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

[electrowind]

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 electrical components if it comes into contact with them.

If you need to remove super glue from a circuit board or electronic component, it is generally best to use a specialized adhesive remover that is designed for use with electronics. These products are less likely to damage the materials or components on the board, and are formulated to be safe to use on sensitive electronics.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Please update us on how this works out for you!

Also, @lexluthermiester I think this thread is absolutely fascinating and I'm hoping it'll become the fix we need for coil whine. Kind of insane how people just live with it and didn't really try to find any solutions for it.

Right? As was said elsewhere, been doing this for a little longer than 20years. It's been a great fix!

And Welcome to TPU!

They just wrote to me that this noise is considered normal as it doesn't affect the performance of the card, so RMA is out of the question.

Yeah, that's an example of manufacturer execs being greedy and not caring about consumer experience.

 

[Mussels]

I'm more worried about if something goes wrong with these glued components and they need to be changed, but they're stuck to the board and the board can't be serviced. removing the cooler is one thing, modifying the board is another. They will always try to find a reason to reject warranty repair.

I'll probably end up doing it, but I'd like to see more success stories on 4090 cards first.

As for warranty being void in my region, I'm based in Switzerland and we have the same rights from this point of view as Germany. A wording in an email from MSI seems to indicate that changing cooler, paste, pads is ok, as long as the new cooler has as good or better performance than the original, and the card is returned to its original state before RMA.

superglue is not permanent, you can remove it with nail polish remover in a few wipes, then wipe that up with whatever cleaning wipes you use

We cant remove anything wicked up inside the chokes - but you can certainly remove any excess on the outside and clean the unit up

 

[Shrek]

Will the original coil enamel be safe with acetone?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Will the original coil enamel be safe with acetone?

That is a good question. If it's real enamel, then yes. But if it's a varnish type, maybe not..

 

[Wolverine2349]

I am so glad I found this thread.

I am so badly trying to get a quiet coil whine/buzz free RTX 4090 under an intense 4K gaming load with 144FPS/Hz monitor like Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTZ V and Control and Cybr Punk etc. . I have tried like 13 different 4090 cards. Mostly Gigabyte Gaming OCs and PNY cards. Also a couple of Zotacs and one Asus and MSI card.

I have either returned or sold all of the ones for a little loss as all had too much whine even when undervolting. So frustrated to try so many cards and all had a coil whine/buzz/grinding chainsaw type noise under AAA games maxed out at 4K even under 144 FPS and even as low as 60s of FPS.

The Asus and MSI of course were the worst though not as bad as the horror stories of people saying they hear the whine/buzz in the other room. But within 7 feet or maybe a bit more of enclosed sound dampened foamed Silent Base 802 case, the whine/buzz was absolutely loud on Asus and MSI cards. It was only mildly or modestly at best better on PNY cards. And it was a little better and less on Gigabyte and Zotac cards than PNY. But still even the Gigabyte cards had too much audible buzz/whine from the coils or capacitors. Even undervolted to 0.85V and clock reduced on last Gaming OC to 2340MHz performance dropped 20 to 25% and buzz/whine was very faint, but the whisper chainsaw like noise was still in the background and a bit too much.

I had a Gigabyte Gaming OC 3090 Ti and it was so quiet and had such faint whine it was inaudible in my closed Silent Base 802 housing with mesh front only 3-5 feet from the case. And if there was any audible at all, it was only if I turned my head certain ways and was like a mild change of pitch in dead air or slight at worst minor barely ear ring. I expect to find a 4090 as quiet under all lods and why not given they use same 450 watt power consumption as all 4090s none of them I pushed passed that even though they have 600 watt limits.

So I see someone stated they had a whiny Gaming OC 4090 and made it silent with the Super Glue and also a PNY silent with Super Glue. Anyone have any advice on these cards and are they the ones to buy and successfully fully silenced with Super Glue on the right inductors? Unlike Asus which was better but still whined even after Super Glue method.

I do not care at this point if I void warranty. I can afford it if I damage a card and am out $1600 a few times. I just want a whine/buzz free 4090 card to stick in my system and call it a day that works and is very quiet in a quiet room with PC speakers off and case using quiet 1000 RPM fans. Thats how my Gaming OC 3090 Ti was so want a 4090 the same or better quietness.

