Maximum PC

Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 has an annoying buzzing sound when at full load. No overheating, not crashing, no artifacts. Just a strange buzzing sound. Anyone else getting this?

Full load = Full fans
Check the fan. Is there a loose sticker? Does it seem loose (i.e. spins fine on the Y axis, but wobbles on the X or Z axises)?

Yeah I use the catalyst software to manually run the fans to 100% and it's not th same noise. The fans don't have stickers on it. I've heard that it can be a
Transistors.

fyi, they are blower type fans, not regular type of fans there nog.

It could be electrical noise, are you sure its coming from the 7970. Most of the time buzzing or humming tends to be a transformer issue; dealing with your power supply. Could you describe the buzzing sound or better yet, make a youtube clip?

Hmmm... good point. I have both cards on a Cooler Master 850Watt PSU. But it never made that noise with my GTX570's. And those GPU's were power hungry and hot! So now why would it buzz with these lower power-usage gpu's? I'll make a video and post it so you can hear the noise on it.

post up your system specs ITT.

Here are my specs: http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2273549

Uploading video to YouTube now...

Video of my two Sapphire Radeon HD7970 GPU's making a buzzing sound when at full load. I was running BF3, but the buzzing happens with any game.

http://youtu.be/KiKJfvXQK68 <-iPhone 4S cancels out noises, its actually much louder then what you'll hear in the video.

Both cards make this same noise [weather on Xfire or not) and i've heard others mentioning this same problem. Might be a drivers thing? idk...

PS: Also ran the fans in manual mode, set at 50% and i could still hear that buzzing sound masked by the sound of the fans.

Really weird, it sounds like a cross breed between a high pitch power draw noise from a component and something hitting a fan at high speeds... So both cards give the same noise? Have you tried to put the cards in a different system?

No, haven't tried it on another system. Fans look clean and clear and I held the fan while the noise was going on and the noise continues. So definitely not the fans.

It could be a number of things, but if I put my money on it, its either the power coming from the psu isn't clean enough on load putting stress on a component on the cards (as in the power oscillation isn't correctly set), but usually would mean you would be crashing a lot if this was the case, then again most cards are pretty tolerant about the incoming power source...

OR a component on the card just doesn't like you and went "FFFFFFUUUUUU electricity". lol

With my luck, probably. I've had this PSU for a while. Don't think i'll be changing it soon but in the future, maybe. I guess for now I'll just have to raise the volume of the gun fire of BF3 so that it mask the buzzing. Thanks for the help, dude.

Do you not have another PSU to test one of the cards or find a friend with a decent setup that you can just add your card in to see if its actually the card? I would trouble shoot this more.

OR... you could just add some 120/140mm x 38mm case fans rated to 220CFM and 68dba that they use in server chassis' to drown out ANY noise in your immediate area... lol

Unfortunetly, I'm alone in the geek world where I live. I'll try a different PSU. But so far the voltage and amps on my current PSU meet specifications for the GPU. But we'll see, for now I'll just crankup the volume on my games.

I have read several complaints about the sapphire cards making the same noise when the fans are cranked up. Several people rma the cards but the ones they sent back made the same noise in a few days

Just so I can get something out of the way: you sure it's not the PSU itself? PSU's tend to do strange, but normal for operation things when under load.