Flonkam
 it seems that it indeed may be possible that the PWM is causing the noise--but I don't understand how it could cause it**, nor have I found even a suggestion as of yet.

I'm pretty sure it's the bearings in the fans just making noise when torque is first applied to them, could be they need to spin to lubricate. I don't think it's uncommon, the only time people notice is with GPUs with zero RPM modes though. My previous Evga 980 ti did it, and in this thread or another someone was saying their 2 Asus 1080ti did it as well. I did only notice it at first with my 980ti, I'm thinking the bearings might wear in after a while and stop making the noise, or I just didn't notice it anymore.

The noise could come from weak PWM signal that is under minimum operation volt for the fan .. then the fan motor will click and tick

LasseK1981
 
try another power supply 

I did.. a brand new Corsair RM1000x 1000w singerail other than my own Corsair HM1000W multirail..  made no difference... TRUST me!!! tried almost all so called fixes haha.. none worked..  and just to mention I never had Coil whine before..  But my 2080 Ti after EKWB blocks screams ..
 
Also specifically coil whine there are SO many and frankly unbelievable unverified "try this" fixes out there, I tried a lot! But my own conclusion is that it IS the gfx and nothing else.. 
 
I think a lot don't know what they are doing when troubleshooting..  ex. someone says I have GPU coil whine..   anther guy says try another PSU and MAYBE in a rare occasion it worked.. But my theory is that there never were coil whine in Gfx but his PSU.. he just doesn't know it but think.. I fixed GFX coil whine! :) 
 
 

LasseK1981
The noise could come from weak PWM signal that is under minimum operation volt for the fan .. then the fan motor will click and tick

That sounds similar to what I surmised in a previous post:
 
"I can think of only one possibility. Perhaps tox1c90 can tell us what he thinks about it. The only thing I can imagine is based on the fact that the rotor, when advanced partially, moves backward to its resting position. If the initial pulses are of insufficient power to propel the rotor to its next detent, and it starts to move backward, perhaps the application of a subsequent pulse at the point when the rotor is moving backward is causing this sound."
 
I'm curious: Have you actually witnessed and verified such a cause and effect yourself? I did a very brief search online, but I only found examples of PWM causing noise, not clicking. Someone maintaining absolutely that PWM can cause this exact clicking--and not just higher-frequency noise--would be good enough for me.
 

Pixelhomie
Well, we can discuss here for another two months what's causing this problem but i my opinion this is not our job.

You are right. But there are people like me who have not yet purchased a 20 Series card, and I would very much like to know what is causing this problem, so that I can factor that information into my decisions. E.g., if I know it is an obstruction, I know that it is relatively easily fixed. If I know that it is the PWM, I can decide to deal with it, or to research replacement fans that comport better with the particular signal being sent.

I went and found some pictures of the 2080 (I'm not home so can't take any of mine), but this is exactly the same wire and the slack I have in my 2070.
 
Hopefully you can zoom in enough to see, the circle centers over where you can see the slack in the wire on this card. I noticed the rub mark on the wire about where the red star is. The rub mark was an extremely small gray mark.

And the same pic without the circle so you can see the slack between the frame and the wire.

 
 Got the pics from the HEXUS review, 
Review: EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC Ultra Gaming
by Tarinder Sandhu  on 21 September 2018, 14:01


 The full size pics are there.

KaptCrunch
 
Adam
 
note: never turned a screw, just poked through fan blades 
 
I done my own fix with Q-tip and silicone 
the slack wires on mine were @ 6:00 position , with long thin screw driver I pull wires away from heat sink angle support and put a glob fast drying silicone with Q-tip right in corner of the angle where wire loose then pushed wires in corner of angle then another blob on top an smoothed over wires so no access would touch fan blades
 I say silent night  holy peace on earth   lol  after that macgiver  job 
see  
 

Yea thats a good call. Otherwise I think if you aren't comfortable with your silicone skills, one small zip tie in the center with the wire snugged up properly and the slack between the new and original zip tie you'd be good to go.

Be careful not to confuse the two completely different issues in this thread resulting in noise coming from the fans.
 
1. The noise which is caused by the fan blades touching some wires/cabling
2. The electronic noise coming from the fan stepper motor, which appears when current is applied to the stepper motor even slightly before the fans actually start to rotate (like .5 sec before, sometimes while the fans make a slight abrupt movement in counter-clockwise direction)
 
These issues have nothing to do with eachother, and while you can fix the first one by moving the cables, there is nothing the user can do about the second problem.
So if some people are fixing it by changing position of the cables, they didn't have the issue which we were talking about most of the time in this thread.
 
