I purchased a few weeks ago 2 GTX 980 Classified Kingpins, powering them with a EVGA 850 G2 PSU. Since installing the cards I have been having issues and I could use some help and input from everyone to find and fix the problems.
 
First issue is coil whine
My first card arrived 2/26/15 and was installed into my system. Right away I was blown away how quite the fans where, but as soon as I loaded any game or stress test I was greeted with very loud coil whine. So loud that even with the fans at 80% you could easily hear it, so I decided to run games and stress test (firestrike, heaven, valley ect) for a few days to see if it would ease up or go away. After a few days of testing and no change in the noise I decided to give EVGA a phone call, they recommended an RMA for the card. I went with the advance RMA option and while waiting for my replacement card I was notified that the kingpins were back in stock, so I ordered my second card. 
My second card arrived 3/5/15 and was installed by it's self for testing before trying out SLI. I noticed right away that this card had the same problem as the first card, very loud coil whine.
My third/rma card arrived 3/10/15 and was also installed by it's self for testing. This card has some coil whine but very little and I could live with it, as it would not bother me like the other two cards.
I am not sure if this has anything to do with the coil whine noise of each card but I thought I would mention it. The cards ASIC quality reads - Card 1 (69.3%) - Card 2 (69.1%) - Card 3 (77.9%) Also the first 2 cards use 1.212V stock where card 3 uses 1.200V max.
 
Second issue is fan noise
The third 980 with little to no coil whine has a fan problem. When the card ramps up the fan speed over 60% and then starts to drop the fan speed down one out of the two fans makes a high pitch grinding noise for a few seconds then goes a way. Almost sounds like it's hitting off of metal but I have verified that it is not and nothing is touching or in the way of the fan. I did tighten the screws on the problematic fan with no change. I was able to narrow down which fan makes the noise by pressing on one at a time and it is just the one fan that is the problem. This only happens once in a while so not a huge issue, but still should not be happening none the less. There is post that I read earlier from another user with a 980 making the same fan noise as mine but from his video that was posted in that thread it would seem his is louder then mine but hard to tell. On a side note, when the fans are at 40% or lower there is a low whoosh noise.
 
Third issue is the LED lights
Every once in a while the LED lights will blink off for a few seconds then kick back on. This happens with one card and two cards installed, if two are present the top card blinks first then the second card does it. It happens at different times and every time I was doing something different then the last, could be on youtube or gaming ect does not matter. I tried re installing PX a few times (clean installs) to see if that was the cause and no change. 
 
Forth issue is PSU/OC'ing
Aside from having all the noise and light issues, I have been messing around with overclocking the cards and run into a problem. Long story short I was able to get a stable +78 core and +500 memory OC with SLI enabled and stock voltage (higher OC with single card) So I decided to increase the voltage by enabling one of the two 0.25V switches on the card. When doing so I get instant artifacts and driver crashes during firestrike, so I put the card back to stock clocks and try again with just one switch turned on and same thing artifacts and driver crashing. So next thing I do is hook up my killa watt meter to test how much power is being used with and without the voltage increase. With the switch off the system pulls no more then 580 watts, mostly low 500 watt range while stress testing. With just one 0.25V switch enabled it pulls a max of 650 watts. Basically anything over 600 watts of system use causes on screen artifacting or driver crashes, regardless if it's a single card or SLI.  Both stock and a +78/+500 or less overclock.
 
Do you guys think that my PSU is faulty or unable to power these cards ? and that is what is causing all of my problems or do I just have really bad luck and received 2 cards with bad coil whine, low OC'ing and 1 card with a bad fan ? 
There is a replacement PSU coming soon, just waiting for the RMA to be approved. When that comes and if all or most of the issue are not fixed then I am not sure if I should just return all of the cards and wait for next series of cards or try and RMA until I get a none problematic 980. Thoughts ?
 
Any help or input would be greatly appreciated.
 
