Coil Whine - After adding water block?

craig_t · 9 Jan 2017 at 14:04

Hi, I have an EVGA 1080GTX which has ran fine for a short period that I tried it out gaming with the standard FE fan on. However, when I installed my waterblock as soon as I open a game full screen it gets seriously loud coil whine. Has anyone got any idea why this may be? Was the fan masking this noise? Have I broke it? Have I not put it together correctly? Is my PSU not good enough?

I did install my new CPU at the same time and overclock it, I had the CPU in my signature originally.

I have:
Skylake 6700k @ 4.5ghz
1080GTX FE
3xSSD
D5 pump
2x16gb ram
5xfans
RM750i

Cheers

AtreuS · 9 Jan 2017 at 14:24

SO wait... you changed mainboard, cpu and put a block on?

Im guessing its the power supply but i suggest first removing the over clock and maybe testing with a spare gfx card?

koooowweeee · 9 Jan 2017 at 15:14

Not that you have more FPS in games that could be the cause. Try games with vsync on

D1craig · 9 Jan 2017 at 16:15

Test it with the stock cooler again.

Toss3 · 9 Jan 2017 at 16:16

koooowweeee said:
Not that you have more FPS in games that could be the cause. Try games with vsync on

This

craig_t · 9 Jan 2017 at 16:57

I'll try with vsync on thanks. Some maps I get around the same FPS as I was previously, but it happens even at the menu screen where FPS is always just capped even before hand.

Before I bought the PSU I looked and 750 was more than enough from what I could see for my requirements so hoping it is not that.

Armadillo · 9 Jan 2017 at 17:57

Isn't the the blower on the FE quite loud? I wouldn't be suprised if it was always there, just masked by the fan noise.

Dervious · 9 Jan 2017 at 18:25

As you've removed the standard cooler, and fitted a waterblock, you may have altered the pressure being applied to the VRM chokes by the old cooler. Perhaps that has triggered the coil whine.

Panos · 9 Jan 2017 at 18:56

Dervious said:
As you've removed the standard cooler, and fitted a waterblock, you may have altered the pressure being applied to the VRM chokes by the old cooler. Perhaps that has triggered the coil whine.

What Dervious said is true.

On OC.NET someone told me that months ago. So I had to try thrice to get away the coil whine on my GTX1080 when watercooled it.

And third time did the charm. While when I put back the original cooler, made sure how much pressure to put not to have coil whine and it didn't

(following up the above revelation two months ago, I applied to the watercooled Nano and miraculously cured that one also).

@OP You have to put the correct pressure on the screws.
Also did you apply thermal pads to the 3 vrms on the back of the card near the GPU? Even if no manual states to do so, you have to put, and keep the screws of the backplate bit loose. Not very tight.

craig_t · 9 Jan 2017 at 20:21

I put the pads on the backplate so I believe so, but I will confirm it coveres everything.

How do I know what pressure to put on the screws? Is it just loosen off, test, loosen off test?

Sc00p007 · 9 Jan 2017 at 21:38

Panos said:
What Dervious said is true.

On OC.NET someone told me that months ago. So I had to try thrice to get away the coil whine on my GTX1080 when watercooled it.

And third time did the charm. While when I put back the original cooler, made sure how much pressure to put not to have coil whine and it didn't

(following up the above revelation two months ago, I applied to the watercooled Nano and miraculously cured that one also).

@OP You have to put the correct pressure on the screws.
Also did you apply thermal pads to the 3 vrms on the back of the card near the GPU? Even if no manual states to do so, you have to put, and keep the screws of the backplate bit loose. Not very tight.

Wow thanks for the tip, i didn't know this. My coil whine is so bad it plays through my surround system and even with my speakers turned off, i can still hear it outside the room with the door closed.
Do you think it would be possible for me to try this by gently loosening the screws without removing the block?
Is it more likely to be the back plate or main block?

Panos · 9 Jan 2017 at 21:53

remove the backplate and listen to it

Smffy · 10 Jan 2017 at 17:19

The coils aren't on the back so I don't hold up much hope for that working unless they are somehow making contact/presssure from the front (they shouldnt be as there are cut outs on the block for them).

The whine was probably there when you had the stock cooler but its more heavily shrouded, when you remove it there is clear air around the sides and obviously no fan noise so it becomes more obvious. It happens under high FPS most notably, if its really bad you can get it replaced under warranty by EVGA but as a word of warning you have to rebuild the card to original spec and send off... You might just get another one back that sounds the same, I did on my 980Ti, I now have 2 x 1080 FTW and they have some whine but not as much as the previous.

They will ask you to make doubly sure its not the PSU though so best to test another one if poss?

DRSEire · 10 Jan 2017 at 17:50

Smffy said:
The coils aren't on the back so I don't hold up much hope for that working unless they are somehow making contact/presssure from the front (they shouldnt be as there are cut outs on the block for them).

