Coil whine (I think) - sometimes

[cman]

I have a 3950x, 570board, 32gb Ram and a 1080ti. The 1080ti and my power supply (1000W corsair) are from my previous system. I never heard any coil whine before. When I fired up Divinity 2 I could clearly hear it. I think it's from the gfx card, but not 100% sure. The frequency changes as the camera changes, which I think rules out the power supply. The thing is when I run it in full screen window mode and select the desktop, the whine goes away (as does the sound from the game). This does not make sense as everything is still being rendered (game not minimized). I removed my Creative soundcard and am now using the motherboard sound (MSI Meg X570 Unify), and I still hear the whine. I disconnected all fans except for my cpu fan (Bequiet Dark Rock Pro 4) - still get the whine. Everything in the system is high-end and I never heard the gpu whine before. It's in a Bequiet 801 case - I really want a quiet system... so this is VERY annoying.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

 

[TonTom]

Last time I experienced coil whine was on a PSU. It was constant though with the pitch changing depending what I was going on screen at the time.

surely there’s a phone app around that can show noise levels. If so grab put your phone near each of the components and see when the noise level reaches its highest.

 

[tyler_jrb]

Just ensure you are running the game at native refresh rate and not say 1000frames in the menu. And as above you can use a phone or paper funnel to pinpoint the source of noise.

Other than that if it is the gpu there isnt really much that can be done. I’ve gone through the whole process of trying literally 10+ cards due to unbearable whine and they all have it to some degree. As well as several motherboards/PSU’s, power conditioners, UPS no difference.

In the end I just put my pc in a wall cupboard. It’s still there but it’s completely inaudible as it’s now hidden away. Before it was just unbearable.

You can undervolt the card to around 1800mhz which will reduce noise drastically if the issue is coilwhine.