GPU Coil Whine? Try This. 

With GPU shortages being as bad as it is, I don't mind if my GPU speaks Swahili as long as I get one.

That 5700 sounds like it's in pain Undervolting and capping fps really made a difference

"Check the reviews for the card you're interested in first" Literally none of the reviews I've looked at in the past few years bother to mention coil whine.

Another important tip is to let the GPU work at high loads for a couple of weeks. The inductors seem to be settling in and the coil whine is reduced significantly.

Imagine having a bunch of Noctua fans just end up being a victim of coil whine

Hello induction, my old friend I've come to shriek with you again Because a system sharply beeping Left coil whine while I was sleeping And the tinnitus that was planted in my brain Still remains It makes me prone, to violence

As a former Radeon VII owner, I can't begin to tell you how much PTSD the intro to this video gives me... 😫

"Should you maybe return your GPU?" Can't return what I can't buy.

Can we get a review video of your cat?

Thank you so much for the countdown back to regular sound! Love that small touch.

what worked for me is leaving my computer in some menus of the games where FPS is running away on you past 300 fps, and leaving it over nights, it basically warms up the coils and eventually "works" them into the more enjoyable sound. Doesn't work with every card, but worked for some cards for me. I also used my GPUs extensively for gaming, and over time the coil became less and less. Another huge thing is to have a good power strip AC conditioner, such as Furman with RFI shielding implemented. This will help a lot as well. Clean AC power going to your GPU is also depended on good power supply inside of your computer, I have EVGA 1000w Platinum series. Some cards will buzz more, but gaming extensively will likely help the sound to disappear. Changing the frequency of the card can make a difference too. Having a slightly less or more voltage can change the pitch or remove the buzz. There are about 5-6 variables, and if my suggestions don't work, then the card's design is such. My GTX 1070ti buzzed a lot, GTX 1080 buzzed less, and RTX 3070 from Gigabyte doesn't buzz for me to perceive it, unless I walk up to the computer and put my ear to it. Path of thinking: 1. Clean ac power going to computer 2. Clean/Great power supply of platinum or titanium certified levels. 3. NO dc power adapters plugged into the same outlet as PSU or laying on your computer wires anywhere. 4. Luck and blessings from Gods above That is all. The rest you can tinker with until you can either fix it or not.

The sound of my life

There is another method of dampening coil whine or possibly getting rid of it depending on severity. If you are experienced with taking apart you GPU. Apply a thermally conductive silicone on and in-between the inductors, it'll dampen the sound of your coil whine. Instead of the vibrations coming from the coil inside the inductor happening freely inside the housing, itll happen inside a housing dampened by silicone on the outside. The thermal conductivity will still allow heat to transfer to the open air as well. Use silicone based thermal conductive products so you are able to peel it off. DO NOT use thermal conductive adhesive, only thermal conductive silicone.

Thanks a lot for this! Just got my 3080 shipped (ordered in September) and was about to send it back due to the massive coil wine (even at just 100 fps). Then found your video, undervolted the card and it's the most quiet GPU I've ever seen! The TUF cooler is superb. Absolutely happy with the purchase now!

I will always say this. You make the content for the questions I ask myself and need answers too. One of the best channels on youtube hands down.

RX 5700's whine resembles with dial-up modem connection from the '90s 😊 By the way, it is not fair to put a relatively old Rx590 to a 300fps cap as it already has a greater workload than newer gen GPUs. If you want to lower coil whine on older GPUs, then you need to set it at lower cap values.

When I throw on fluid simulations, my Titan Xp goes weeeeeeeeee... I'm thinking about writing software that triggers coil whine in specific frequencies to make the GPU play music :D

PSU swap also can help, perxonal experience, swapped some sketchy HIPER to Seasonic and it was first thing I've noticed.

The undervolting GPU thing is the best info I've ever got from this channel thank you!

Sweet, Ali! I have an itx 2060 super and the coil whine is pretty damn bad. I made a K39 based off of your review on it, with an MSI z490I, 10700K, and the 2060S. Your undervolting content took my build completely to the next level, looking forward to watching the rest of this video.

♥ the countdown at the end of the comparisons. Ears saved 🙏

A friend loaned me a 1660 TI a while ago, and I found not only was it very erratic in terms of performance, but it did make more coil whine than I found to be acceptable. I tried out your undervolting tutorial from a while back and it completely stabilized performance, and took noise levels way down, all while running much cooler in general. So I highly recommend undervolting for noise sensitive people like myself. It is probably one of the most useful tricks to know about when it comes to tuning a PC.

