According to MSI, coil whine is NORMAL, and NOT a defect.

[VirtualLarry]

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

We apologize for the issues that you are having with this product.
The issue is not related to other components in the system, but a coil whine is a normal behavior with the card.
You can try reducing the GPU clock speed to 1000MHz using MSI Afterburner and see if it reduces the noise.

If you have any questions, please kindly get in touch with our tech support team directly at 626.271.1004 for assistance during regular business hours from M to F, 6am to 6pm Pacific Time, or you can email us at usreview@msi.com, thank you.

Best Regards,
MSI Review Team | usreview@msi.com



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...scrollFullInfo

Edit: this was an excerpt from a newegg review response. I though the forum should know about it. I haven't yet purchased the card, but was considering it.

 

[Face2Face]

Yup, pretty much the same thing they told me with my GTX 570... oh well...

 

[Techhog]

It's a feature!

 

[blackened23]

Yeah, screw that. If I got such a card I would RMA it immediately to the point of sale post haste. I had a couple of cards with annoyingly loud coil whine, and would NEVER EVER put up with it.

Vote with your wallet friend. I say RMA that garbage immediately.

 

[tviceman]

I've owned a twin frozr card for my last 3 cards, and I feel like the fan noise has gotten progressively worse on each one. Next card I buy will not be an MSI card.

 

[paul878]

That why I stick with EVGA, they would never try to BS you like that.

 

[mindbomb]

this thread assumes customer support is correct.
and this frequently is not the case.

 

[Rvenger]

All cards have some sort of coil whine. It's just how much noise can you put up with.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

I've run across several cards that have coil whine. It seems to be alot worse on games or benchmarks with high fps.

I've had good luck with vsync getting rid of it

 

[Teizo]

I've owned a twin frozr card for my last 3 cards, and I feel like the fan noise has gotten progressively worse on each one. Next card I buy will not be an MSI card.

The MSI Gaming cards are near silent under load. They are very good. However, for them to not stand behind their parts like this when they market themselves as having Military Class components is pathetic.

OP you should do a recording on video of the noise it makes under load and send them the vid, then raise heck about their Hi-Cap Military Class capacitors

 

[Deders]

Thankfully I have never experienced coil whine. MSI should know better!

 

[Teizo]

Yeah, I'm pleased with mine, but being the noise freak I am if I run into problems, I'll make a Gigabyte/Asus Fixer vid of me smashing my 760s and mobo.

OK, I may try to sell them first, but if that is how they treat their customers, I'd rather just buy something new.

 

[iiiankiii]

Mine is extremely loud. It's louder than my fans combined! Fortunately, it's only annoyingly loud during benchmarks; but not actually gameplay.

 

[Deders]

Maybe Vsync and triple buffering might help reduce the load. Try using D3DOverrider.

 

[Stuka87]

Does it only do it at high FPS (Such as loading screens where the FPS hits hundreds), or does it do it all the time?

You can put some epoxy on the coils (made sure its rated for use on electronics, many epoxy/rtv's are acidic) and it will greatly reduce or in some cases stop any coil whine.

 

[dmoney1980]

I just processed a return to newegg because of some really bad coil whine on a MSI 280x card. The coil whine actually came through on my speakers with my displayport cable. Tried using DVI, HDMI, all the same!

This was my first and last MSI card. Like another poster here said - vote with your wallet. Shame really because the card was silent while gaming

 

[Genx87]

That why I stick with EVGA, they would never try to BS you like that.

I stick with EVGA because I have never had an issue like that. I have heard this in MSI and Gigabyte cards.

 

[Rvenger]

I had the issue on EVGA too. Its luck of the draw.

 

[BrightCandle]

Getting coil whine is the luck of the draw, some cards just come with bad solder joints that work but allow the noise to occur. Some cards only produce it when overclocked, or underclocked or at particular frequencies.

One of my 680's will whine when the frame rate exceeds about 500 fps. Therefore its not normally a problem but is occasionally when in a menu screen or something. Its not really something you can RMA it for though, its not normally whining its just an extreme case that I see maybe 1-2 times a week briefly. But I really understand the desire not to have any whine and certainly not at normal clock speeds and performance levels, but its an extremely annoying noise. If I had a card that did that I would RMA it asap, it is a partially failing solder joint anyway, its probably going to die young as a card anyway.

 

[Phynaz]

Between this and their under-powered motherboards, I think I'd stay away from MSI.

Posted from a machine running an MSI motherboard :\

 

[sze5003]

I had a 560ti no whine. Then I got an iceQ X2 7970 and that was horrible. They even advertised on their site and the box quality capacitors that had no coil whine. I RMA'd it to newegg for a refund within the time frame. My current card has no whine, except in menus of certain games where you can slightly hear it.

 

[chimaxi83]

Yeah, eff that. I wouldn't deal with a whiny ass card. I remember a launch 7970 having terrible whine. $550+ card, and that bs? Nope, returned. That was a Sapphire card, and it was the worst coil whine I've heard so far.

I like MSI products though, no issues with anything I've used of theirs.

 

[Teizo]

Between this and their under-powered motherboards, I think I'd stay away from MSI.

Posted from a machine running an MSI motherboard :\

I have noticed with the voltage of my RAM overclock at 1.6v it often runs at 1.58v. I'm still stable, but that is probably a very good reason I can't get this ram stable @ 2400mhz (wanted to try since BF4 supposedly loves 2400mhz). When I put in 1.65v...it never read that high. Only 1.64v.

And, I have to have VDroop control @ 100% for 4.4ghz for my cpu on auto volts so I can take advantage of speed step. That is fine by me, but when I was shooting for higher clocks, whatever I put in the bios did not show up in my readings. Was always under. I figured that was just a safety precaution on their part so noobs would be less likely to kill their pc.

All things considered, however, I am pleased with this mobo. Only one I would consider trading for would be the Gigabyte UD5H.

 

[railven]

My Ref Sapphy had some horrible coil whine, but it was only audible when you were getting like >200 FPS or something stupidly high.

With v-sync on, never heard it during game.

 

[bononos]

Reminded me of an old thread where the lab was too noisy for the techs to trace the issue.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2243730