PC Graphics

[killerkoala78]

My video card has been recently making a loud buzzing sound while I'm playing certain games (so far, I've noticed this in Battlefield 1 and in GTA V). You can see in the attached video that it's rather annoying. The graphics themselves seem to be looking just fine but it definitely starts buzzing a lot when I'm outside and exploring the city of Los Santos. Once I quit the game - the buzzing completely stops and goes back to being very quiet. I'm not in familiar territory here but I do tech support as a career so I'd like to nail this down if possible. Can anybody suggest anything to help me fix this? If you need any log information, just let me know what and I can grab it.

My guess here is the card is overheating, it's running at about 50-60 degrees Celsius while I ran the game with the Performance Logging enabled.

[mstfbsrn980]

Your system does not have overheating problem. Do not worry about it. And the sound is coming from the coils, I guess. 

[dstmnd89x]

Yes, that is referred to as "coil whine" which can be either a high-pitched or scratchy buzzing sound. There's not a whole lot you can do as it indicates heavier power draw throughout the card's subsystems; some cards' coil whine is more noticeable than others. It's very common in graphics cards because of how they are manufactured but may also indicate cheaper quality parts. It shouldn't be a problem, but can be annoying.

My suggestion, if replacing the card isn't an option, is to add sound deadening material to your case if it's really distracting. This can be done a number of ways, or just wear headphones

[elstaci]

50-60 Celsius is great for a GPU card  under heavy loads.

As mentioned previously by the other two replies. It does sound like Coil Whine.

Coil Whine occurs in hardware that uses a lot of power, like the PSU or GPU cards.  Open the computer case and make sure the whine is coming from the GPU card and not the PSU.

If the RX470 still is under AMD Warranty, you might want to open up a AMD Warranty Request and see if they can repair or replace your RX480 under Warranty from here : AMD Warranty Request Form | AMD 

If not under Warranty, you can google how to dampen Coil Whine and follow the links suggestions. None will fix the problem but it might make it more bearable.

[killerkoala78 · Accepted solution]

I was able to resolve the issue on my own. It turns out there was a significant amount of dust within the case and once that was cleaned out with a can of air, it's running very silent even under a heavy workload.