Question Is there any data on RTX 4090 coil whine

[Wolverine2349]

I have tried 4 different RTX 4090 including 2 Gigabyte Gaming OCs and a Gigabyte Aorus Master and a PNY XLR8

Unfortunately all had too much a buzz like noise that will not be drowned out by the sound of game in a quiet area of the game. Though in areas of the game where sound is louder it can it would be drowned out, though looking for less whine than that.

I had a GeForce RTX Gaming OC 3090 Ti and it had almost no coil whine at all in any situation and it was so hush and faint and very hard to detect even if you looked for it.

Sadly not the case for the 4 RTX 4090s I have tried.

3 of the I sold and now left with a Gaming OC again with the same issues.

Is there any setup or any ones with no or extremely little coil whine??

Or is it just a reality that all 4090s have it more than just a little and no way around it??

Its hard to believe they could not have any without them as many 3090 Tis tested by Guru3D stated they had a hard time detecting it on those cards and the 3090 Ti power draw is very similar to factory RTX 4090 power draw around 450 to 460 watts,

And yeah I did try power limit and it does almost nothing unless I put it below 60% which is unacceptable gimping of performance. If I could almost eliminate the buzzing/whine at 80 to 85% power usage, great. But having to go below 60% or even as low as 50% is not good.

Strange thing is the whine is actually bad in high end AAA games like RDR2 and GTA V even with FPS only 80 to 120. In Furmark bench Mark at 1080P with MSAA at 8X FPS is like 200 to 300 and like no buzz nor whine. Or course FPS goes into 700s with MSAA off in Furmark and it starts to make a different kind of whine which is ok if FPS goes that high as never in real world usage.

I have seen many reports that say Zotac, Gigabyte supposedly have less chance of it and are better. Though the Gigabytes I had all have too much.

And have heard Asus is worst and MSI also has lots of complaints.

Though I have heard some reports of people insisting they have none even with their ear right by an MSI Suprim X. I wonder is the newer batch of cards from MSI better. I know Suprim X has the best VRM of all cards. The Gaming X Trio has 8 less power stages and only 50 amps at that.

 

[gdansk]

I tried another card. "PNY GeForce RTX 4090 24GB XLR8 Gaming VERTO EPIC-X". Overall similar coil whine even with frame rate limit of 144Hz in place. I only have two PCs with 1kw PSUs to test and it's the same sound when powered by either.

I figured this would be the case. Plan to run display/USB cables from my office to my server room seems the only solution now. Superglue beneath the inductors may void the warranty.

 

[Wolverine2349]

Tried another PNY XLR8 and Zotac Airo AMP XTREME

Both have same old too much coil whine/buzzing noise.

Not much difference.

Though Zotac fans are taped as if it can pass coil whine test, I will replace term as the fan motors sound awfully bad

Just testing its whine levels with 1 minute gaming sessions so temps do not overheat since fans are not spinning at all.

So far whine still too much. Though trying power limits so see if it has tangible improvement at something other than 50% or lower which gimps the clock speed to 1200 to 1400 and thus perf tanks. The Gaming OC and PNY had like no improvement in coil whine unless I put power limit to 50%. Even lowering clock speed from 2700 to 2200 did like nothing nor did undervolting.

Trying now on Zotac.

 

[Wolverine2349]

And update undervolting and clocking down a little on Zotac did nothing. Still same metal banging against metal even if somewhat faint annoying whine. Well not faint but faint compared to real metal banging against metal noise that is not coil whine/buzzing/rattling from TDP board.

I may role the dice with a few more Gaming OCs and Aorus Masters and find the quietist one.

Seems Giga cards are best chances for least whine this gen and even if they have it, have it the least and at least have ok fans unlike the noisy Zotac fan motor screeching/humming.

Well the Gigabyte fan default BIOS is annoying as it bursts the speed to 100% so fast but you can manually tune fan curve with Afterburner and fans are fine in that case unlike the Zotac which have a horrible hum the moment the motor turns on.

 

[Wolverine2349]

I used loctite liquid professional super glue on PNY RTX 4090 and let it dry for over a day. I put it on the chokes circled in red.

How to quickly & easily fix coil-whine(coil choke noise)

Ah. Acetone should fix that - it dissolves super glue. While it is true that acetone can dissolve certain types of super glue, it is important to exercise caution when using it on electronic components or circuit boards. Acetone can damage or corrode certain materials and can also short circuit...

www.techpowerup.com

Made no difference sadly.

 

[Wolverine2349]

The reality is almost all high TDP boards have it. You can try different PSUs, it doesn't make much difference. You can try to add a UPS, it doesn't make much difference. Manually replacing inductors until there is no whine can make a difference. But that will void your warranty. You can reduce the target board power, that often helps and doesn't void warranty.

But for context I haven't been able to find a single high-end GPU with reasonable coil whine since Pascal in 2016. And I bought about a dozen.

I really at this point do not care about voiding the warranty if that is what it takes to get rid of coil whine.

