Should my GPU fans be making high-pitched squealing sounds that sound like coil whine?

[AllRed69]

I doubt the person who made this thread will ever see your answer as it seems they deleted their user at some stage.

i don't think I get coil whine on my Red Devil. I know I can hear the fans if they are on, but I wouldn't call it a buzzing noise. my case fans are noctuas so I don't hear those unless I let them all run at same speed. Intakes are 2 Corsair ML120 which are fairly quiet as well . PSU also has a ML fan... Some days the loudest part of PC is the GPU fans.

Think I disable my MSI fan curve, as its not really necessary to have GPU at 25c all the time. Afterburner overrides the radeon settings so even though it thinks its running at defaults, I have to choose quiet and then default again to get fans to stop if Afterburner before.

I had a 2070 Super before this which didn't run its fans unless card was over 60c, it was only in the weeks preceding replacing it that I used https://github.com/Rem0o/FanControl.Releases to control its fan - it doesn't work with AMD cards.

Seems the fans are meant to be quiet

i can find results for coil whine on the card, but not noisy fans

coil whine can be reduced by controlling frame rate. Its only high frame rates that normally cause it

I have set radeon chill up so my max frame rate is 143 and my minimum is 141. My screen max is 144 but I have seen it mentioned that running 1 less just makes it less likely to cause tearing, Setting a max might also reduce coil whine and could explain why I haven't heard it.

thanks again for your reply Colif. i really don't know if it's really fan bearing making the noise or coil whine? did it even possible for GPU to get coil whine without load and only fan spinning using Afterburner? i just do the test again and record it. i'm upload the video here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1joLQP4NKGhGAtfGe6iT60CRTV_oMXcuV/view
can you help me hear it too? thank you.

when i try to stop the fan using my finger before they spin (before i turn on the fan with Afterburner), i hear small buzzing in the fan cable area (fan cable that connect with PCB), but it so small.

 

[Colif]

Even with noise cancelling headphones on, I can't hear anything unusual on your video. It just sounds like fans spinning. I expect the buzz is normal if you impeding the fan from running.

 

[AllRed69]

Even with noise cancelling headphones on, I can't hear anything unusual on your video. It just sounds like fans spinning. I expect the buzz is normal if you impeding the fan from running.

you can hear between 0.54 - 1.08 there psssttt noise, but i think it just hard to hear in form of video? i dunno if fan making psst / bzztt noise really normal as my old gtx 1070 with 3 fan never make psstt / bzztt noise.

tho yesterday i just send my gpu for RMA to local distributor, and i'm still waiting for their reply. actually don't want to deal with RMA, but ' brand new' gpu with problem just doesn't sit right with me.

anyway thank you again for your reply Colif. i'll update my progress and outcome with RMA for future reference if someone read this post in the future.

 

[Colif]

It might just be a bad fan. shame Powercolor don't use the fans that Sapphire do on some of their models, you can just remove them and replace easy.

 

[AllRed69]

Ok after 1 week pushing and convincing the local distributor to replace my unit as it was 'brand new', i finally get my replacement. The noise still there even with case closed but reduced to 50% and i can barely hear it now even in silent room. Coil whine also reduced when gaming with this replacement unit.

So the conclusion is:
Fan not actually faulty or bad but have coil whine (yes even without load / game running, the fan making psstt / bzzt noise even on lowest fan speed (disable zero RPM mode with Afterburner/Adrenalin)), as my coil whine also reduced when gaming (undervolting it make it more silent). Maybe different PSU might help get rid or reduced the whine even more, tho i'm not really bother to change my PSU for now (it's MSI MPG A850GF 80+ Gold), and will try to bring my GPU to my friend house for testing (he got Seasonic Prime 850w 80+ Plat).

And that's it for the update.

 

[Colif]

i set my fans to always run at 30% speed or faster in Afterburner (and override the zero rpm mode). Its difficult for me to work out which fans I hear in my case. I think the only fans I hear now are my two 120mm intake fans on the AIO that are running at 900rpm. the rear and exhaust fans are only running at about 400rpm. GPU fan is on 500ish. (GPU really doesn't care about temps but running its fan cools my nvme which is an added bonus)

Not sure I can actually hear coil whine, even on videos about the subject. It could be my hearing isn't good enough... concerts in my past might be to blame there.

Or it might have been my choice in parts, I went from a Seasonic PSU to a Corsair one at start of year (when I got 7900 XT) so I might just have parts that don't cause the problem.

Have you restricted refresh rate in Adrenalin so GPU doesn't try to run screen faster than it actually can? High refresh rates are known to be one reason for getting coil whine.