Other users of the GTX 1080 have also referenced this fan noise at: it seems the 1060 dual coolers (SSC FTW FTW+) may also be affected by this too.
 
forums(dot)evga(dot)com/EVGA-GTX-1080-SC-ACX-30-Cooler-resonance-m2508616.aspx
 
At around 36% fan speed it makes an annoying whistle / howl best I can tell all cards resonate at some frequency but the cooler regularly goes through this frequency at around 1100rpm does anyone know if there's ever been a fix to this?
 
Does evga consider this a defect with the card? The card basically has done this since day 1 it's about a month old I guess I just started noticing it and what you have seen / heard you can't unsee.
 
It sounds identical to this video notice it hits it at a specific RPM www(dot)youtube(dot)com(slash)watch?v=ULuUk36lmHk

Some people were saying to the others RMA it but one person tried that 4 times and all cards had it sometimes the ranges differed by 1% but none of the cards he got it was "fixed" so I'm thinking it's part of the design of the fan blades and shroud.
 
Now I also thought that it could be some resonance on the aluminum heatsink which is what some have suggested and to test this I detached the shroud from the heatsink by removing the 4 mounting screws and 2 fan screws. I then ran the fan at various speeds attached to the shroud only without it being in contact with the heatsink.
 
After that test I learned that it has very little to do with the heatsink was at least 4 inches or so away from the fans and the fans still emitted that noise. I tried also touching various parts of the shroud to determine if it was vibration and it's not that either since usually with a vibration issue you can change the tone or getting to go away after you press on the shroud since you change the harmonic frequency of the thing emitting the noise.
 
Best I can tell is the sound is just the sound of the fan blades as they move air past the shroud the effect and sound are similar to what others have referred to as blowing onto a beer bottle.
 
I really like the visual design of the cooler but admittedly this side effect of the design I would consider a design flaw.
 
I might consider in the future modifying the shroud to see if I can shift when the fan starts emitting the noise curious if any musicians here with knowledge on how to design for retuning a whistle. My initial thought was to add a shroud to extend the length of the lip on the card.

Kinda wish I knew about this before hand might have influenced a buying decision oh well at least it isn't a defect it's more it's designed that way.
 
Guess it's not an RMA unless the sound is more of a rattle.

The fan design is an interesting thing to look at EVGA as far as I know is the only one using swept fans where the center is more forward and the outer edge is trailing let's call this "scimitar propeller" design.
 
Most other companies use a more traditional computer fan setup where the fan sweep is starts at the outer edge and the inner core is the trailing edge let's call this "sickle fan blade" design. I think there's a reason over the years we settled on this design it probably is quieter or has some other inherent properties.
 
Also I noticed that the Asus fans recently started to use a non swept design and audio clips of their latest cooler sound a bit whinny as well.
MSI has kept the more traditional sickle design like in other computer fans and so far that one remains one of the quietest maybe this overall is the issue.
 
I wonder if someone makes replacement fans with a different fan blade for our EVGA cards. I think the difficulty in replacing it mostly comes down to the wiring harness. And the fact the fans have to have a 3 point mount.

So you're saying the blower design is better from a sound standpoint interresting my GTX 570 was a blower from EVGA and it seemed to also make a howl at 40% although it was of a lower tone but it was there.

Ah, do you know anything about the ACX 1.0 fans they have a forward swept design. Where they noisy / had a howling sound?
 
Curious if those would still be compatible although on the 1060 it doesn't look like removing the fans from the shroud would be an easy job since there's a flat plastic bar keeping the fans mounted to the frame :-(
 
The only way to remove the fans seems to be to cut the wire or remove the fan from the motor hub since the blades themselves are too big to fit through the shroud.
 
They must screw in the fans first then crimp the connectors which means you would have to uncrimp the connectors to take them apart so there's not really a way to replace the fans in a non destructive way.

Cool the hunt for silence continues.

Just wanted to update seems like the RMA card I got back from EVGA has both a howl and a higher pitched whirr noise. I'll be sending back the RMA card as it's worse than my original card.
 
So for the record if anyone is still in doubt this kind of noise is "normal" for an EVGA card.

Lol for my GTX570 which I upgraded form it also had whiny fans.
 
Lol I guess I'm just destined to have annoying fans.
 
That said I think this was something that was not that well known but now it seems like we shouldn't be RMA'ing
 
Too bad the evga support staff thought this was unusual now I have an RMA card to send back we could've avoided the whole thing.

At this point after getting an RMA and having the same issue I'm convinced that they all do this it just depends on if you're paying attention to it or not.
 
Alternatively we can also say that maybe a high percentage of cards do this since there are enough posts on this forum if you search on this issue and users RMA'ing their first card only to find their 2nd card is also just as loud.
 
The whistle and howl happen at a specific frequency also and for most it's 1100rpm a hundred RPM above or below that it goes away completely.
 
Under normal use the fans will run under this frequency but may briefly pass into the 1100 RPM band before being stable at the frequency they are suppose to run at.
 
If someone has a successful RMA story for this condition I'd love to hear it since I'm not really willing to go through another RMA process unless I know there's a chance of getting this fixed.

I have figured it out!
 
Turns out the fan noise is actually caused by the fan blade design itself which means if you are getting this noise you should probably not RMA the card as the new card you get will probably exhibit the same problem with set to the same RPM's. If you're no longer hearing the problem in game then most likely your load characteristics have changed and you're no longer at the correct fan RPM to create this type of resonance.
 
So this is what I've done to address. After being frustrated with the RMA replacement card I decided to order some ACX 1.0 card fans since after scouring the internet I did not see any fan howl problems with cards dated back to that gen. When I got the fans I realized they didn't do 0db so I swapped the fan blades with the ACX 3.0 fan blades and the noise magically went away.
 
Mind you this is not without trade offs the ACX 3.0 fans have a howling noise from 35-37% fan speeds roughly around 1100 rpm and again at 70 - 75% fan speed and are generically loud at 80% fan speed. The ACX 1.0 fans are actually silent all the way up to 60% fan speed at which point they get progressively louder an are noticably louder than the ACX 3.0 fans.
 
However the ACX 1.0 fans don't have a problem region where they suddenly make resonant noise rather they just smoothly get louder after 60% fan speed prior to which they are completely silent.
 
The other trade off is the ACX 1.0 fans don't look as nice as the ACX 3.0 fans but since I never get to see them anyways it was an easy descision to stick with them.
 
As for performance implications the ACX 1.0 fans actually perform on par or sightly better than the ACX 3.0 fans able to achieve a slightly lower RPM in games and OC scanner while maintaining the same temps.
 
The only area that the ACX 3.0 fans do better that I can tell are speeds above 2000rpm at which point both fans are audible but the ACX 3.0 fans do better at just sounding like wind noise vs the ACX 1.0 fans which have started to make windows plus some normal fan noise that we are used to hearing.
 
Overall my feeling is that we've used the same fan blade design on computer fans for decades and I bet there's a reason we haven't really re-invented the wheel by a radical amount the known trade offs with the existing optimized fan design are probably good enough vs a new fan blade design that contains untested and hidden trade offs.
 
Hopefully this update was useful to people that have started noticing their video card howls at specific RPM's chances are it's not you and your card isn't defective it's just the design of the fan blades.