Is this issue confirmed to be the fan hitting a wire or a noise from the actual fan? Started a thread the other day thinking I was unlucky to get a noisy fan then found this thread filled with similar reports! If the fan is that click noise really a characteristic of the fan or is it a fault? Has anyone been able to determine whether all fans make the click or just one or two? 

Jackolantern28

Graphite8five
Is this issue confirmed to be the fan hitting a wire or a noise from the actual fan? Started a thread the other day thinking I was unlucky to get a noisy fan then found this thread filled with similar reports! If the fan is that click noise really a characteristic of the fan or is it a fault? Has anyone been able to determine whether all fans make the click or just one or two? 

Its characteristic of the fans. Both my fans make it when spinning up. Just a design flaw by EVGA for using a poor choice of fan. Nothing you can do about it other than get a different card or play with fan profiles.

This is really disappointing. I’ve got a 2080 Ti XC2 Ultra on its way to me right now and I don’t know what to do. If I test the card and find the noise unacceptable, I’m assessed a 15% restocking fee - that’s like 200 bucks!

So my only options are to send it back (without opening it) and get an ASUS card (which allows you to disable the 0db mode!), or to keep the card and put a bracket and AIO cooler on it if the fan noise is too annoying (as another user said he had done).

What I don’t understand is why EVGA won’t satisfy the users who have issue with this by allowing them to disable the 0db mode. ASUS cards also have a 0db feature. I haven’t seen any reports about similar clicking fan noises on the ASUS cards but they even allow users to disable 0db mode with a switch on the GPU!

Could not EVGA release an optional bios which could be flashed to the card to disable the 0db mode for users who would prefer their fans to always be spinning (albeit at low RPM) without having to mess with custom fan curves and the X1 software?

I still really don’t know what I want to do, personally. I’ll probably open the card up and see what I think, and if it’s too loud just put it on a bracket and AIO cooler. At that point perhaps I should’ve just got the 2-slot card instead, but I guess having the extra support of the third pci-e slot is good from a structural perspective (to help mitigate sag), and also the extra thermal sensors are kinda cool.

Flonkam

Graphite8five
Is this issue confirmed to be the fan hitting a wire or a noise from the actual fan?...If the fan is that click noise really a characteristic of the fan or is it a fault?

There are two separate issues. Many people have independently confirmed that they discovered that a fan wire was making contact with the blades of one or both fans.
 

Jackolantern28
Its characteristic of the fans. Both my fans make it when spinning up. Just a design flaw by EVGA for using a poor choice of fan. Nothing you can do about it other than get a different card or play with fan profiles.

This is incorrect. There are two separate issues, and there is no way that one could know for certain which problem a user has--or if he has both--if he has only reported a "noise".
 
The fan blades hitting the wire will produce the "clicking" sound. Like the other issue, this usually only lasts for a second until the fans are spinning fast enough for the plastic blades to bend away from the wire, and/or the wire to get pushed away by the air pressure.
 
The other issue, which seems to be caused by the bearings, produces a quieter, subtler, "growly" or "grindy" type of sound. Many people say that it sounds like an older hard drive. This one is subtle enough that it may not even be heard unless you have a particularly quiet case.
 
As I posted earlier, I suggest removing the card to determine whether or not either of your fans is contacting the wire. If so, it is something that you can fix yourself, and once fixed, should remain fixed for the rest of the card's life.

Posts #101, #197, #206, and #228 contain information and pictures from people whose noise was caused by an obstruction, and were able to fix it with little effort.

If the fans are not hitting anything, your choices may be limited to setting the fan curve to remain above a certain speed so that the bearings only generate the noise once when starting up, trying to get used to the intermittent noise, or returning the card and purchasing another brand that does not use the same type of bearings.

Well to be fair, if the fan is hitting something, its still the same fan type, so resolving that, it will still make the same grinding noise. And its not that quiet, I have an intel stock cooler thats 3yrs old. If it is audible over that thing, then it isn't quiet. Maybe the extent of the sound varies between card, but videos I have seen so far dont show that.
 

Hello, 
 
(my english isn't the best so please have some tolerance)
thought i might report my problem as well. I have a EVGA RTX 2080 ti FTW 3 Ultra Gaming. I read the complete post and i already looked for loose cables of the fans. I couldn't find any loose cables. So i opened X1 and set the fans from 0 to 30%. Whilst starting i heard the same noise as in the first video that was posted with these sounds (i think it was on the first page of this thread). But i realized that only Fan 2 and Fan 3 make louder noises when starting. Fan 1 is nearly inaudible, but still there. So it has to do something with the manufacturing process of the fans... When two fans are louder than the first one??  My solution now is: setting the fan-curve to a minimum of 30% (thats the sweetspot for low noise and cooling for me) and letting it ramp up higher if temperatures rise. When the fans stop, i have no noise. (when shutting down the pc) 
 
But i cant decide if i should RMA it and hope to get my money back, and buy another brand... for a card this expensive that should not be an issue. it should run flawless out of the box imho. There is still no solution from EVGA am i right? I would not want to miss out on the 10 year additional warranty i can buy from EVGA. No other manufacturer has something comparable :( And a card that is this expensive (1600€ in Germany) i would like to keep it more than 3 years...
 