Help greatly advised.

Thanks

 

[lexluthermiester]

My recommendation is either Galax, Zotac or PNY. Those seem to have the least level of whine and respond well to being superglue-sealed.

 

[Wolverine2349]

My recommendation is either Galax, Zotac or PNY. Those seem to have the least level of whine and respond well to being superglue-sealed.

What is the best type of Super glue to use and do you have a PCB picture of the coils I need and where to put the super glue on the PNY XLR8 which I can get very soon. Well I would go with PNY as Zotac has horrible fans and Galax hard to get a hold of assuming they all respond equally well to Super glue for complete silence.

 

[lexluthermiester]

What is the best type of Super glue to use

The brand name SuperGlue is best, but any liquid type generic brand will work.

do you have a PCB picture of the coils I need and where to put the super glue on the PNY XLR8 which I can get very soon.

See the PM, I highlighted the appropriate chokes. I'll post them here for everyone to reference.


Again, the chokes highlighted by red are the most likely to make noise, the ones in yellow less likely but still possible.

 

[Wolverine2349]

The brand name SuperGlue is best, but any liquid type generic brand will work.

See the PM, I highlighted the appropriate chokes. I'll post them here for everyone to reference.
View attachment 285120
View attachment 285121

Awesome cool. Out of those 2 which is more successful in obtaining complete silence with Super Glue. You had mentioned only Galax was 100% silent in your PM, but stated Palit and Zotac still had slight noise but were much better. How does the PNY super glue silencing success compare to Galax, Palit, and Zotac form your experience?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Galax is the best, but PNY came out well too. Something to consider, as mentioned in the PM, Inno3D seems to be having a good go in the lack of coil-while as I haven't read about anyone having problems with those cards yet.

EDIT: For perspective, my sample size is low. At this point I've only worked on about a dozen 4090's and a few 4080's.

 

[athenaesword]

Galax is the best, but PNY came out well too. Something to consider, as mentioned in the PM, Inno3D seems to be having a good go in the lack of coil-while as I haven't read about anyone having problems with those cards yet.

EDIT: For perspective, my sample size is low. At this point I've only worked on about a dozen 4090's and a few 4080's.

I didn’t know u did so many 4090 that’s a pretty decent sample size! Did you have any that failed? Did u get a chance to work on Asus tuf cards?

 

[Wolverine2349]

Per this review and testing here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/100gxul
One of the Inno3D 4090 cards is very bad with coil whine though the other is pretty good. Though only one sample size of each.

Though why is there such a lottery among even cards of the same brand. Though it does seem some brands are much more susceptible than others. Particularly this gen it is Asus and MSI. And last gen it was Asus mostly.

Though this gen they all seem to have too much whine, though Gigabyte overall at stock is much more tame than MSI and Asus and on par with PNY or maybe slightly better at stock without using super glue method. Though Super Glue changes everything.

And last gen it seemed there were more cards that were overall quiet at stock than this gen in the lottery particularly from Gigabyte and MSI. And Asus was disaster last gen. Not sure about others.

@lexluthermiester - You say Galax came out best with super glue method and PNY came out well too on 4090 cards? Would you say Galax was best and PNY 2nd best and PNY better than Palit and Zotac even though not as good as Galax after Super Glue applied for the 4090 samples you tried?

 

[Shrek]

I have either returned or sold all of the ones for a little loss

Hopefully you told the buyer that they were treated with superglue

 

[Wolverine2349]

Hopefully you told the buyer that they were treated with superglue

No I never treated any of them with Super Glue. They had too much whine/buzz for my liking under full load, so I sold them. This is before I considered using Super Glue and was hoping to find a whine/buzz free card on its own without having to physically modify it, but after so many tries, I give up and see super glue as only hope.

And for the ones I sold of course I did not tell the buyer because of coil whine as reason lol!! But I did not modify the PCB at all.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Did you have any that failed?

Failed, in the context of this kind of procedure, is somewhat subjective. About half were totally silenced, the rest were at varying degrees of "muffled". Only one was what I would call "still too noisy". However, compared to what it was originally, the owner was still very satisfied and said she could live with it given the noise of the rest of her system(OC'd AlderLake with lots of fans).

