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I read on a forum, that the 79XX series of cards ALL have coil whine. Considering some of you mine, you noticed anything?

I don't hear it on mine.

I'm assuming "coil whine" would be like a high pitched sound?

I have the XFX black 7970 *but it's the reference cooler one, not the cool double fan design*

all I can say is I am very impressed with the card, temps are awesome and the reference fan design is much better than I would have believed. when I bought this card I thought I was getting the "DD" model -- I was disappointed at first, but that reference fan actually does an awesome job of expelling the heat out the back of the case.

If the coils are whining, I can't hear them, and the fans are only running at 50%, so they're not very loud at all.

Coil whine is fairly common but varies on the type of hardware you're using and the person using them.  For example, my Sapphire 7970 whines during benchmarks but is fine mining or playing 3D games.  My other two 7970's don't exhibit any symptoms.

SeaSonic PSUs seem to contribute to coil whine but that's not always the case.  Also, not everyone can "hear" coil whine.  Some people can hear lower frequencies than others and when it does reach that audible level that is where it can get annoying.

My Powercolor reference 7970 doesn't whine no matter what it does. :)

Or well, not in games/mining anyway... it's possible it would in some extremely high-fps benchmark, but I haven't run those.

Does this mean that something is wrong with the hardware or just annoying but nothing wrong ?

I have experienced this myself on 5870s. If I run furmark you can actually hear the GPU working and no, I am not insane.

Similar thing when watching a hardware accelerated video.

Is this a defect or just normal / annoying ?

I also noticed a bigger coil whine from my PSUs but I think that is normal because of the big transformers and whatnot inside.

Thanks !

To have coil whine you need a coil and those are in your PSU.  

I have a sapphire, visiontek and gigabyte 7970, two reference design blowfans, and the 3 fan windforce Gigabyte.. None have any whine that is audible to me over the fan noise, when clocked at 1070MHz, each slightly undervolted.

It is normal, just annoying if you can hear it. It comes from the windings in inductors and transformers vibrating. Sometimes if you can locate the offending coils dumping some superglue inside can reduce or eliminate the whine. I have an Nvidia 6600GT that makes PWM noises whenever the GPU is running in 3D mode. Has run for years without issue.





Pretty much anything has inductors on it these days. Most gpus have several which are part of the switchmode power circuitry that buck the 12vdc input from the psu down to the 1.2v or so that the GPU core and memory need to operate. Motherboards have inductors for the same reason, bucking voltage down to the CPU vcore level.

Goes to show this guy doesn't know SHIT about computers.

Anyways, coil whine isn't harmful to your hardware. It's just an annoying sound. Deal with it (live with it or RMA)

Except not all PSUs have VRMs that use coils, nor are PSUs the only thing that use VRMs.

Yah, I thought the 7970s ran solid state chokes, but that looks to be reserved for the non-reference variety.  


Oh I know quite but about "computers" as it were.  I think you'd be more precise to say electrical circuitry since obviously computers aren't the only type of electronic device.

I probably should have just said check your PSU because it's far more likely to be the source.  I know my 7970 doesn't whine, but my PSU does on idle.

Was that comment posted towards me? If so, that wasn't very nice, and I posted this thread based on what *others* have said about this "problem".

I think it was aimed at despoiler but whatever.  For the record I had to look up coil whine myself.

what people call coil whine is usually cap/inductor whine, and almost all video cards produce it if you put your ear close to them.

There are too many factors involved here. How loud the whine is, is relative, and also it greatly depends on the model of the video card. On a few of mine, it ranges from no noise at all, or barely audible. On others, there is obvious whine, to squealing. I also noticed that when the mining application stops, it also stops squealing.

I had pretty bad coil whine on a brand new seasonic psu not too long ago. I contacted them and RMA'd the psu for a replacement which is totally silent. Their explanation: once in a while you get bad batches of coils, although this will not affect the use, it'll annoy the hell out of you.

Seems to be related to the quality of the coils each manufacturer uses.

Does anyone even know the science behind the coils whining? Why don't we ever hear of motherboards whining? Only GPU and PSUs.

The answer is right here:


... I guess Graphics cards must also have them?

I haven't heard any, though I have put my ear up to the card to listen for it either.  I have the dual fan sapphire 7970, and a PC Power & Cooling brand power supply.

Coil whine is caused by resonant frequencies in an inductor (coil). All electronic components with their own PWM regulated power supplies such as motherboards, graphics cards, and other peripherals have such coils (AKA chokes), even though they may only be the size of a standard capacitor. Here is an example of a very small one that you might find on a motherboard (from digi-key):

http://media.digikey.com/photos/TDK%20Photos/RLF7030%20SERIES.jpg

And here is an assortment of coils, large and small:

http://img.tootoo.com/mytootoo/upload/56/561457/product/561457_be4c07138e58edcad7200b042dab5bdb.jpg

I have 3x 7970s on water-blocks and I can't hear a peep out of them.

Have you guys noticed any difference between miners? cgminer for one makes one of my 5870s whine quite audibly. phoenix not so much as a peep. There seems to be also a good 40w difference on power consumption. Yet the throughput seems largely unaffected. I run with water so not too much fan noise to cover the whine, but I bet one could hear this whine despite the fan noise of stock cooling!

So the real question is why don't the other cards whine? Does this have anything to do with too low voltage(11.6v measured from whining card's power cable connector)? Can my caps blow up?

Likely due to the quality of the inductors in use on the card, although they probably won't fail. As someone else mentioned, you could try dropping some superglue into any chokes that you find, to see if a slightly loose winding is resonating.

Umm I had connected this particular card via the 6pin-4pin molex adaptors that was included in the box. Now I changed it to better cables. I measured the voltage under load before and after I changed. The second connector actually had a lot lower voltage of 11.4v vs 11.6 with the new cable it is 12.05v on both connectors and the whine is almost gone.

I don't think it is the chokes because I can't see any of those in the area the whining seems to emanate(rear end, next to the 6pin connectors). I can only see four caps.

However as I'm not electronics guru would someone with more knowledge explain why the whine almost went away when the card got more juice while the load remained the same.