Hi there, I recently updated my graphics drivers to the most recent update version 22.7.1 and began experiencing issues with coil whine and my CPU fan revving up while in-game.
I updated my drivers at night on July 27 shortly before shutdown and did not notice any issues until July 30 when while in-game with vsync off noticed a very loud whining/scratching noise coming from either my GPU or CPU, which I think could have been coil whine. I'd never heard this kind of noise coming from my PC before but putting on the in-game vsync stopped it.
A few days later it got worse and it happened again, this time with vync on through Radeon Settings. It would come and go and I tried various different graphics options, including turning on and off vync through Radeon Settings and in-game, as well as FPS limiters. However, checking my FPS it didn't seem to be the issue as I was only getting the usual 60 FPS and my temperatures were fine.
The noise and CPU revving had no apparent affect on performance with no frame drops but I could hear the noise over my headphones which was very off-putting. Coming out of a game was the only way I could stop it and up until Thursday night it had persisted almost constantly while in-game, beginning only a few seconds after loading in.
I didn't suspect the drivers at first as a full 2 days between updating and the noise had passed but while trying to troubleshoot the issue online I saw that someone had mentioned the possibility of drivers causing coil whine so yesterday I decided to uninstall my drivers through Display Driver Uninstaller (I had no option to rollback through Windows) and reinstall version 22.6.1.
I also cleaned my PC with compressed air and reseated the GPU, as well as replaced my 6-to-8 pin adapter as my motherboard only supports 6-pin GPUs. I have heard that adapters can go faulty so replaced it just in case it was causing the issues.
Since doing all this yesterday, I have not heard the noise since (at least, for now) and my CPU has not revved up. Reinstalling version 22.6.1 seems to have resolved the issue but I'm not 100% convinced that the drivers were the issue to begin with. I'm also concerned that the issues will return if I update again to 22.7.1 or any later drivers.
My PC is fairly old, I've had it since 2014 and upgraded to a RX 570 only last year, around May 2021, and it has been working fine up until this point. My CPU which is a FX-4300 is the weakest link in my rig and is bottlenecked but the games that I play are not very performance heavy. I was thinking another possibility was that the recent drivers or some other issue had been drawing too much power to the GPU and throttling my CPU, but I'm not 100% sure. The games that I play are not very performance heavy and are pretty old, and for the past few weeks I've funnily enough mostly been gaming on console.
Below are my specs:
- CPU: AMD FX-4300
- RAM: 16 GB
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3
- HDD: Seagate 2 TB
- PSU: XFX Pro 550W
- GPU: Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 570
- OS: Windows 10 Home 64 Bit
- Monitor: Samsung C24F396FHU (1920x1080p)
I have also attached two videos of the noise that it was making. Again, I'm not really sure if it was necessarily coil whine but it sounded as though it was either coming from my GPU or CPU and at one point experienced severe CPU fan revving.
Sorry about the huge walls of text and lengthly explanations but again I'm not too sure if it even was the driver update that caused the issue but manually rolling back to version 22.6.1 seems to have fixed it, at least for now.
Was wondering if anyone had any insight into what could have caused this and how to proceed going forward. Looking at the release notes there is a reference to the 570 and that there is a known issue where GPU utilisation can become stuck at 100% after closing games but this issue only happened when in-game, and everything looked okay afterwards.
GPU utilization may be stuck at 100% in Radeon performance metrics after closing games on some AMD Graphics Products such as Radeon™ 570.
https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-22-7-1
One other thing I did notice was AMD Noise Suppression in my startup which had automatically been enabled. From my own understanding all this seems to do is reduce background noise while using a mic but I don't see how this could be blamed for the issues I was having. I checked my startup options and it has been removed by rolling back the driver.
I don't have much of a clue as to what happened, my PC does make the odd strange noise from time to time but this was a first and up until now I've never had any issues with graphics drivers. Maybe it's just my PC's way of telling me that it's beginning to get too old or that the drivers are beginning to outpace the hardware. I plan on building a brand new PC at some point in the next few years but for now I'd like to keep my current rig running as it seems fine with most tasks.
Any insight into this issue or recommendations as to what to do next would be greatly appreciated. For now I'll keep an eye on it and see if the noise happens again.
Thanks.
