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Coil Whine woes

D

desmopilot

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 17, 2010
Messages
127
having coil whine issues with my recently built htpc/file server build (specs in sig). Have no idea how to narrow down which part is making the noise, but it does not seem to be the HDDs. Any help is appreciated as this noise is so very very annoying.
 
By listening very carefully. You can probably eliminate the mobo by simply placing your finger on the suspected coil, the reduced vibration should change the tone or eliminate it. If it does neither, it's probably in the PSU.

Be sure to ground yourself so you dont fry your board with static
 
desmopilot said:
How would I narrow it down?
Click to expand...

roll up a tube of paper, like a paper towel roll, and use it to pinpoint where the noise is really comming from. Keep a slight distance (at least 3-5 inches) above your mobo, so you don't accidentally knock something off, lol..
 
If it does turn out to be the PSU, would Corsair bother with an RMA? Since the unit technically works fine, minus this beyond irritating noise.
 
desmopilot said:
If it does turn out to be the PSU, would Corsair bother with an RMA? Since the unit technically works fine, minus this beyond irritating noise.
Click to expand...

Yeah should still be RMA'able but as you noted, coil whine is just annoying and not indicative of any stability or performance issues.
 
Try disabling anything to do with power savings in your BIOS. Set your Vcore to be constant, disable sleep modes, etc.
 
RamonGTP said:
Is it really that bad to warrant a replacement?
Click to expand...

Believe me, I've tried my best just to deal with the noise, but it's just so very annoying.


ShinyFalcon said:
Try disabling anything to do with power savings in your BIOS. Set your Vcore to be constant, disable sleep modes, etc.
Click to expand...
I've disabled C1E etc, but I'll try the Vcore etc. Will report back with an edit. Seems that whenever the system is stressed (CPU specifically) the whine starts, sitting at idle in windows there is no whine.
 
I'll give you a story with my ES2L, my P55-USB3 (i5) and my PSU... My first PSU (a PC Power Cooling 500W) suffered from the whine with the ES2L, and at that time I left settings in BIOS untouched. I RMA'd the PSU and got back a refurbished model, and the noise did disappear, but at that time I was messing around with the BIOS, so I don't know if I changed something that caused it to shut up.

Then I upgraded my motherboard to the Gigabyte P55-USB3, and used the same refurbished PSU, and the coil noise was back to haunt me. So many problems came along with it, music started pausing, BSODs, Windows glitching, etc. I turned off turbo mode, overclocked, turned off the sleep modes (C6) related to turbo mode, set my Vcore to a constant voltage, turned off the fan control/warning stuff, and left speedstep activated. So far it has been good since then...

What both the ES2L and the P55-USB3 does have in common was this "Gigabyte easy energy saver" stuff. I downloaded the programs that are associated with them and made sure that they are set to off. Having dealt with CPU whine on Core 2 Duo laptops, I knew it had to do with sleep modes and the fluctuating voltages. At the moment my i5 rig is silent and I'm happy. Just remember to uninstall the gigabyte programs after you're done with them.

Hope my story gives you any idea as to what to look for.
 
If the noise is that annoying, you could take a hot melt glue gun and place a small stripe along the offending coil, just enough to change the harmonics and not change the cooling of the offending coil.
 
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