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If you’ve heard the high-pitched whine or buzz from an electronic device when a current-carrying inductor is vibrating, you’ll know how unpleasant it can be. It’s common in all kinds of equipment, but it’s become a particular annoyance of late in hardware like PC power supplies, GPUs, and cooling pumps. There is plenty of hearsay on the web about which parts whine and which don’t, and [Lowell Wood] wants to get to the bottom of it.
To track the issue, [Lowell] has put together the Coil Whine Database. It accepts user reports on hardware, regarding the level at which coil whine is present. A score of 0 is given to a part that is inaudible in a quiet room, with higher scores representing higher sound levels. A part scored at 2 is audible working at a desk with the computer under load; a part scored at 4 is audible even when the machine or device is at idle.
For now, the database is largely empty—[Lowell] has just opened submissions, adding a report on their own ROG Astral RTX 5080 card for good measure. If you want to submit a report on a unit, either silent or noisy, that’s simple enough—just fill in the coil whine report form. Over time, submissions will hopefully grow, and it will be easier to get a good idea of what equipment whines and what is likely to operate silently out of the box.