Is there any guides on replacing inductors? Is it as easy as finding one that is quiet with the rated capacity of the inductor in place or way more complicated than that?

 

[igor_kavinski]

I really at this point do not care about voiding the warranty if that is what it takes to get rid of coil whine.

What about liquid cooled cards? Would the water dampen or amplify the whine?

 

[Wolverine2349]

What about liquid cooled cards? Would the water dampen or amplify the whine?

Not a fan of water cooled anything. My case is not built for it. Are there any way to replace inductors successfully.

 

[igor_kavinski]

https://archive.techarp.com/showarticledfaf.html?artno=399&pgno=4

2+ hour repair guide:

Videos of coil whine fixes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUzCXF3oMD0

 

[Wolverine2349]

Well tried new PSU and really no difference.

One thing I did notice is that on both PSUs, it feels as if the buzz sound is also coming from the PSU. It is like it is echoing or the GPU is making the PSU buzz as well

Happens on both Asus ROG Thor Platinum II 1000 and eVGA SuperNOVA T2 1600.

Why would that happen and could it be 2 faulty PSUs.

Or do coil whine GPUs make good PSUs emit the same whine noise?

That RTX 4090 whine/electrical buzz noise is not heard from either PSU when GPU is idle. I can tell as I am testing with both PSUs outside my case to try and fix this issue.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Or do coil whine GPUs make good PSUs emit the same whine noise?

Resonance

 

[Wolverine2349]

Resonance

Is there anyway to eliminate that. Is it basically the GPU causing the issue only?

 

[igor_kavinski]

One user killed it with nail polish: https://www.overclock.net/threads/coil-whine-coming-from-gpu-psu-at-fault.1628876/

 

[Wolverine2349]

One user killed it with nail polish: https://www.overclock.net/threads/coil-whine-coming-from-gpu-psu-at-fault.1628876/

Almost 6 years old but yes helpful. And yes on unrelated topic and comes to my mind whenever I see these dates - good old days at my old job when that thread was posted only a few months before the most shocking and torturous office politics ever the following July.

Though thing is it does not seem coil whine was as prevalent then as even stated they last found a high end card with reasonable coil whine during Pascal era. And 1080 Ti is Pascal era. Though not sure how much more TDP 1080 Ti had than regular 1080 as Gdansk stated in their case almost all high TDP boards have coil whine in 2nd post of this thread.


The same truth then as now no rhyme or reason why certain parts cause whine together and others do not. I am heading to someone's house tomorrow who claims their gaming OC has no whine to test mine in their system to see if their setup is good for it. Maybe I will then buy the same PSU and mobo they have if it works. I will also have them test their card in my new setup and test mine and back and forth to see what is concluded.

 

[Timur Born]

Mainboard VRM noise sound level usually correlates to CPU frequency (higher frequency = louder). I imagine something similar applies to GPUs. Furthermore on GPUs the base frequency of noise usually equals the frame-rate (with modulation based on content).

Since both increased over the last years on top of more VRM components being put on boards (both CPU and GPU) this likely increased the prevalence of the problems.

 

[IEC]

Even if your card wails like a banshee at 1000 FPS you can sometimes greatly reduce the whine by dropping the max frequency by 10% or so. And given how basically all the latest GPUs and CPUs are factory OC'd out of the box this will also greatly improve your power efficiency...

I will say that some designs seem to be more prone to whine than others. I get a faint very high pitched coil whine at 1000 FPS on my XFX 7900XTX but at realistic settings never notice it (240Hz 1440p). My previous XFX 7900 XT also did not seem prone to coil whine. YMMV as I've had two identical model GTX 1070 cards from the same manufacturer and one had more noticeable whine than the other.

 

[Wolverine2349]

Even if your card wails like a banshee at 1000 FPS you can sometimes greatly reduce the whine by dropping the max frequency by 10% or so. And given how basically all the latest GPUs and CPUs are factory OC'd out of the box this will also greatly improve your power efficiency...

I will say that some designs seem to be more prone to whine than others. I get a faint very high pitched coil whine at 1000 FPS on my XFX 7900XTX but at realistic settings never notice it (240Hz 1440p). My previous XFX 7900 XT also did not seem prone to coil whine. YMMV as I've had two identical model GTX 1070 cards from the same manufacturer and one had more noticeable whine than the other.

All 4090s I have tried ahve had annoying chainsaw trype electrical buzz at FPS no wear near that high. In fact at FPS even below 100 in AAA games maxed out. It seems more load dependent than FPS with this generation sadly.

I do not need more than 144 FPS as my monitor is only 144Hz refresh rate at 4K.

 

[Wolverine2349]

Update from my end.



Just went to someone's house who says they have no whine on GAMING OC.



I confirmed they are correct ad I could not hear anything and was very little if anythingm



I tested my system same resolution and game and same whine. We tested my card in their system and a little whine but not as bad.



Then tested their card in my system and whine like as bad as my own card.



So something with my system, and worse card. Confirms maybe need to change mobo again. My PSU is 2 month eVGA SuperNOVA T2 1600 and they have 5 year old eVGA 1000 G3. Both Super Flower based Leadex platforms. We did not swap power supplies as that would have been too much trouble.



