I'm using an RTX 5070 with CachyOS, a 240Hz ultrawide OLED monitor, and a secondary 60Hz Dell IPS display. After making my fan curves quieter, I noticed a high-pitched coil-whine-like sound from the GPU whenever I scroll with the mouse wheel in Firefox or Brave while the browser is on the 240Hz OLED monitor. The same thing does not happen when the browser is on the 60Hz monitor, and scrolling in Dolphin seems fine.
Changing the mouse polling rate or disconnecting my external DAC had no effect. Disabling browser hardware acceleration mostly eliminates the noise, which makes the GPU seem like the likely source. However, I'd prefer to keep hardware acceleration enabled because I want proper HDR playback. Lowering the OLED monitor to its roughly 167Hz preset did not make much difference, while reducing smooth scrolling helped noticeably.
Could undervolting reduce this kind of coil whine, or is it unlikely to help? Are there any other settings or hardware changes worth trying?
3 Answers
Coil whine is fairly common with GPUs and usually isn’t a sign that anything is failing. Undervolting may change the noise if it reduces the specific power states or frame rates involved, but it isn’t guaranteed to fix it. You could also try slightly less aggressive fan curves again so the fan noise masks it, although that’s more of a workaround than a solution.
Scrolling on a high-refresh display isn’t necessarily a completely idle workload. Browser compositing can drive frequent rendering updates, especially with hardware acceleration enabled, and that can make a GPU’s coils resonate at an audible frequency. The fact that it mainly happens at 240Hz and disappears when acceleration is disabled points in that direction.
It’s still worth checking whether the sound is actually coming from the GPU rather than from speakers, an amplifier, or an audio connection picking up electrical interference. Analog audio equipment is especially prone to this. Try muting or disconnecting the speakers and headphones completely; if the noise remains physically audible from the graphics card, then it’s genuine coil whine. If it disappears from the audio system, lowering its volume or improving the audio hardware and cabling may help.
That makes sense. I’ll probably try undervolting anyway, but I’m not expecting it to be a permanent fix. Unfortunately, now that I’ve noticed the sound, it’s hard to ignore.