Yo, thank you kindly for this video. I just got a 3070ti FE 2 weeks ago and during this last update to Tiny Tinas, it started this GPU Coil whine and FREAKED me out. After watching your video, I applied a mere negative 5-10MHz core undervolt and it made this issue tolerable and down to normal electrical noise. This video was a massive help! Thank you again!

very informative and to the point. tyvm for not taking 20 min to provide one solution but rather less than 7 with multiple solutions and multiple cards tested. Two thumbs up

I literally contacted the store I bought my GPU from regarding this to return it, and then this video shows up hahahaha

Great video! I was wondering what your thoughts are on "undervolting" just by applying a core clock offset (i.e. +100Mhz) and then adjusting the Power Limit % in Afterburner, depending on your target power consumption (and therefore core voltage). I feel like that is a much easier as well as versatile way of dynamically limiting your card depending on the game you're playing (for example, you might not need the extra 100-200MHz when playing Valorant or CS:GO, but you most definitely will if you're playing Cyberpunk). The only thing you will then need to change is the power limit and your GPU will boost accordingly. I really like your content and I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

How are all these scenes so colorful and beautiful, even tho it's just like pretty basic gaming setups.. this is kinda inspiring!

Thanks for the video. May I ask what is the shortcut key combination to flatern the voltage frequency curve beyond the selected point?

I returned a 2060 at 380€ in early december cause this reason, and now i understand the terrible mistake i made. 6 months later, still without pc

Contrary to what you said in the video, video cards of the same make and model can have different amounts of coil whine. It may depend on the components used, though, as various video card vendors can use different components for the same card.

HOLY SHIT, THANK YOU. i don't mind the noise, cus i cant hear with the headset, but I thought my gpu was broken and i was so worried, im so happy is nothing i need to worry about. everyday im more thankfull for finding your channel, keep it up!!!

I really like that in 3:30 that you have a text is says "Back in 3 2 1" I was using pretty high volume to hear that Coil whine and was turning down when I saw that text and know when to turn my volume down. great video

Identify the coil that's whining, apply a drop of RTV high-temp silicone sealant to it. It works a treat. I had to do this to an SFX power supply recently. Cleared it right up.

Try adding some thermal pads on the coils to absorb the vibrations or stop them from resonating with the PCB. Similar to how silicone is used on bigger inductors (smaller ones that are encased should already have a filling but even those can whine/vibrate/resonate).

The quality of your content is so great man, and you keep getting better

Some times in the bios there's a section regarding the power supply and it's settings. I forget what it's called (maybe they have different names for different companies). But I found that turning off the power saving, or efficiency feature of the power supply, helped get rid of some of the whining.

My day turned optimal after Optimum Techs video!

I know with the Xbox series x they removed coil whine by putting some globs of silicon around the inductors to absorb the vibration, so I wonder if a mod like this would be possible for GPUs

Thanks for the vid. I hadn’t considered an FPS cap. I have a 3090FE with really bad coil whine and I tried following your undervolting guide in the video you did. Unfortunately it didn’t seem to make much of a difference in my case. Luckily I don’t hear it when gaming with my headphones. However I think I’m going to switch the undervolt profile back on, as I have another issue. I think my VRAM is getting really hot during gaming. I need to use some monitoring software to be sure but basically the card stays around 65 degrees c, with the gpu at 100%. However every now and then the fans ramp up to max (which is very loud) even though the temps (monitored through ICue) haven’t changed. I’m going to download and run HW info to be sure, but it would explain a lot. I don’t see any performance issues just have to deal with noise that I can hear through my headphones. Have you seen anything on this? Would be really interested to see a video on thermal pad replacement on a FE if you are looking for ideas.

The quality of your channel is so good man🤤 Even the colors and the editing! Are you still working with Da Vinci resolve?

I would love to see hardware modifications to reduce coil whine, such as using some foam to reduce vibrations like they do for music/ sound

You are sooooooooooo underrated man! Love your content, youre definitely one of my favorite tech youtubers :)

thx for making a video about this topic! this problem has been around for too long and big youtuber ignore it...

What about when you under-clock and under-volt your gpu? Would it be worth to test it out and see if it works?

anyone know what wallpaper he is using on his monitors? Looks amazing

I had this problem really bad on one of my old rigs. I was able to completely resolve the issue by disabling one of the cpu power saving options in the bios. I think EIST was causing the GPU to whine, if I do remember correctly. Unfortunately, I don't think it can be disabled on alot of motherboards.

This is amazing video, never thought about undervolting as a possible solution.