All in all, I haven't had a full on complete failure yet as even at worst there was still at least some level of improvement. Now this statement applies to all RTX4000 series cards I've worked on, not just the 4090's. The 4080's have coil whine as well.

Though why is there such a lottery among even cards of the same brand.

This is why I said it can be very random. Some batches of coils are better than others. It's like silicon lottery but for choke coils and it's just as unpredictable if not more so.

@lexluthermiester - You say Galax came out best with super glue method and PNY came out well too on 4090 cards? Would you say Galax was best and PNY 2nd best and PNY better than Palit and Zotac even though not as good as Galax after Super Glue applied for the 4090 samples you tried?

Put as directly as possible, I can not objectively state that one is better than the other at this time as my sample size is just too low. However historically, Gigabyte, MSI and ASUS have all been the noisiest cards by far and the most difficult to silence. EVGA, Galax, PNY and Zotac have historically been the best cards to buy if you want silent coils and the easiest to fix if they do make noise.

So if we're going to go on historical experience, then yes, Galax, Zotac and PNY would be my personal choice going forward, given EVGA's depressing exit...

 

[Wolverine2349]

Failed, in the context of this kind of procedure, is somewhat subjective. About half were totally silenced, the rest were at varying degrees of "muffled". Only one was what I would call "still too noisy". However, compared to what it was originally, the owner was still very satisfied and said she could live with it given the noise of the rest of her system(OC'd AlderLake with lots of fans).

All in all, I haven't had a full on complete failure yet as even at worst there was still at least some level of improvement. Now this statement applies to all RTX4000 series cards I've worked on, not just the 4090's. The 4080's have coil whine as well.


This is why I said it can be very random. Some batches of coils are better than others. It's like silicon lottery but for choke coils and it's just as unpredictable if not more so.

Are the better batches of coils better for less whine, or better for power delivery or both?

Cause there are some cards with excellent inductors for power delivery and stability, but they whine like a b!tch. Where as some are less stable but good enough power delivery and are quiet. Some have both.

Have you seen a 4090 with no whine or buzz under full load without having to Super glue modify it? or have all had audible coil whine/buzz/grinding/chainsaw noise even with card in enclosed case if you are next to the case, its just the degree of how bad it is?

 

[lexluthermiester]

See above edit..

Have you seen a 4090 with no whine or buzz under full load without having to Super glue modify it?

Oh yeah. You seem to be having bad luck or are one of those people with a heightened sensitivity to high frequency noise. Perhaps a combination of those two factors.

You may not prefer Zotac, but they have a good track record for coil whine. The fan noise from their cards have never bothered me personally, though I always preferred EVGA... Galax and PNY are very good choices.

 

[Wolverine2349]

Failed, in the context of this kind of procedure, is somewhat subjective. About half were totally silenced, the rest were at varying degrees of "muffled". Only one was what I would call "still too noisy". However, compared to what it was originally, the owner was still very satisfied and said she could live with it given the noise of the rest of her system(OC'd AlderLake with lots of fans).

All in all, I haven't had a full on complete failure yet as even at worst there was still at least some level of improvement. Now this statement applies to all RTX4000 series cards I've worked on, not just the 4090's. The 4080's have coil whine as well.


This is why I said it can be very random. Some batches of coils are better than others. It's like silicon lottery but for choke coils and it's just as unpredictable if not more so.


Put as directly as possible, I can not objectively state that one is better than the other at this time as my sample size is just too low. However historically, Gigabyte, MSI and ASUS have all been the noisiest cards by far and the most difficult to silence. EVGA, Galax, PNY and Zotac have historically been the best cards to buy if you want silent coils and the easiest to fix if they do make noise.

So if we're going to go on historical experience, then yes, Galax, Zotac and PNY would be my personal choice going forward, given EVGA's depressing exit...

Interesting that historically the 3 biggest and most well known motherboard makers have good motherboards, but bad whine on video cards/ Where as less known brands that do not make many if any mobos have less or no whine on GPUs.

See above edit..


Oh yeah. You seem to be having bad luck or are one of those people with a heightened sensitivity to high frequency noise. Perhaps a combination of those two factors.

