I love the performance and the look of the EVGA 970 but the one I got yesterday has a super loud coil whine. Is this something that goes away over time? It starts at about 35% usage and just gets higher pitched and louder as the percentage of usage goes up.

I had that with the 770 as it got older.  the back of the card began to sag and the fan started to "chop" into the shroud.  once I ghetto rigged the back of the card by lifting it up and putting a support brace to hold it, the chop noice and coil whine went away.  I think these ACX coolers are / have been defective from the start.
 
see guru3d
 
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/evga-geforce-gtx-970-acx-has-misaligned-gpu-vs-heatpipes.html

it's pretty significant. I'm about 4-5 feet from my case (using an r4 windowed) and it's  very audible. I don't know if this is a lot of coil whine or just some seeing as my last card didn't have any so I have nothing to compare it too. Will definitely mess around with the shroud

No coil whine on my GTX 970 SSC axc 2.0. Also, I tried some overclocking and it reached 1500mhz with no problems. Very pleased so far.

Yea I have a nearly unacceptable amount of coil whine. It is fine when I'm on my desktop, but the moment I switch to a game (specifically was using D3), it produces a very loud whine. Switching back to the desktop immediately stops this noise.
 
I'll probably have to return the card (GTX970 ACX1.0)

I have the 970, got it the day it came out. Mine has a ridiculous amount of coil whine. I'm thinking about returning it for an Asus.

interesting my card was just having some coil whine as well while i was in diablo 3... as soon as i switch back to desktop the coil whine stops immediately... interesting.. i wonder if its related to diablo 3 in some way.. i have zero coil whine in battlefield 4... ultra settings 200% resolution scaling... looks beautiful constant 50 fps...

roc_hope
interesting my card was just having some coil whine as well while i was in diablo 3... as soon as i switch back to desktop the coil whine stops immediately... interesting.. i wonder if its related to diablo 3 in some way.. i have zero coil whine in battlefield 4... ultra settings 200% resolution scaling... looks beautiful constant 50 fps...

Exactly the issue I have with d3.

Cap your maximum frame rates at 60fps if that is all your monitor can handle. Coil whine occurs with higher FPS, you'll notice it more especially in menus without a capped fps. My previous gigabyte windforce gtx 780 ti was a great overclocker, at 1,200mhz solid. It had coil whine, my previous r9 290 and r9 290x had coil whine as well. 

My 970sc has no coil whine. I played with Heaven 4.0 benchmarks for a while last night and it never happened, even played Gauntlet for a while also and nothing. I ran benchmarks on SSFIV (lol 202fps) several times and no whine either but it's way too short a benchmark. Though usually if I am playing I have v-sync on because I hate screen tearing.

Installed my 970 SC card tonight. Silent at idle and under load..

Hi
 
Been buying EVGA products for some time now but i am never loyal to one company....
 
Bought Six Evga 970 cards for clients system builds four of the evga cards had coil whine noise had to return them and went for 3 MSI and 1 gigabyte ....This is very poor from EVGA i think they have dropped the ball on this one .....so far its cost me Time and money sorting there faults out.
 
Shame on you EVGA
 
 

No coil whine here with 2x970's but as someone else stated, set a frame rate limiter.  I know its chest thumping to get fps real high but that is what is causing the issue in most cases, few cases bad coils.  Manually set it in nVidia inspector for your games that do not have vsync and you should be GTG.

I am really interested what EVGA thinks about this issue and if it's worthy of an RMA ticket?
 
I am personally having significant coil whine off of my EVGA GTX 970 SC 1.0. It idles at 1200 RPM plus. I have modified the fan curve using EVGA Precision 16 and cannot get the fan off or any lower than that. The fans on the GPU cooler are the loudest thing in the room. It is way to loud to be normal and am hunting to find a solution. If anyone is interested, I think I might try to post a video so you all can give me your opinion.
 
Does anyone have any advise? Are you having this issue too? Were you able to quiet it down somehow? Thanks!

I have heard some people have success by folding or benching for a long period, like 24 hours or so. Running the card hot seems to change something in the coils (potting compound?) that quietens them down. Doesn't always work but worth a try.