4:58 my graphi csounds like this(3060), like a scratched disc and the sound of a scratched disc is heard more, the electric one is not heard much, I have no problems living with that sound if it is not going to spoil my video card, do you recommend something please

For Ampere, here's what you can try, courtesy of Valaint671​30@HFR : - set clocks/tdp/voltage at highest possible and safe value - run Unigine Heaven Benchmark at lowest settings (try 720 or 1080 preset) to get highest possible FPS - roam around searching for the place that makes the card scream the most (usually castle or dragon statue) - let it run for an hour, go do something else meanwhile - if CW gets better, do it again (could take a few sessions) - go back to your normal settings/UV and use it normally My 3080FE whine was less pronounced after doing that, as well as for others who tried it on different cards.

I just got a 3070 ti and after having a 1070 that would rarely make any coil whine, it seems like this one will be much louder. I guess it’s not a big deal though, as long as it’s not doing any damage or anything.

This reminds me of my fanless zero moving parts PC in an industrial case, with SSD would sound like an HDD under load, it was caused by all the capacitors being on one side of the board which would flex due to thermal expansion at audible frequencies under load. But a 50 or 60Hz tone is far less annoying than a higher pitch whine.

5:26 that back in 321 thing saved my ears there I had just turned the volume all the way up!

Surprised you didn't mention PSU's. I replaced an old bottom of the barrel bronze Corsair PSU with a high end platinum from Seasonic last year and it completely eliminated any audible coil whine in my system.

A friend told me he fixed his coil whine by running his GPU on 100% usage for a long period of time. He used to loop Benchmarks, for example TimeSpy, to keep up the usage. After doing that for a while, he notice a decreasing in coil whine. Further than that, I saw this method being used by other users in forums/threads. I'm not sure if it's the right way to do it, but those with major coil whine problems could try it on their one risk.

My PSU does this when the PC is under load. Is that a bad thing or normal/expected? I have a new Seasonic focus gm-850w gold semi-modular. It is clearly audible even at 4 yards away with the side panels attached. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

First time PC builder here, this is great information, I always assumed coil whine was something to do with the heatsink fins and how air went through them...cool video 👍

May I also add, the PSU also has a big impact on the pitch of the Coilwhine, I tested 5 different PSU from BQ, Corsair and SS from gold to titanium and noticed SS and Corsair were among the quietest around, the pitch level went down by a lot. Maybe it got something to do with two separate PCI-E Power cable? Because BQ, which uses just one ist among the loudest I witnessed. I also want to use this for a small question, I noticed my EVGA XC3 3080 gets noisy (coilwhine) when the boost kicks in, FPS in this case don't matter, the moment the boost goes up to 1800 the coilwhine is present, I changed he GC, PSU and RAM. It all started with my 1070 which ran silent for 4 years until recently on a new x570 mainbaord.

5:24 thinking of adding that timer made me happy :D +1 sub

Hey, Can you do a Video for chipset thermal pad replacement on the asus x570i? My board is missing the thermal pad, there is only a Small piece left over and the chipset fan is the loudest thing on my setup

Is it possible to mitigate coil whine on a PSU similar to how it can be done on a GPU?

That video quality is absolutely insanely delicious and God damn amazing.

Just use a framerate limiter so that the framerate can't shoot up. Manufacturers consider coil whine perfectly normal and it's basically unavoidable under certain usage scenarios in electronics.

Your videos are so perfectly put together. Keep it up mate!

I always thought it was something with writing on the disk but this makes sense. Glad it's normal....relieved

I'm so lucky I don't have this problem at all. I can't even get a GPU now.

Hey! One thing you didn't cover that worked for my 2080 Ti was adjusting the tightness of some of the backplate screws. Kind of like the RX 590 in your example, it's probably hit or miss depending on the model of card. I've also noticed it depends on load as well, not just frame rate.

@optimumtech would love any SFF case recommendations that are better for isolating coil whine due to GPU placement / no mesh etc.

Great videos ! I always undervolt my gpus so I hardly ever got a screaming GPU. Now, I understand why ! Thanks !

4:58 when a bee gets inside your pc😂

Something weird to note is that coil whine can go away by its own. I have a rog rx 590 which used to have major coil whine, but after several months of use it almost dissppeared, and im running it with OC.

I have a Titan RTX, I got absurdly noisy after watercooling. Do you have a guide to undervolt this particular model?

I have a RTX 3060 TUF. The card really makes no noise at all when gaming even under load. But as soon as I start to stream over steam to a tv with steam link something starts whining loud enough that I have to use headphone in order to not hear it. Is this normal?