Thanks
Edit 1: EVGA is the best, regardless if I have 3 defective cards and/or a bad PSU.
 
Edit 2: EVGA has bar none the best customer service and I would like to thank them for treating me like a valued customer ever time I have dealt with them over the years.

Vipergtspa
I purchased a few weeks ago 2 GTX 980 Classified Kingpins, powering them with a EVGA 850 G2 PSU. Since installing the cards I have been having issues and I could use some help and input from everyone to find and fix the problems.
 
First issue is coil whine
My first card arrived 2/26/15 and was installed into my system. Right away I was blown away how quite the fans where, but as soon as I loaded any game or stress test I was greeted with very loud coil whine. So loud that even with the fans at 80% you could easily hear it, so I decided to run games and stress test (firestrike, heaven, valley ect) for a few days to see if it would ease up or go away. After a few days of testing and no change in the noise I decided to give EVGA a phone call, they recommended an RMA for the card. I went with the advance RMA option and while waiting for my replacement card I was notified that the kingpins were back in stock, so I ordered my second card. 
My second card arrived 3/5/15 and was installed by it's self for testing before trying out SLI. I noticed right away that this card had the same problem as the first card, very loud coil whine.
My third/rma card arrived 3/10/15 and was also installed by it's self for testing. This card has some coil whine but very little and I could live with it, as it would not bother me like the other two cards.
I am not sure if this has anything to do with the coil whine noise of each card but I thought I would mention it. The cards ASIC quality reads - Card 1 (69.3%) - Card 2 (69.1%) - Card 3 (77.9%) Also the first 2 cards use 1.212V stock where card 3 uses 1.200V max.
 
I dont think there is any relation to asic quality to coil whine as i have 2 980 ftw with a 77 & a 67 asic and neither has the whine
 
 
Second issue is fan noise
The third 980 with little to no coil whine has a fan problem. When the card ramps up the fan speed over 60% and then starts to drop the fan speed down one out of the two fans makes a high pitch grinding noise for a few seconds then goes a way. Almost sounds like it's hitting off of metal but I have verified that it is not and nothing is touching or in the way of the fan. I did tighten the screws on the problematic fan with no change. I was able to narrow down which fan makes the noise by pressing on one at a time and it is just the one fan that is the problem. This only happens once in a while so not a huge issue, but still should not be happening none the less. There is post that I read earlier from another user with a 980 making the same fan noise as mine but from his video that was posted in that thread it would seem his is louder then mine but hard to tell. On a side note, when the fans are at 40% or lower there is a low whoosh noise.
 
Sounds like a bad fan
 
Third issue is the LED lights
Every once in a while the LED lights will blink off for a few seconds then kick back on. This happens with one card and two cards installed, if two are present the top card blinks first then the second card does it. It happens at different times and every time I was doing something different then the last, could be on youtube or gaming ect does not matter. I tried re installing PX a few times (clean installs) to see if that was the cause and no change. 
 
What are you using to control the led's? Did you try the led crtl in experience? I know...bloat ware...
 
 
 
Forth issue is PSU/OC'ing
Aside from having all the noise and light issues, I have been messing around with overclocking the cards and run into a problem. Long story short I was able to get a stable +78 core and +500 memory OC with SLI enabled and stock voltage (higher OC with single card) So I decided to increase the voltage by enabling one of the two 0.25V switches on the card. When doing so I get instant artifacts and driver crashes during firestrike, so I put the card back to stock clocks and try again with just one switch turned on and same thing artifacts and driver crashing. So next thing I do is hook up my killa watt meter to test how much power is being used with and without the voltage increase. With the switch off the system pulls no more then 580 watts, mostly low 500 watt range while stress testing. With just one 0.25V switch enabled it pulls a max of 650 watts. Basically anything over 600 watts of system use causes on screen artifacting or driver crashes, regardless if it's a single card or SLI.  Both stock and a +78/+500 or less overclock.
 