The noise coming from #2 is a common issue of fans, even of fans meant for silent operation, because while it had been taken care of the noise when they are running, usually they are not specifically manufactured with dead silent spin-up in mind.
For example, the stock silent case fans of my damped Fractal Define R3 case all do that noise in that very moment when I press the power button. With the Fractal fans it sounds more like the access noise coming from an old floppy disc drive. Just once in the moment where current is provided to the stepper motors.
 
Expensive fans like Be Quiet Silent Wings won't do that noise, because of stricter tolerances that don't allow such fans to pass QA. If that is not the case, then I would assume that it is quite random if you receive a card with or without the fans making this noise.

For those who mention "constant fans clicking" because --> Fans are starting & stopping frequently - there are some adjustments in software:
 

Temperature Hysteresis: will make the system wait till the "set number" in degrees C, has been passed before the fan will slow
(example)  If fans go On at 50 C & hysteresis is set to 3 --> the temp must drop below 47 C for fans to stop

Fan Speed Update Period: is the number of seconds between the info being updated  1 second = 1000 ms
 
And of course set the minimum fan speed above zero   (I run mine at 30% all the time, custom curve to higher speed as temps climb)
 

remidian
You need to figure out why you're GPU is idling at 55c and if you can't that you're gonna have to adjust the fan curve. 47c-55c seems to be the default temp for fans to turn on.

Agreed, but I'd also check for this issue. Sorry to keep harping on it, but I honestly believe it's the root cause in most situations where the GPU appears to be idling hot enough to cycle the fans.

Lol, Flonkam not gonna give it up. 

Good Thinking tox1c90 and flonkam!
 

Watching the video that is definitely the same noise that my fans make upon starting up. Thankfully I do not idle anywhere near the temperature that would cause that to happen. Watching videos w/ MPC and MadVR does not cause it either although I haven't turned up my MadVR settings since getting the 2070.
 
I can hear the noise more clearly on the video than I can on my own fans. It sounds like the fan blade is contacting something, but if that were the case one would expect the issue to continue to happen while the fans spin. At the very least you would expect to hear something as the fan slows down to a speed that is similar to when it begins to spin. All we hear is the initial sound and then nothing until the fan starts to spin again. So despite it sounding like the fan blades are contacting something I don't personally believe that they are, at least in that specific video.
 
Another thing I found interesting about the video is that the two fans both make a similar, but different sound. The left most fan makes a louder noise. If I listen to the video w/ my eyes closed I can identify every time without fail which fan is making the noise. I had someone seek around the video randomly for me in an attempt to make it harder, lol. 
 
I think EVGA is unlikely to comment on this matter simply because they have nothing to gain from commenting in my opinion.
 
If they state the fans are operating as intended it may cause some unhappy people to return their cards. If they say it's an unintended defect they'll get hit with RMA's. The best solution for EVGA is that people find their own way to deal with this issue without an RMA. Whether that be a custom fan curve or lowering idle temperatures etc.
 
Right now I imagine the 'fallout' from the fan issue is minimal and manageable. The last thing they want is to RMA every single card they've sold to replace fans on them. Even if you ignore the cost of potential replacement fans and RMA related shipping it would be a huge labor intensive undertaking. There isn't a company on the planet that would volunteer for something like that.
 
Surely they must have run QC on some of these cards before they entered the market. If they knew the fans made this noise from day one their options would have been to delay the launch while waiting for new fans and risk losing sales or forge ahead and hope that customers aren't bothered by the noise.
 
Have they confirmed to anyone who's requested an RMA that you will receive a card with fans that don't make this noise?

Thing is that when i asked for my sending back my second card for RMA i of course provided a video of the issue ( exact same noise you can hear in the video from the first page ) and asked the support if the fans were supposed to work like that. They answered me :"They are supposed to be very quiet and not make that noise"...
 
 
They also stated that they could not reproduce fan issue with my previous Graphics card. So i'm not sure what's going on.
 
Honestly IF this noise is inherent to this type of fans then they shouldn't have make those cards semi passives. They should have make the fans always on as the issue would have been audible only at the boot of the computer.

@ erto567

OK, so you see other thread about clicking .... why did you create yet another thread on the same topic ?
 
Temp Locking    CLICKING ISSUE RTX 2080 TI XC - VERY ANNOYING! NO RESPONSE FROM EVGA     as duplicate thread
 
merging with existing thread - this thread ---> 2080 TI XC Ultra fan clicking noise