I’ve heard that coil whine is a result of using cheaper inductors with coils that haven’t been dipped in epoxy resin. Had they splurged a bit and used more expensive inductors with epoxy dipped coils there wouldn’t be coil whine or it would at least be greatly reduced. Would like to see that confirmed.

how can you read my mind like that?

I don't even have this issue but I will watch EVERY optimum tech video

Hey Ali, do you mind sharing what test bench you use? Thanks!

Amazing content! Keep it up

Really appreciate the countdown so headphone users don't shit themselves.

I have the issue where my GPU's coil whine seems to be picked up by my sound card, and then actually creates noise IN my headphones. Have you seen this issue before?

So basicly if i have a RTX 3060ti from MSI then the same model from MSI might have the same? so to avoid it i need to look an other Brand? Like EVGA? or all 3060ti will have it and i need a other modell number like 3060 normal or 3070?

I would like to mention that this problem goes away over time. Since its caused by the characteristics and selection of components (Coils mainly) which sometimes resonate at audible frequencies. As they age and wear their resonance frequencies will change overtime causing the coil whine to go away.

undervolt doesnt always mean less power draw, the card could end up drawing more amps therefore same wattage. In circuitry amps is usually what contributes to heat, either way if the card is consuming same amount of wattage then heat coming out will be roughly the same, differences from heat generated by the chip taking in more voltages minimal the more wattage the moarr heat. What i was saying is off topic tho, in this case yes it helps with wine on certain board designs. watched some of your previous vids its abit misleading what you said about undervolting previously, in stead it should be if you reduce the clocks and voltage together then the system will run cooler because its drawing less power due to if any chip is running near max out, to squeeze the last 10 percent of clock require the card to draw significantly more power, basically dial the card back abit and you will enjoy afar cooler and more efficient system or also to keep really power-hungry cards from throttling in small systems without taking much hit on performance.

Would changing thermal pads on the VRM's change coil whine?

I have heard that water blocks exaslcerbate the issue, what is your experience?

Watching reviews doesn't really help, going by those, coil whine should be almost non-existent. And except EVGA, I don't think there are a whole lot of companies that accept "reasonable" coil whine as a reason for RMA.

Or, and I know I'm being silly, the actual MANUFACTURERS could use decent inductors and mount them properly when they build the cards.

What do I do if I still have coil whine at idle with an undervolt? 3080 FE

My 3080ti xc3 started it after I installed an EK vector block. The stock heatsink actually had some taped feet that made contact with the coils. EK didn't even come close. So now I have ~6mm of thermal tape on top of them and an additional mm over everything but the ram spots under the EK backplate. (Leaving it slightly loose) That has tamped it down to reasonable levels in the Ncase. Interestingly, I shed about 7C on my BF5 temps somewhere in this process. I'll call that profit, unless this lets the smoke out sometime in the future.

I must thank you for those tips. Now my Nr200 is almost silent, and the GPU is cooler ! The coil whine of the 3080 in certain games is horrible, but now it's nearly gone. Keep doing that amazing content of yours ! 👍

My 3090 founders has pretty loud whine. Thanks for this video it is informative. I will play around with lowering the voltage.

i need help, i hear that sound but in my heaphones when i unpause any game, i hear this only when playing games, if the game is paused i dont hear it and the sound comes from my headphones

I posted a video recently with my coil whine on my 2060 Super. It just happened randomly and I was thinking if it didn’t make a noise before, how come it started to just make one? I literally did nothing to it

If only we had the luxury of being able to pick and choose the brand of card we want... Hard enough to get one at all.

This came in clutch after having this problem for nearly a year!

can you give us a review on the final a4000? I have been thinking about buying them. Getting your perspective will be appreciated.

I recently took out my ASUS ROG STRIX 3080 OC out of my system to install a secondary NVME drive, and I noticed that my GPU's coil whine is abnormally loud when I play games. Why is that happening after I took it out and reinstalled it?

People that dislike this man's video are purely jealous of him, I can't believe the amount of work this guy puts in his videos! The quality of the video screen recordings the video quality of him speaking everything from lighting to sound is just so well thought out and well planned! This has become my favourite channel on RU-vid & one of the very few channels who's upload notification puts a smile on my face.

im very late and i know that by 1 year but i need to know why my card sounds as if its cutting something yet the fans arent moving and i cant find the soultion anywhere im worried that i broke something while optimizing my pc

I have a 3060 msi ventus 2x and I get an awful coil whine with even just 72 fps cap. Any other suggestions?

Good video, like the part with undervoltage , it works perfect