Coil whine is an irritating phenomenon where high-pitched noises can come from a graphics card, motherboard, or power supply. Sometimes it can be obvious, but sometimes it can also be difficult to track down, especially in a noisy environment. The developers behind the stress tester OCCT released version 15 of the stress tester, featuring a coil whine detection tool that doesn’t require a microphone.
To do this, OCCT has developed a genius solution that turns the annoying high-pitched frequencies into a method of detecting the source of the noise. “While testing using Switch mode…” OCCT will load up the system artificially to produce one of “three pre-defined tunes”, turning the noise from a consistently audible tone into a specific tune that will make the coil whine pop out above whatever other environmental noises might be hiding it.
This feature takes advantage of an inherent behavior of coil-whine, where the sound will usually increase as more power is loaded onto whatever component has coil-whine. The same can also happen when power fluctuates very fast between high and low loads. This is why most people will often only hear coil whine while they are gaming, especially while running a game at an exorbitantly high frame rate (such as 300-1000 FPS).
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As a reminder, audible coil whine is a natural phenomenon that can exist in several computer hardware components, primarily graphics cards, PSUs, and motherboards. The annoying high-pitched sound is generated by a computer component’s electromagnetic coils when current is passed through them.