Overclocking the memory on Maxwell produces minimal results  and you don't need more juice for a small overclock of 78 mhz over volting by .25mv is way to much juice for a 78mhz overclock it is the same as under volting the gpu...instability...
 
see below explaining the memory overclock on maxwell:
http://www.anandtech.com/...orce-gtx-980-review/22
 
bring that memory oc down to 50 or 100 and just go for mhz with no over volt just power limit increase.  I don't think it is the watts that is causing the instability i think it is you over volt on such a low mhz. the card does not need it.  It is always much harder to overclock in sli then one card...Read a good overclocking guide on sli
 
Do you guys think that my PSU is faulty or unable to power these cards ? and that is what is causing all of my problems or do I just have really bad luck and received 2 cards with bad coil whine, low OC'ing and 1 card with a bad fan ? 
There is a replacement PSU coming soon, just waiting for the RMA to be approved. When that comes and if all or most of the issue are not fixed then I am not sure if I should just return all of the cards and wait for next series of cards or try and RMA until I get a none problematic 980. Thoughts ?
 
I am running a 4790k at 4.7 ghz using more watts then you with the same power supply and while i was unstable with two gpu's at first, it was because of a voltage discrepancy between each card. Once i modded that, my system was totally stable for hours on end. Did you monitor you volts in sli and see if there was any large difference in each gpu?
 
 
 
Any help or input would be greatly appreciated.
 
Thanks
Edit 1: EVGA is the best, regardless if I have 3 defective cards and/or a bad PSU.
 
Edit 2: EVGA has bar none the best customer service and I would like to thank them for treating me like a valued customer ever time I have dealt with them over the years.

Sometimes defective card is much better than other things...
Because defective card is bad luck and nobody fault and better then when company betray loyal customers
trying to sell more chips in highest and most expensive class even if chips don't deserve to be separated as good.
My personal opinion is that 980 K|NGP|N models overclocked on 75-100MHz and 200-250MHz on memory are good cards.
Fabric clock is very high, everything over +100 on GPU I would say EXCELLENT. No matter on voltage, maximum or default in Precision X.
Most important is to card never show crash in any application on fabric clock on stock voltage and and 75-100MHz OC it's not bad at all. 
 

antandbetty

Vipergtspa
I purchased a few weeks ago 2 GTX 980 Classified Kingpins, powering them with a EVGA 850 G2 PSU. Since installing the cards I have been having issues and I could use some help and input from everyone to find and fix the problems.
 
First issue is coil whine
My first card arrived 2/26/15 and was installed into my system. Right away I was blown away how quite the fans where, but as soon as I loaded any game or stress test I was greeted with very loud coil whine. So loud that even with the fans at 80% you could easily hear it, so I decided to run games and stress test (firestrike, heaven, valley ect) for a few days to see if it would ease up or go away. After a few days of testing and no change in the noise I decided to give EVGA a phone call, they recommended an RMA for the card. I went with the advance RMA option and while waiting for my replacement card I was notified that the kingpins were back in stock, so I ordered my second card. 
My second card arrived 3/5/15 and was installed by it's self for testing before trying out SLI. I noticed right away that this card had the same problem as the first card, very loud coil whine.
My third/rma card arrived 3/10/15 and was also installed by it's self for testing. This card has some coil whine but very little and I could live with it, as it would not bother me like the other two cards.
I am not sure if this has anything to do with the coil whine noise of each card but I thought I would mention it. The cards ASIC quality reads - Card 1 (69.3%) - Card 2 (69.1%) - Card 3 (77.9%) Also the first 2 cards use 1.212V stock where card 3 uses 1.200V max.
 
I dont think there is any relation to asic quality to coil whine as i have 2 980 ftw with a 77 & a 67 asic and neither has the whine
 
I was thinking it had more to do with power draw, higher ASIC needs less power which causes less coil whine then the lower ASIC cards that need more.
 
