Help, high-pitched whine under gaming load, is my PSU on the way out

Question

A few months into this build and now every time i actually load a game i get this high-pitched electrical whine out of the case. Dead silent sitting on the desktop, then a game launches and there it is. I genuinely cannot tell if it is coming from the GPU or my UD1000GM PG5 V2. I've already dug the warranty paperwork out of the drawer because that is apparently the kind of person i am. So is this a real early-failure symptom i should RMA now while i'm inside the window, or is it just a noise people learn to live with? What did you all do about it?

calibration_guy · Accepted Answer

That is coil whine. It is magnetostriction, current changing through an inductor's windings makes the coil vibrate audibly. Usually it is the GPU, sometimes the PSU or the board VRM, sometimes the two switching frequencies beating against each other. On healthy hardware it is cosmetic, not a failure sign. Mine did that on one card, I capped the framerate and it went quiet.

fanspinning · Answer

ive had whine on two cards over the years and both still run fine. you tune it out eventually.

needmorehz · Answer

Nine times out of ten it's an uncapped menu screen screaming. CAP your fps