow latest and get back to you! ( I have the new 1300w MSI meg ai platinum ATX 3.0 in now)
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
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....
Click to expand...
I just can't believe any zero coil whine claim. There is always going to be at least a little bit of it, especially if you put it in the situation where the frame rates are high. That said, my gigabyte 4090 is very very quiet and the only time I could hear any coil whine was at extremely high frame rates that I would never play at anyway so I'm pretty happy with this card. I might put up a short video later of the card under full load.
 
jobert said:
I just can't believe any zero coil whine claim. There is always going to be at least a little bit of it, especially if you put it in the situation where the frame rates are high. That said, my gigabyte 4090 is very very quiet and the only time I could hear any coil whine was at extremely high frame rates that I would never play at anyway so I'm pretty happy with this card. I might put up a short video later of the card under full load.
Click to expand...
I mean, I heard it all the time when my 3090 was in my main PC under load... I can put it under the same 4K load in the other pc now and I can't hear it at all... and I have tinnitus, so I HEAR it. If it's there, it is very quiet. My 4090 make noise in my current setup now under load; I'm half tempted to try it in the other PC just to see how it changes under load, but it would not make a difference in the end anyway as I don't really feel like ripping apart this PC to swap power supplies.
 
I had a MSI 2080 Ti that had insane coil whine, 3080 Ti FE that didn’t have any and now a cheap RTX 4090 from PNY (like the crap lowest price one) which to my surprise doesn’t have any either. It’s also freaking cold/silent but I hear most 4090s are. I just thought for sure this one was gonna be warmer and have coil whine.

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.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top