Thanks, and greetings from Germany :)

Flonkam

Jackolantern28
Well to be fair, if the fan is hitting something, its still the same fan type, so resolving that, it will still make the same grinding noise.

You're right--if a particular fan happens to be experiencing both issues, but the (presumably) bearing-related issue is not a problem on all cards. My 2080 Ti Black, for example, makes no noise at all when the fans spin up. That was the first thing I checked after getting the card, because I had already been in these forums and knew about the noise issues. I have a very quiet open case, so it was easy to verify by putting my head right next to the card.
 
 

Jackolantern28
And its not that quiet, I have an intel stock cooler thats 3yrs old. If it is audible over that thing, then it isn't quiet. Maybe the extent of the sound varies between card, but videos I have seen so far dont show that.

If you have already verified your situation beyond all doubt, then I apologize, but you may be surprised at how often people confuse the two different noises, and how many people originally refused to believe that the noises could have been caused by an obstruction!
 
Compare the sound in the video in Post #20 on Page #1 of this thread with the sound in this video: 
 
In the first, the noise is clearly heard, but in the second, even though the microphone is right next to the card, the noise can barely be heard above the background noise. I do not know for certain, but I believe the noise in the first video is an obstruction, and the noise in the second video is the (bearings?).

If you have had these kind of issues before, its often hard to show the loudness of the clicks (or coil whine if filming that) as phone mics are not that good quality (I assume its a phone by the look of it). When I had issues with noises in the past, I used an external mic, as it better shows the severity when listened to with an ear rather than a low end mic. phone / low end mics cant pick it up that well, but last time i checked my ears are not phone mics, and they can pick it up very sufficiently.

Small Update.
 
Bought a 2080 Ti XC Ultra a week ago and only once noticed the slight grind on fan start-up. Otherwise the card is dead silent at idle and hovers around 41C (in Phanteks Evolv atx case).
 
So far so good!
 
 
 
 

In regards to the fan stop mode not working, I'd love if other people in this thread could perform the following test with GPUz or any other similar software.

GPUz shows that when using three monitors, my card uses 40w at idle. When using two however it hovers near 15w. This is the reason why the card idles in the 50s and turns the fans on and off every few seconds. My old 1060 strix had no issues with fan stop mode.

4790K
Here a short Video of the clicking. it occurred while watching a movie and gpu was at 55-56C. 
 

Yes, exactly same noise, i thought last night that i had a mouse scratching inside my closet...just as annoying as a faulty HD.

AHowes
Sounds like the fans are hitting either the fan cable or heatsink fins are it ramps up. The fan head can move up and down as it speeds up.

Keep in mind that the video he posted is not his--he was only presenting it as an example of the kind of noise he is experiencing.
 
I too assumed that he was dealing with an obstruction until he stated that there is no noise on start-up. Not only is this contrary to what would be expected, every example of an obstruction that I have seen thus far featured a noise on start-up.
 
At any rate, your point about the fan head moving is important for helping people understand how an obstruction can cause a noise at start-up but not continuously. Also, I know from experience that plastic fan blades bend away from the direction of airflow. I'm sure the deflection in these fans isn't near that of an RC plane, but even so, less than a millimeter would be enough.

randomnut
The noise is simply unacceptable, so loud.
 
I was getting to the end of the rma period with the retailer so i've now sent it off, in the hope that the replacement I receive won't be quite so bad.  If EVGA know about this issue and are not rectifying it in manufacturing it says all that needs to be said about EVGA and I won't be buying any more of their products.

Your problem was almost certainly the fan wires obstructing the blades, which can be determined by the louder, hard, "grating" type of sound. The sound of an object contacting moving fan blades is a very distinct sound.
 
This is an easy problem to fix yourself, as multiple people have reported in this thread. Should you have to? Of course not. But in situations like these, all factors must be considered. You could purchase a card from another company, and yet deal with an inferior product, and/or inferior service.
 
In fact, this issue does not say all that needs to be said about EVGA. There are many people like myself who have purchased many cards from EVGA over a decade or more. There is a reason why EVGA has earned the reputation of the "elite" option for video cards. In this scenario, it makes no sense to throw the baby out with the bathwater at the first sign of trouble. If problems like this persist, only then will I be forced to consider other manufacturers. As of now, it's an anomaly.
 
