Okay,

some of you might remember me from this thread: http://forums.evga.com/GTX-980ti-Hybrid-70c-m2522976.aspx

I got my replacement 980Ti a while back and everything was fine. Until a few days ago when my 980Ti suddenly started having ridiculous coil whine.
Let me explain: A few days ago I got my new table. I put my case on my table. It's next to me now.
Why do you care? Well I was playing project cars and everything was fine. The day after randomly during my time playing project cars it suddenly started. The ridiculous coil whine. At first I thought it was just the pump of my H100i GTX ramping up. It made sense to me because the PC was under my desk the whole time which could be the reason why I never noticed but something was off. My PC was idling louder than before.

I then wanted to clean out the case because some dust accumulated there (mostly because it was sitting below a desk for the whole time) and I took the opportunity to check out where exactly  the sound was coming from. I started several benchmarks (Prime95 26.6, cinebench, unigine heaven) and put my ear next to different components. Blahblah testing testing the sound is coming from the GPU.
Okay this is no normal coil whine I think. Do you know that part when you exit unigine, you  get to a frame and your PC spits out tons of FPS? Yeah coil whine there is normal. It's the normal high pitched sound, limiting the FPS to say 100 makes it dead silent there. When playing games though the coil whine gets ridiculoius. It's not the normal high pitched coil whine but more a buzzing. Sounds like a pump but I don't think it's the pump. The coil whine is related to FPS. I limited the FPS to 5 in heaven, which resulted in the sound only appearing whenever a frame got spit out. Basically each frame produce one sound. Hard to explain.

https://youtu.be/pikLEVzLbS4 -> Idle. This sounds like it might just be the pump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dloK316j0WU -> Coil whine starts at around 0:20. I started Unigine Heaven.
https://youtu.be/-DGyEdfGkz4 -> Me rambling about the issue.

Some private words towards EVGA: Hey EVGA. I purchased this GPU a while back, it wasn't particularly cheap. I'm not mad at you for me having to RMA the first card, stuf happens but really... a 2nd RMA is kind of pushing it. I paid how much...? Something around 700€ or 800€ I think. This is a lot of money and honestly for that price I'm expecting a premium product. I think everybody can understand why this is making me kind of mad, this is not just a matter of RMAing the card. This is a matter of reliability and trust.
Not all is bad though. I commend your RMA process / support team. My last RMA went really well.

I will wait what you people have to say but I think I'll have to RMA this card...again. Let's hope it'll be the last RMA this time...


Edit: Update okay I can hear water flushing...I removed the radiator from the case and put it outside the case in such a way that the hoses are on the bottom but there still was some flushing sometimes. I checked the radiator and the system for leaks but found none, everything is dry.
I don't want to risk it though. I'm gonna RMA this card ASAP.

Edit: A few minutes ago it even sounded like the pump was completely dry or something. Really loud kind of grinding noise. The GPU is NOT leaking though. Gonna remove it from the system now because honestly this card is scaring the crap out of me right now lol. Might be the pump failing or the loop not being filled enough. The coil whine thing is still confusing me though -.-
 
Really EVGA... I originally purchased this card 1 year ago and I currently am in the process of requesting the 2nd RMA.... I honestly am not sure what I should think of this. Reading up the issues other users are having with your cards I really am thinking twice about buying another one of your products. This whole situation is making me rather angry.

Sajin
Coil whine is harmless... http://www.evga.com/support/faq/afmmain.aspx?faqid=59535
 
Fixes for coil whine...

#1 Put glue on the noisy coils. Only works if coils are exposed. Will void warranty if done.
#2 Run ati tool overnight to burn the card in. Click show 3d view to start ati render test.
#3 Increase/decrease voltage on the card.
#4 Try a different psu.
#5 Use frame rate limiter software to limit fps in game to reduce whine.
#6 RMA the card.

It definitely is not harmless to my sanity. It is louder than my freaking fans and they aren't particularly quiet. It's not just coil whine. It's really loud and annoying coil whine.