Second issue is fan noise
The third 980 with little to no coil whine has a fan problem. When the card ramps up the fan speed over 60% and then starts to drop the fan speed down one out of the two fans makes a high pitch grinding noise for a few seconds then goes a way. Almost sounds like it's hitting off of metal but I have verified that it is not and nothing is touching or in the way of the fan. I did tighten the screws on the problematic fan with no change. I was able to narrow down which fan makes the noise by pressing on one at a time and it is just the one fan that is the problem. This only happens once in a while so not a huge issue, but still should not be happening none the less. There is post that I read earlier from another user with a 980 making the same fan noise as mine but from his video that was posted in that thread it would seem his is louder then mine but hard to tell. On a side note, when the fans are at 40% or lower there is a low whoosh noise.
 
Sounds like a bad fan
 
I would hate to RMA over one bad fan :( also this one has the least amount of coil whine.
 
Third issue is the LED lights
Every once in a while the LED lights will blink off for a few seconds then kick back on. This happens with one card and two cards installed, if two are present the top card blinks first then the second card does it. It happens at different times and every time I was doing something different then the last, could be on youtube or gaming ect does not matter. I tried re installing PX a few times (clean installs) to see if that was the cause and no change. 
 
What are you using to control the led's? Did you try the led crtl in experience? I know...bloat ware...
 
PX, I could try that but I am not a fan.
 
Forth issue is PSU/OC'ing
Aside from having all the noise and light issues, I have been messing around with overclocking the cards and run into a problem. Long story short I was able to get a stable +78 core and +500 memory OC with SLI enabled and stock voltage (higher OC with single card) So I decided to increase the voltage by enabling one of the two 0.25V switches on the card. When doing so I get instant artifacts and driver crashes during firestrike, so I put the card back to stock clocks and try again with just one switch turned on and same thing artifacts and driver crashing. So next thing I do is hook up my killa watt meter to test how much power is being used with and without the voltage increase. With the switch off the system pulls no more then 580 watts, mostly low 500 watt range while stress testing. With just one 0.25V switch enabled it pulls a max of 650 watts. Basically anything over 600 watts of system use causes on screen artifacting or driver crashes, regardless if it's a single card or SLI.  Both stock and a +78/+500 or less overclock.
 
Overclocking the memory on Maxwell produces minimal results  and you don't need more juice for a small overclock of 78 mhz over volting by .25mv is way to much juice for a 78mhz overclock it is the same as under volting the gpu...instability...
 
see below explaining the memory overclock on maxwell:
http://www.anandtech.com/...orce-gtx-980-review/22
 
bring that memory oc down to 50 or 100 and just go for mhz with no over volt just power limit increase.  I don't think it is the watts that is causing the instability i think it is you over volt on such a low mhz. the card does not need it.  It is always much harder to overclock in sli then one card...Read a good overclocking guide on sli
 
I was adding more voltage because anything over 78MHz on the core alone would cause artifacts on 2 of the 3 cards, 1 card would reach 104MHz before having artifacts. I tested all cards separate and in SLI and yes there is a difference in voltage when using the 3rd card with the 77.9 ASIC running with card 1 or 2. Not sure how to fix that aside from using the classified voltage tool.
 
Do you guys think that my PSU is faulty or unable to power these cards ? and that is what is causing all of my problems or do I just have really bad luck and received 2 cards with bad coil whine, low OC'ing and 1 card with a bad fan ? 
There is a replacement PSU coming soon, just waiting for the RMA to be approved. When that comes and if all or most of the issue are not fixed then I am not sure if I should just return all of the cards and wait for next series of cards or try and RMA until I get a none problematic 980. Thoughts ?
 
I am running a 4790k at 4.7 ghz using more watts then you with the same power supply and while i was unstable with two gpu's at first, it was because of a voltage discrepancy between each card. Once i modded that, my system was totally stable for hours on end. Did you monitor you volts in sli and see if there was any large difference in each gpu?
 