You may not prefer Zotac, but they have a good track record for coil whine. The fan noise from their cards have never bothered me personally, though I always preferred EVGA... Galax and PNY are very good choices.

I have already tried 2 Zotac AMP AIRO cards and both had awful sounding fan motors at only 30%. It sounded like a 20 year old PC case fan or worse than that.

I had taped the fans so they would not spin to test one for coil whine/buzz thinking if it was good in that area, I would keep it rip the fans off and try and put custom ones on. And I limited game time to 1 to 2 minutes to make sure it would not overheat as fans were not able to spin. And sadly the whine/buzz was still too much though one of the better ones along with some of the Gigabyte cards in terms of coil whine/buzz. So I scrapped that idea and returned one of the cards and sold the other. Now Super glue is next to try for a card.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Interesting that historically the 3 biggest and most well known motherboard makers have good motherboards, but bad whine on video cards/ Where as less known brands that do not make many if any mobos have less or no whine on GPUs.

Perhaps that's not surprising. I know Galax, Zotac and PNY all take choke-coil whine seriously and strive to minimize it.

 

[Kodehawa]

It's been some time since I've take a look at this thread, but I can confirm that the GPUs are terrified with:

It's like their whole lives are passing on a few seconds film, "I'm done, the death is knocking on my door".

Opening a map in osu! (which runs at like 5000fps on any decent gpu/cpu combo) also causes screeching from hell on any GPU I've tried.

Seems to be pretty common with low power, high-fps scenarios.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Opening a map in osu! (which runs at like 5000fps on any decent gpu/cpu combo) also causes screeching from hell on any GPU I've tried.

Seems to be pretty common with low power, high-fps scenarios.

This is why VSync is important. Set your screen refresh-rate and lock it. Still, the superglue fix solves that problem most of the time as well.

 

[Wolverine2349]

Does super glue solve the buzzing/rattling/chainsaw noise as well that is not linked to FPS buy power draw and GPU usage and oscillation with the higher clocks on 4000 series.

[Sammelthread] - Ada Lovelace RTX 4xxx: Coilwhine / Fiep / Rassel Thread

Hallo zusammen, @ALL: Info (24.03.2024) Danke euch allen für die Informationen hier im Thread. Sucht ihr speziell Infos zu einer Karte, sind unten entsprechende Beiträge hinterlegt. (steht rechts oben, dieser ist #1) Curtains Closed - wir haben über 1000 Samples, ich klinke mich jetzt aus. Wenn...

www.hardwareluxx.de

Tech Enthusiast mentions in this thread that higher clock rates cause the oscillation and the chainsaw buzzing like noise. Super glue fixes that as well right?

Many on blogs have mistakenly stated that is electrical buzz and not coil whine and I wonder if those that say their card has no whine are not counting through chainsaw buzz like noise as whine when that is misleading as it is still bad unwanted electrical noise from coils. Perhaps worse noise.

Almost every 4090 I have tried has not had beeping type whine, but all had easily modest or even loud audible chainsaw rattle buzz type coil electrical noise.

 

[SRV123]

@lexluthermiester Reporting in that I tried this mod with my work laptop because it had a bit of coil whine that I wanted to try and address. (A mod which they... *ahem* will hopefully never discover.)

Anyways, I went to Walmart and spent a dollar more for brand name Loctite liquid super glue thinking it was a known brand and therefore should work well. Unfortunately, it took a long time for the super glue to harden and even hours later the super glue was still liquid. I also can say that the coil whine was dampened slightly but it seemed like the mod did not work. I think from this point on it might be helpful to state a few things if anyone has down the mod. I also researched online to see that humidity and temperature will affect how fast superglue hardens. I think in my case it did not work well because it was cold, dry, and mostly because the brand of super glue did not react the way I wanted it to.

Potentially helpful questions:
1. What model/brand of super glue did you buy?
2. What's the general temperature and humidity of where you're at?

Would not suggest this brand:

 

[Kodehawa]

This is why VSync is important. Set your screen refresh-rate and lock it. Still, the superglue fix solves that problem most of the time as well.

osu! is an interesting case, because you *want* to be running at thousands of fps, the input handler is tied to framerate and you want to minimize input lag as much as possible

so yes, you end up handling a lot of coil whine