Two EVGA power supplies VS one 6900XT.... what is this?

LigTasm

Supreme [H]ardness
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So I just picked up a 6900XT from a user on here, and I'm seeing very strange issues with my EVGA power supplies hooked up to this card. Note that I did some searching and a few others with high end 6000 series cards have had the similar experiences when combined with EVGA power supply coil whining.

Basically what happens is once the card gets under load in a game, the PSU itself will start to coil whine like a maniac and the fan will go to 100% straight away. I have a Supernova G something 1000W and an older 850W platinum rated model, can't remember it off the top of my head but I know they are both Leadex based. I haven't heard a PSU fan running in a very, veryy long time. I was confused at first and assumed the card itself had the coil whine and its fans were loud because that seems way more likely but the card itself is nearly silent.

What can be happening here? To be totally honest I risked it a little bit and hooked the card up to my Gigabyte 450W unit that I basically just use for testing/building since it was so cheap and that thing barely ramped up the fan at all and everything was silent.
 
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The PSU is obviously pushing out the same combined wattage to the motherboard, GPU, and other hardware. But the PSU is providing power at higher voltage (primarily 5v and 12v) which equates to lower amperage flowing through the PWM voltage regulation filters in the PSU.

Inductors in the voltage regulator circuitry are coils of wire which are part of the output filtering which vibrate due to pulsating magnetic fields generated as current flows through them. You can hear them vibrate like a speaker if they do at a high enough amplitude.

Preventing coil whine is ultimately up to the manufacturer when they design the hardware. They can either use higher quality components which are less likely to make audible noise, or add more power phases so that less current is flowing through each specific phase thereby reducing the amplitude of the sound.

Interestingly, since the PSU is providing PWM regulated and filtered output to every part of your computer, the CPU, DRAM, chipset, and GPU effectively have two layers of PWM voltage regulation to them. A low quality PSU with "noisy" voltage output (poorly filtered), can aggrevate the PWM voltage regulators on the motherboard and GPU. Coil whine on a GPU can sometimes be dramatically reduced by purchasing a better PSU which has more stable voltage output.

Interesting read HERE and Here
 
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Interesting read HERE and Here

I'm aware of why coil whine typically occurs although those are good links, I'm more wondering why only this specific card causes it and also why the fans on the PSU ramp up to 100% blow dryer levels (the fan thing is what actually concerns me really, that means something is getting hot for unknown reasons). The 850W PSU has been in various rigs without a peep for 3 years or so now, covering a wide range of platforms. Total draw at the wall is like 360W which is nowhere near what it would take to max out the fan. The newer 1000W replicates the behavior exactly and it is indeed the same platform.
 
I would RMA those.

I've seen a few people with EVGA power supplies have issues with the new GPUs and the RMA replacements did not.
 
I'm aware of why coil whine typically occurs although those are good links, I'm more wondering why only this specific card causes it and also why the fans on the PSU ramp up to 100% blow dryer levels (the fan thing is what actually concerns me really, that means something is getting hot for unknown reasons). The 850W PSU has been in various rigs without a peep for 3 years or so now, covering a wide range of platforms. Total draw at the wall is like 360W which is nowhere near what it would take to max out the fan. The newer 1000W replicates the behavior exactly and it is indeed the same platform.
Are you getting the coil whine at idle? If it is at full load I highly doubt your wattage reading under load is accurate. The 6900xt at stock pulls up to 350w under full load on its own leaving only 10w remaining for the rest of your system. What was your previous graphics card that had no whine with the psu's? Are you using any adapters for your PCIE connectors? All of these things can and will affect coil whine. If the coil whine is coming from the transformer or the caps this can be attributed to age of the PSU. To eliminate the video card I would check amperage draw off the PCIE cables alone using a clamp meter on the ammeter setting. I highly doubt the graphics card is bad or has something wrong with it. Which model of card are you running? Answers to alot of these questions could help us point you in the right direction. Is the fan mode in ECO mode... There have been reports of that causing random fan ramping issues.....
 
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Are you getting the coil whine at idle? If it is at full load I highly doubt your wattage reading under load is accurate. The 6900xt at stock pulls up to 350w under full load on its own leaving only 10w remaining for the rest of your system. What was your previous graphics card that had no whine with the psu's? Are you using any adapters for your PCIE connectors? All of these things can and will affect coil whine. If the coil whine is coming from the transformer or the caps this can be attributed to age of the PSU. To eliminate the video card I would check amperage draw off the PCIE cables alone using a clamp meter on the ammeter setting. I highly doubt the graphics card is bad or has something wrong with it. Which model of card are you running? Answers to alot of these questions could help us point you in the right direction. Is the fan mode in ECO mode... There have been reports of that causing random fan ramping issues.....

At idle no. Full load in this case is playing games at 1440p that aren't super demanding so the GPU is not maxed out. This is why I was able to run it on my 450W PSU just for a quick check.

I'm suspecting it has to do with this Leadex platform they've used, which I know is very good normally and reviewed very well. I've had no problem with them in the past which is why I barely paid attention at first. I have two PSU's here that show the same behavior, the older 850W and a brand new 1000W I picked up on an Amazon sale just to have it. Its been used like 3 hours total. The card is a standard reference AMD 6900XT from Gigabyte, my other card is an EVGA 3070 XC3. The older PSU has seen plenty of ~300W cards.

Regardless, I picked out a Corsair RMX 1000W that should be here on friday, I'm more curious as to just what might be going on electrically to cause this issue.
 
Maybe overloading a 12v rail or something with powerboost in the gpu, I would imagine the 6900s pull a ton of amps.
 
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