How did you resolve the voltage difference ?
Thanks
 
 
Any help or input would be greatly appreciated.
 
Thanks
Edit 1: EVGA is the best, regardless if I have 3 defective cards and/or a bad PSU.
 
Edit 2: EVGA has bar none the best customer service and I would like to thank them for treating me like a valued customer ever time I have dealt with them over the years.

bcavnaugh
For One Card; Minimum of a 500 Watt power supply.
Run GPUShark and then test the cards in Fire Strike to see the wattage usage is.

I have used my kill a watt meter to test the wattage. Running SLI on stock clocks my system draws no more then 580 watts, using the voltage switches on the card jumps that up over 650 watts.
 
With all the testing I have done it seems like anything over 600 watts of total power cause instability, not sure why unless the PSU is bad.
 
Thanks

Sajin

antandbetty
Did you at least try what i said above? You will never know unless you test all components. Guessing that a psu is bad is not troubleshooting. Did you try and run GPUShark like bcavnavugh said?
 
 

Vipergtspa

Sajin

Vipergtspa
Do you guys think that my PSU is faulty or unable to power these cards ? and that is what is causing all of my problems or do I just have really bad luck and received 2 cards with bad coil whine, low OC'ing and 1 card with a bad fan ? 

Yep.

I hope you are right :)
Thanks

I wasn't saying his PSU is faulty. I was saying yep to the bold part.

Sorry...i did not mean that as a reference to you. I meant it as the op is guessing at this point... and the op needs to do addition testing. The cards need to go back either way for the fan at least but he should not assume the psu is not enough watts or is faulty.  

 
I just want to reiterate that over voltage on a gpu that does not need it is as bad as under volting it. these cards overclock much differently the the last generation...They are able to reach 1550 with no voltage increase. While you have that amount of volts going into the gpu set the osd to see if any card is even close to reaching the max over volt you are applying. 
 

Vipergtspa

bcavnaugh
For One Card; Minimum of a 500 Watt power supply.
Run GPUShark and then test the cards in Fire Strike to see the wattage usage is.

I have used my kill a watt meter to test the wattage. Running SLI on stock clocks my system draws no more then 580 watts, using the voltage switches on the card jumps that up over 650 watts.
 
With all the testing I have done it seems like anything over 600 watts of total power cause instability, not sure why unless the PSU is bad.
 
Thanks

What i find very odd is coil whine on a kingpin gpu. I am waiting on two of these myself and when i asked about this the evga manager told me he has never head of a kingpin with coil whine. The pcb and the "coils" all equal the cleanest power delivery to a 980 that exists today.  But for you to get 3 cards all with coil whine is making me wonder....
 
The psu you have is no slouch ..it even was awarded 9.9 out of 10 by the master of PSU's Jonny Gure. To get that kind of rating from him, the psu needs to next to perfection. Maybe it is defective as the coil whine on a kingpin makes no sense to me. You are delivering clean power to a clean gpu but there are parts between those two that could effect the power delivery mainly the motherboard.  
 
I have two mobos, not sure if you have a spare but if i was in your shoes i would try everything. even at 650 watts that you are pulling from the total system draw you have plenty of power left. 
 
PS: the led's seem to have issues but that is common even on my ftw's. 

Sajin

Vipergtspa
The tech I spoke with at EVGA thinks that the PSU is bad, that is why I have all of these issues. I do hope he is right because I do not want more RMA's with 2 week old cards.
Thanks

I don't think it's the PSU myself. Guess we're going to find out... Are you going to RMA the PSU?

Yes, the tech setup the RMA on the phone last night. I did have some coil whine on my 780 Ti classified as well so figured maybe something is going on with the PSU or maybe MB. Getting a replacement will help narrow this down I think.
 
I have been testing all day with all three cards and still feel like I am no closer to fixing this, next step is taking one of the cards and putting into a lower end spare PC I have. I also tried a old Corsair HX750 PSU that I had sitting around from a prior build, but it had coil whine by it self and increased the noise on the cards.
 