Of course you understand that I have not had any problems with my 2080 Ti, and most people haven't either. But I'm acknowledging that these problems exist.

randomnut
There is no issue with the fan wires, I checked and double checked they are out of the way as I really didn’t want to have to deal with rma.

I sent that same video in via support ticket and asked if this noise is by design, and if it’s been fixed in manufacturing, I was told simply that all rtx cards by evga make this noise. So a replacement would still have it.

I’ll see what happens when I get the replacement, but if it’s also this noisy I’ll return and replace with a gigabyte one.

The frustration here is that that noise is unacceptable. Evga know about that noise, and refuse to accept that it’s not good enough and fix it in manufacturing. They flat out say the only fix is to use px1 to set a fan curve and have the fans running all the time, which is only a band aid for a deeper problem. Everyone makes screwups and you should only judge places by how they address and resolve said screwups. Unfortunately here EVGA haven’t done anything whatsoever to address the problem, they seem to think that this sort of noise is a really great idea

Just a quick response. Your reply from EVGA does concern me somewhat, as it seems like they're not acknowledging that there are two separate sources of aberrant fan noise. The one that is probably caused by the bearings is what they claim is normal, but clearly the fan wire issue is an actual defect.
 
Further, it's odd that EVGA says that all RTX cards make the bearing noise, because my 2080 Ti Black doesn't. I knew about the problems before I bought my card, and the first thing I did was get right inside the case and check for any noise. I have a very quiet case, so it was easy to determine. And to be honest, I don't think most RTX cards have bearing noise issues--but then again, I don't know that for a fact.
 
I don't mean any offense, but the fan wire issue is not necessarily easy to see just by visual inspection, because there won't be any loose wires. There are some pictures earlier in this thread that other users have taken of the wire problem. It's easy to fix--just not necessarily easy to detect, because most people assume it means that a wire is actually "loose". And then the wire only has to be just barely touching the fan blade. In other words, you might not be able to hear or feel it by turning the fan slowly. But if you are positive that you eliminated that possibility, then my apologies.
 
You are right about everyone making mistakes. I'm not defending the noise issues this generation. As far as I know, EVGA is playing fair--i.e. they are telling the customer what the situation is, and honoring refunds if the customer is not happy. NVIDIA have caused a lot of big changes to be made, which trickle down to the manufacturers. I'm only saying that, personally, I would need to see disappointments like this extending beyond this generation for me to look elsewhere. Thus far, I feel safest with EVGA, all things considered.

my EVGA RTX 2080 XC Ultra fan is maxed out when boot up at 100 percent and cant control it at all tried to unplug the header and does nothing

cardnexus
Hi, I just got my 2080 yesterday with 2 fans and immediately I noticed the clicking notice like majority of people pointed out during fan stops and starts spinning. I googled it and found no officially solution and confirmation by EVGA. Do we know if there will be some kinda fix/patch from EVGA?
 
Thanks!

Hello. There are two separate issues that can cause a start-up noise. One is inherent to the fan assembly itself, but even so, not all cards/fans have this noise (neither of my 2080 Ti fans have it, for instance). The other cause is the result of the fan wires obstructing the fan blade. If you look through this thread, you'll see that many people have solved their noise problem by finding and correcting this issue.
 
Posts #101, #197, #206, and #228 contain information and pictures from people whose noise was caused by an obstruction, and were able to fix it with little effort. It may not be obvious--you'll need to remove your card and do a thorough inspection.
 
If you determine that there is no obstruction, you can adjust your fan curves so that they remain spinning at a low RPM, or exchange the card and hope that the replacement doesn't have the same issue (or worse). Or you could take your chances with another manufacturer. I suppose you could even try AMD. I would have loved to stick it to NVIDIA by going with AMD, if they had a card that provided the power I need for 4K.

V3DTech
To anyone who had the cable touching, did it make the sound only when the fan first starts to spin or would it make it all the time?
I just got a 2080 XC it makes the sound only when the fan first starts to spin like in the videos above.

As far as I know, everyone who has reported that his noise was the result of a wire obstruction experienced the noise only when the fans start spinning. It seems counterintuitive, but there are at least two possible reasons why this would happen that I know of.

p0tent
My FAN2 makes a noise at 1-1000RPM approx, there is absolutely no way it's hitting anything. Pressing down on the fan can change how loud it is, sometimes I can make it slightly less noisy. FAN1 has never made a sound. Very annoyed by this product so far.

 
If your fan makes a noise continuously at lower RPM, and not just at spin-up/spin-down, then it is almost certain that it is being obstructed by the tiny fan wire (or something else). At higher RPMs, the air pressure can push the obstruction away, and in addition, the plastic fan blades themselves can bend in the opposite direction, away from the obstruction. This is why the many people who have found a wire obstruction almost always heard a sound only briefly at startup.
 
Do you have another idea as to what could be causing such a continuous noise?