#1: Uh no. I will NOT do anything that would result in a voided warranty
#2: Can do... "burn the card in" ? It's a few months old but yeah I'll try that.
#3: Why? It suddenly started happening? I already put it back to stock settings and the problem still persists
#4: Because my AX860i suddenly went bad? Do I look like I can buy a new PSU just like that? lol Again, it randomly started happening.
#5: Limit FPS to what? 5FPS? I even get the Coil whine with 10fps. Please watch the videos I posted, I explained the issue in the 3rd one.
#6: This probably is the thing I'm going to do.
 
Edit: Update okay I can hear water flushing...I removed the radiator from the case and put it outside the case in such a way that the hoses are on the bottom but there still was some flushing sometimes. I checked the radiator and the system for leaks but found none, everything is dry.
I don't want to risk it though. I'm gonna RMA this card ASAP.

Edit: A few minutes ago it even sounded like the pump was completely dry or something. Really loud kind of grinding noise. The GPU is NOT leaking though. Gonna remove it from the system now because honestly this card is scaring the crap out of me right now lol. Might be the pump failing or the loop not being filled enough. The coil whine thing is still confusing me though -.-
 
Really EVGA... I originally purchased this card 1 year ago and I currently am in the process of requesting the 2nd RMA.... I honestly am not sure what I should think of this. Reading up the issues other users are having with your cards I really am thinking twice about buying another one of your products. This whole situation is making me rather angry.

RMA it and get over yourself. Things break, EVGA has great support. You buy EVGA for the support, not because they can magically make failure rates go down.

There is no evidence that EVGA has an abnormally high GPU failure rate. Either you got unlucky or one of your other components is causing the failure. Regardless, making passive aggressive comments about how you are angry is useless and non-productive. You're free to be angry, but it's a silly thing to be angry about. RMA it and go on with life. Thanks to EVGA the RMA process will be easy, which is frankly the best you can expect from a systems integrator like any GPU OEM (hint, they don't actually make the GPU, Pump, Memory, IC's, etc).

Update:
I thought this was worth mentioning. My original 980Ti Hybrid had the gold shroud on it, the 2nd card (1st RMA) had it as well but my 3rd card (2nd RMA , my current card) has the silver LED shroud on it, which is nice. In my opinion the silver one looks better than the golden one.

Temps are ~52°c max OCed, pushing the card REALLY hard makes it spike up to 55°c (only saw that ONCE for a very short amount of time). It seems like it's a horrible overclocker though. It can run at +100MHz core through multiple firestrike runs, furmark and heaven no problem but it isn't stable in games. Stable game OC seems to be around +60MHz on the core. The memory however seems to be stable at +500MHz.
I'm not done testing the card (didn't mess with it too much because I'm messing with my RAM atm) but meh. It's a reference board card, I never expected good overclocks from it.

Btw, what's the max voltage those cards can go to? Setting the voltage any higher than around +60mV in MSI Afterburner doesn't do anything. Do those cards cap at 1.23ish V?

One minor detail though is that the card ( or at least the shroud) seems like it has been used before. It's not a too big deal but worth mentioning IMO.

Carbonshape
Oh my gosh! Coil whine's nothing... if your card work's adequatly and it is not too invasive; Ignore it.
 
Edit: P.S. It's not just about the GPU. Coil whine can have different sources like a MB or a PSU in exchange with a GPU. -- Good luck!.

Yeah a loud annoying sound that drives you crazy is not invasive. All right.
Well whatever.

Anybody know what that gray/white stuff is? They look like thermal pads. Are they supposed to be there? I'm just curious because they're directly beneath some ventilation holes.

Carbonshape
It looks like pads. Man, you should talk this out with EVGA... -- they are costumor-friendly!

Talk what out?
The thing with the pads or my negative experience with their Hybrid GPU?

Those long thermal-pads don't really serve any purpose on a 980ti, as there are no RAM chips under the pads.
The Titan X (Maxwell) backplate have the same pads in the same exact spot (and does have RAM chips under those pads).

My guess is that Evga made these backplates to be compatible with both the Titan X, and 980ti.

Yes, that backplate is for the Titan X, 980ti, and I 'think' the 980sc(?).
It IS a multiple backplate for multiple cards. 
The pad should not hurt anything, and if it was on the card when you got it, I assume the same as others, that evga put it on there so it wouldnt hit parts on non-titan x cards.