The whine was probably there when you had the stock cooler but its more heavily shrouded, when you remove it there is clear air around the sides and obviously no fan noise so it becomes more obvious. It happens under high FPS most notably, if its really bad you can get it replaced under warranty by EVGA but as a word of warning you have to rebuild the card to original spec and send off... You might just get another one back that sounds the same, I did on my 980Ti, I now have 2 x 1080 FTW and they have some whine but not as much as the previous.

They will ask you to make doubly sure its not the PSU though so best to test another one if poss?

I noticed this with my txp also.Couldn't hear it prior to the block being fitted but slight whine now with high fps.Not bad but there.Think your idea of it always being there and couldn't be heard because of the shroud/cooler is bang on the money.

Dervious · 10 Jan 2017 at 19:54

Sc00p007 said:
Wow thanks for the tip, i didn't know this. My coil whine is so bad it plays through my surround system and even with my speakers turned off, i can still hear it outside the room with the door closed.
Do you think it would be possible for me to try this by gently loosening the screws without removing the block?
Is it more likely to be the back plate or main block?

If anything, tightening the screws (increasing the pressure on the VRM chokes) is more likely to reduce coil whine.

Also, if coil whine is "transferring" to your surround system speakers, it would seem that your PC power supply could be the culprit. If the PSU is poor regulated, underpowered, or has poor smoothing on it's outputs, the power rails to your PC's audio circuitry could have excessive ripple on them when your graphics card is under load. This could put noise on the PC's audio output which will be audible if it's connected to your surround system. Even if you manage to silence the VRM chokes, it won't prevent the noise from your speakers.

Sc00p007 · 10 Jan 2017 at 20:42

Dervious said:
If anything, tightening the screws (increasing the pressure on the VRM chokes) is more likely to reduce coil whine.

Also, if coil whine is "transferring" to your surround system speakers, it would seem that your PC power supply could be the culprit. If the PSU is poor regulated, underpowered, or has poor smoothing on it's outputs, the power rails to your PC's audio circuitry could have excessive ripple on them when your graphics card is under load. This could put noise on the PC's audio output which will be audible if it's connected to your surround system. Even if you manage to silence the VRM chokes, it won't prevent the noise from your speakers.

Thanks for the advice. However, this is not a whine that was hidden by the original shroud. It shreaks so loud I can hear it outside the room with the door closed. I didn't hear coil whine with the original shroud when i was in the same room. Also, i never had the problem of the whine being amplified by the receiver.
I fitted the gpu block with back plate, threw on a game, then straight away my speakers were shreaking along with the gpu.
I have had coil whine in the past, and i know how it normally transfered when i fitted a block. It would be a little more audible as the card had lost its fan and shroud. But this time it is night and day. Not twice as loud, more lilke 10x.
I bought a 1080 gtx which doesn't cover removing the stock fan. So when this happened, i thought i may have broken the card. So i took it on the chin until i saw the post in here. After a little googling, there are a few reports of people with the same problem as me, EK WB, and it seems the whine did disappear after fiddling with the pressure of the screws or just refitting from scratch.
So as this noise started when the block was fitted, and i never changed psu, i will hold off on checking that until i have had time to pull my card to check.
Psu is Corsair ax860 which hasn't given me problems with my previous cards. But, this will be definitely be the next thing i look at.

Dervious · 10 Jan 2017 at 21:15

Is your PC sound taken from the on board audio to the surround system via a decent quality audio lead ?

If it is, and you get noise through your speakers when your graphics card is under load, then it suggests dodgy audio circuit (or power to the audio circuit) on your motherboard. Having said that, your motherboard appears to have a fairly "high end" audio design.

Panos · 10 Jan 2017 at 21:23

Guys, hearing the coil whine coming from any other device than the graphic card, then there is other issue and nothing to do with the card.

PSU more likely. And the coil whine is actually a combination of card & PSU.
And never ever had coil whine that I could year away from my office, even when let them run few hours the Sky diver benchmark to try cure it.

(it worked on the 295X2 and the GTX780 suprisingly).

Dervious · 10 Jan 2017 at 21:29

I remember with a previous PC that I owned, I'd hear a bit of a buzz or whistle from the speakers when the graphics card was working hard. It wasn't very loud, and could only be heard if there was no sound being played from the PC. I knew that was simply due to ripple on the power supply rail to the audio section on the motherboard.

The other possibility is that there is some magnetic induction from the VRMs getting into the audio circuit, but I think that's rather unlikely.

Sc00p007 · 10 Jan 2017 at 22:02

My sound comes from the gpu. Hdmi into my tv, which then uses arc to send the signal via hdmi to the reciever. I bought a good quality hdmi cable, which probably reduced the sound interference by ~25%.
I also use a USB dac and headphone amp. This has 0 noise.

From a quiet coil whine free (or minimal were I would have to investigate to hear) to screeching loud enough to be heard outside the room. The 1 variable that was changed was the gpu removed, waterblock amd back plate fitted. Nothing else was touched, as I have easy access to the card on an open test bench.