Solid State Chokes still whine/buzz

A

Ajiki-kun

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 7, 2012
Messages
484
Well guys, I'm at my wits' end. I was becoming obsessed over this coil whine business, so much so that I restricted myself to buying cards that claimed to have solid state chokes. I was a man possessed. That was my one remaining belief; that as long as the card had solid chokes, it wouldn't whine under load.

I didn't care about anything else (like how bulky this fucking card is and that I'd need to buy a new case for it, or how dodgy a reputation HIS has around here) so long as I could get performance without the whine.

It's been a long two months that I've been on this anti-whine crusade. And now that I finally pop this card in... buzzing in Battlefield 3 with Vsync on, whining while folding, whining at menus in Crysis and buzzing during gameplay locked at 60 fps.

I can only think of 3 explanations:

1) It's not actually my video card, but my motherboard underneath it (still possible, but highly doubtful, as I've tested 5 other video cards, 3 of which had whine, 2 of which were the same 7970 but different manufacturers and the whine here is different from those 2 and the other one -- and I've eliminated all other possible sources since I've been through numerous PSUs, too)

2) That HIS are goddamn liars, like the time MSI lied about having solid state chokes, and they didn't use solid state chokes in this card, or they didn't use them for all of them. Hyperbole on that accusation, I admit. But I'm sick and tired of having to take companies at their word when it turns out to be just marketing. Especially when I'm buying from Newegg or the like, who takes a week to ship the cards.

or,

3) Solid state chokes is all a bunch of marketing bull, and I was an idiot to believe it.

And I just don't know what to believe anymore. If only HIS had a rep or something that I could get some sort of intelligible answer from.
 
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The last HIS card I bought supposedly had solid state chokes and it had a bad whine. I'm thinking they are just lying about using them.
 
Yeah, from your link to that MSI card, sounds like it's pretty easy for them to get away with misleading you by having some solid state chokes, but not all. Anything that becomes a checkbox feature gets gamed, it seems.
 
Well, I've been hunched over the motherboard with a cardboard tube for what feels like an entire day, and I can't fathom it being the motherboard; there are just no chokes south of the PCI-E slots.

So, yes, I'm back to calling people liars. Very unpleasant.

Here's what it says on the back of the box

2mw5eyv.jpg


Amazing! So judging from the pluralization of "capacitors", but not "choke", they must have meant ONE of the chokes is solid state! I should have noticed that when I was unable to see my box when it was with Newegg.

A picture of the chokes (from http://diybbs.zol.com.cn, and it's the X Turbo version, but it's the same pcb from what I can tell)

34t72at.jpg


No, no, there goes even that sarcastic theory. They sure do look the same as the reference as well as the ones of the Sapphire 7970 I had earlier.

So their English is just bad. Goes with the tech support that's telling me to reduce the fan to help "fixed" the problem. No biggie.

And the chokes still may or may not be solid state. Who knows. It's just a freaking iron/plastic/whatever cap they put over wound coils, which may or may not be then filled solid to prevent movement. The point is, they're not up to spec. HIS have lost my trust.

This card's going back. On top of this, and the unfortunate driver issues/performance that are still plaguing AMD (even after 12.6), I think that's it for me with the 7970.

(I will admit it overclocked decently to 1270 on air)

EDIT: At least Newegg has been good about taking these cards back. Thanks Newegg!
 
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I haven't had coil whine since my 4850s. I count myself lucky.
 
I just noticed that searching solid state choke and whine on Google brings me here. Man, this site holds a lot of sway.

I wish I knew what was behind my bad luck, as I've had 3 power supplies with whine before ponying up for my current one, and 3 cards of 2 different 7970s all had whine.

HIS got back to me, telling me RMA team will follow up (too late, as I've returned the card), saying this is the choke has quality problem (sic)

No shit it's a quality problem!

Did this one particular card indeed just get, like, 7770 chokes put on there by some freak accident? I'm not willing to give them that much benefit of the doubt. I'm done with HIS, for good.

Now, the question is, do I still look only for cards with solid chokes? I'm thinking no, but I still cringe every time I look at a Sapphire, XFX and Gigabyte (latter two are also getting widespread reports of whine) and think about the whine that could be, and I find myself still leaning toward ASUS DC2s or MSIs.

I'll let y'all know if even those companies with their chokes ends up letting me down.
 
I built a system for my brother in law last month, and he is a die hard AMD fan, so naturally he wanted a 7970. We went with the Diamond Brand (which is as hated here as HiS) and during all of my testing, benchmarking, and stability tests, noticed absolutely zero choke whine. In fact, I had always heard about how bad it was that I was actually listening for it too.

We ended up returning the card anyway since the thing ran like a pot belly pig... it was pathetically slow. I'm not sure why, but even with the latest drivers etc and a brand new system running , he was only able to get a 6900 p score in 3DMark11. When we returned it, we got an ASUS GTX680 and without changing ANYTHING in the system whatsoever, he scored just under 10k

Moral of the story... buy green
 
I had terrible coil whine from my mother board and both graphics cards (ones XFX non-reference, one power color reference).

I RMA'ed my Corsair TX850 power supply due to another issue, now with the replacement PSU, nothing in my pc whines anymore.
 
Are you saying your PSU was causing whine to come from other parts in your computer?
 
Same experience here. I have RMA'd my 500W PSU a while back and have noticed that all the crickets (from mouse scrolling) have disappeared with the replacement as well.
 
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