If you have problem and with fan and coil whine maybe fan and produce that...
That would be best scenario... I wish you luck. 
 

I had some family/work things delay my testing. I just finished testing the first card which had the worst coil whine out of the 3 in another system and it still had some coil whine but not any where near as loud as in my system. Second computer is a low end desk top with a Ivy bridge G860, 8GB DDR 3 1600, 430 Thermaltake PSU, and I think a cheap Asrock B75 MB.
 
I am not sure why or what would cause this ? MB or PSU maybe ? Like I said in an earlier post, I tried a Corsair HX750 and my EVGA 850 G2 in my system with the same results. Both PSU gave 2 out of the 3 cards extremely loud coil whine and the 3rd has lower but noticable.
 
Another thing I came across last night while doing more testing on the cards is that my SLI fire strike graphics score is lower then most but my single is above, maybe tied in with my MB being the problem ?
Single Card Stock
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4278220
SLI Stock
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4321352
Thanks

Man I hate to hear all the coil whine issues everyone is having, especially with the kingpin card. Thisnis one of the reason the last couple generations I have ended up waiting to upgrade till just before the new products come out so hopefully all the bugs are worked out. EVGA does have one of the best warranties in the business though. But since they see coil whine as "normal" to a degree it may become harder to get them fixed or replaced.

I will keep checking this thread as I'm
Curious what the outcome ends up being.

antandbetty
If you put the GPU's in another PC and the whine was much less then yours that suggests something with the mother board as that is the only part that is in between the two....assuming your psu is good. I just did a quick search on your MB and coil whine and there were quite a few results.... Go into you bios and disable and power saving options especially on the pcie or pci options. Also set you pcie to auto if you have that option and see if it makes a difference...
 

Vipergtspa
I had some family/work things delay my testing. I just finished testing the first card which had the worst coil whine out of the 3 in another system and it still had some coil whine but not any where near as loud as in my system. Second computer is a low end desk top with a Ivy bridge G860, 8GB DDR 3 1600, 430 Thermaltake PSU, and I think a cheap Asrock B75 MB.
 
I am not sure why or what would cause this ? MB or PSU maybe ? Like I said in an earlier post, I tried a Corsair HX750 and my EVGA 850 G2 in my system with the same results. Both PSU gave 2 out of the 3 cards extremely loud coil whine and the 3rd has lower but noticable.
 
Another thing I came across last night while doing more testing on the cards is that my SLI fire strike graphics score is lower then most but my single is above, maybe tied in with my MB being the problem ?
Single Card Stock
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4278220
SLI Stock
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4321352
Thanks

I know most of the power saving options C1, C6, ect are disabled but I think the PCI-E is not set to auto. I will give that a try and double check the other settings.
Thanks

Vipergtspa
Disabled all power saving options in the bios and no change :(
 
Only option I had to change was the C1, it was set to enabled. All other options were already disabled, also changed the PCI-E to auto it was set to gen 3.0.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I am not sure what else can be done, very frustrating.

Very frustrating...  When you get the power supply back and if nothing changes I suggest moving up to a higher end mobo. I always go ROG if i go with Asus.  I have not have coil whine on any GPU since the 570's even with a cheap power supply. If i remember correctly your mobo was 1 of the first gen to adopt pci-e 3.0.
 
The cheaper solution is to call evga tell them you are sick of the coil whine and want permission to open up your cards try and find which coil is making the noise if not all and put a dab of glue from the bottom of the cap to the pcb. See if they will go for it. or just do it..it is easy to do...there are a couple of vids showing how to do it. Sorry you are having such a hard time with such a high end card.

Vipergtspa - you are not the only one with coil whine.  I just received and tested my second Kingpin card.  Same amount of coil whine as my first card.  I have tried both cards on two separate systems.  Both cards are noticeably louder than my R9295X2 and my MSI 680 Lightning.  Not sure what to do at this point.