I recently upgraded my system and have now tried two different RX 9070 XT cards. The first was a Hellhound paired with a Phanteks SFX 850W power supply, and it produced extremely loud coil whine, so I returned both. I then tried a 9070 XT Reaper with a Cooler Master V850 SFX power supply, but both the graphics card and power supply still had noticeable high-pitched whining. Is this just bad luck, or is coil whine especially common with the 9070 XT? Would switching to a regular RX 9070 likely help? I'm willing to return this card, since I don't want to spend around €800 on a GPU that makes a loud, piercing noise while gaming.
4 Answers
My Reaper has been running for about six months and I haven’t noticed any coil whine, so it isn’t guaranteed that every card will be noisy. A replacement may be worthwhile if the sound is loud enough to bother you.
Some people have also received quiet 9070 XT cards, including refurbished ones, so changing to a different unit could work. Moving to a lower-power RX 9070 might reduce the chances, but it still can’t guarantee silence.
Coil whine can vary a lot from one card to another, even with the same model. The 9070 XT seems to have it fairly often, but the volume isn’t consistent, so you may simply have encountered two noisy samples.
Try undervolting the card and limiting the frame rate first. That can reduce the electrical load and often makes coil whine quieter, while also improving temperatures with little performance loss.
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