But it is puzzling what is going on and why the whine on my cards. And yes I have already tried anothet PSU.

 

[Wolverine2349]

My system specs:

*Intel Core i9 13900KS e-cores disabled overclocked to 5.6GHz all core 1.28V LLC6)- Yes tried today running all at stock even with DDR4 XMP off and same old whine maybe slightly worse *Asus Z790-A ROG Strix

motherboard

*2 X 126GB Samsung BThe DDR4 RAM clocked at 4000MHz CL15 1.5V perfectly stable

*Be Quiet Silent Base 802 case

*eVGA SuperNOVA T2 1600 PSU

*And to confirm and test maybe if it was my case causing or amplifying the whine/buzz/chainsaw noise from the coils, got a riser cable and tested it with that so it was not attached to case and still made no difference confirming that is not the case as we both may have thought Their system specs: *Ryzen 9 5950X


*

Asus

X570 Dark Hero motherboard

*32GB DDR4 RAM - Not sure the speed

*eVGA SuperNOVA G2 1000 Watt PSU that is 5-6 years old

*Lian Li 011 Dynamic and yes we had both cases open when doing the tests to listen for noise

Their card very quiet on their system running Timespy or Red Dead Redemption 2 - And no I do not think their CPU is any bottleneck as we ran in 4K on 4K 144Hz monitor and GPU usage was 95% or higher almost all the time and wattage was 350 to 450 and GPU clock speed similar and their card almost silent on their system


Here is the theme. Asus high-end motherboards and a good RTX 4090 card. Dark Hero is one of the highest end AM4 X570 motherboards. I also havfe read good reports from other users of high end Asus boards (Hero for 12th and 13th Gen and Apex mostly) even with MSI Suprim X and also Aorus Master and Gaming OC with no whine though subjective without me being there to hear for myself .

Problem is DDR5 XMP at 6000 or higher been a nightmare for Intel 13th gen on Asus mobos for me with regards to poor stability and WHEAs randomly

 

[Majcric]

I personally use Seasonic and Corsair top tier models.

 

[Wolverine2349]

I personally use Seasonic and Corsair top tier models.

Which ones. Is SeaSonic Focus GX-850 a top one?

 

[Majcric]

Which ones. Is SeaSonic Focus GX-850 a top one?

I would go with the Platinum versions from each company. They are more expensive but generally speaking you get what you pay for. There should be options for more than 1000w if needed. I just quickly threw those up there.
Seasonic PRIME PX-1000, 1000W 80+ Platinum

Corsair HX1000i, HXi Series, 80 PLUS Platinum

 

[gdansk]

I would go with the Platinum versions from each company. They are more expensive but generally speaking you get what you pay for. There should be options for more than 1000w if needed. I just quickly threw those up there.
Seasonic PRIME PX-1000, 1000W 80+ Platinum

Corsair HX1000i, HXi Series, 80 PLUS Platinum

I have a SeaSonic Prime Titanium 1000W and Corsair HX1000 Platinum. The coil whine doesn't change at all between them. Or other models. I have tried multiple different RTX 4090s, multiple different PSUs. It doesn't matter, there is always whine.
I doubt a new PSU will help him but since it's cheap it's worth a shot.

 

[Wolverine2349]

I would go with the Platinum versions from each company. They are more expensive but generally speaking you get what you pay for. There should be options for more than 1000w if needed. I just quickly threw those up there.
Seasonic PRIME PX-1000, 1000W 80+ Platinum

Corsair HX1000i, HXi Series, 80 PLUS Platinum

Well I have an eVGA SuperNOVA P6 1000W coming today from Amazon. Ity is a SeaSonic Focus based PSU and actually better and newer revision. Someone at Overclockers CO UK forums has a X670-E Strix and Ryzen 7700X and they had a Gigabyte Gaming OC that was silent even with ear next to the case under load. They had to return Gaming OC due to bad thermals. I am going to try and replicate that build and hope for silence today.

 

[Wolverine2349]

I have a SeaSonic Prime Titanium 1000W and Corsair HX1000 Platinum. The coil whine doesn't change at all between them. Or other models. I have tried multiple different RTX 4090s, multiple different PSUs. It doesn't matter, there is always whine.
I doubt a new PSU will help him but since it's cheap it's worth a shot.

What about different across different motherboards and which RTX 4090s have you tried? And if across different motherboards, which ones?

 

[Majcric]

I have a SeaSonic Prime Titanium 1000W and Corsair HX1000 Platinum. The coil whine doesn't change at all between them. Or other models. I have tried multiple different RTX 4090s, multiple different PSUs. It doesn't matter, there is always whine.
I doubt a new PSU will help him but since it's cheap it's worth a shot.

Is yours the very loud whine like Wolverine is describing, or the minor buzz that requires your ear next to the card? The only reason I ask is he might be satisfied with a minor buzz. To my knowledge, all cards that require a decent amount of power will have some buzz.