Open an RMA to get a replacement card.  Coil whine isn't normal.

gizmo88
Keep RMA'ing until you get a card that is acceptable to you. Since it's under 30 days, I would recommend going through Newegg or Amazon first however (assuming you bought it from them), you can usually get it resolved faster. Ask for a "Prepaid Label" if you want free shipping.
 
You can also choose one of the competing cards, they are known to have less coil whine.

Exactly...

It seems the quality of EVGA's GTX 970 SC ACX1/ACX2 has much left to desire for.

Ed24135
If you continue to have coil whine with replacement cards under stress/load, check your fps. If it's higher than your monitor's refresh rate, it can cause coil whine as well as higher temps. Apply vsync if you can to whatever program you're running and it should go away.

Im sorry but thats not acceptable. Vsync causes horrible input lag and no gamer will tolerate that.

Its a very well known issue https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1doh5l/
 
You can find info about it all over the internet. I'll never enable vsync.

Mine also has this coil whine. I don't know if it's unbearable, as it's a pretty light noise, but it certainly leaves much to be desired about EVGA quality. A shame. I won't buy en EVGA product again.
 
I can't even send the card on RMA as I don't live in the U.S., and I'm sure EVGA is going to send me another coilwhiney card. So, it's not even worth it but I'm stuck with this expensive coil whine. 

I had mine RMA'd on monday due to this, and one of the fans making a grinding sound. 
 
I just wanted to say, i also tried using vsync. It changed the tone of the coil whine to a lower pitch but did not cut it out at all. I had mine RMA'd cause im not sure what exactly is doing it, but I didn't want my card to fail after a few weeks to months. 

As a 970 owner as well I am disappointed in not seeing EVGA step up in this thread to address the issue.

Coil whine, fannoise, radiating electronics...
Seems like the build quality went downhill a lot. I have Light coil whine that is still ok but the fan even at 29% is produciing a permanent rattle.
Since the Maxwell chips seem more efficient the electronics and heat sinks can be much more lousy so in the end the Maxwell uses a needless amount of power and produces noise when maxed out for profit.
All evga cards before were inducing noise into my soundcard. A 660Ti and 670 created different kinds of hum when pushed inducing garbage over air into the soundcard.
My brand new GTX970 is MUCH WORSE. Even when browsing the net and only some slight graphics moving i hear different kind of noise in headphones. No other card i had did this so loud.
This all hints to a real junk and cheapish selection of parts or bad layout.

Does it happen in games too? I installed my old 680 FTW today and I noticed there is some coil whine from it too. I own this cards for two years and never knew about it. It is pretty much the same. Only happening in firestrike but not in games.

pokuly
All evga cards before were inducing noise into my soundcard. A 660Ti and 670 created different kinds of hum when pushed inducing garbage over air into the soundcard.
My brand new GTX970 is MUCH WORSE. Even when browsing the net and only some slight graphics moving i hear different kind of noise in headphones. No other card i had did this so loud.

Sounds like a bad mobo! (possibly a busted PSU or poorly wired case, but less likely)
Most likely you're using integrated sound on your mobo and it just happens to not have powerline filtering installed on the amp. It's got nothing to do with evga/msi/asus, rather motherboard issues with poor audio design. I had a similar issue with the front headphone jack on one of my cases, if you plugged in USB3.0 you got a high pitched hum, which was solved by switching the USB header.

pokuly
The old X-Fi is not shielded at all. I guess it is time to get myself a new soundcard for PCIe to solve this once and for all. My GTX670 was nearly perfectly silent. AFAIK it used the Nvidia reference design.
Besides that the noise is not that obvious as you may think. It is very low and only to hear with headphones.

Still possible the issue is power related, but it could very well be EMF. You could always try wrapping the thing in copper chicken wire, but other than looking pretty badass I don't think it would help much!
 
If your case has a secondary vertical slot, you could try a pci extender, but doesn't sound like you do.

Having The Same Problem in Games Bad High Pitch Whine Sound. EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0

This is an old thread. When you have an issue please start a new thread unless the thread you wish to post into is a few weeks old.