Tinnitus Caused by Nvidia 30 Series 3080FE 3090FE Graphics Card

Hello all. I hope you are well.

I see many computer related tinnitus threads on here after searching which typically relate to mechanical hard drives or fans. This thread wishes to address the 30 series Nvidia Founders Edition (FE) PC graphics card specifically. So the 3060FE, 3070FE, 3080FE, 3090FE and their variants (Ti).

I've developed permanent and severe tinnitus after using the long awaited Nvidia 3090 FE graphics card and so has another family member.

Has anyone else experienced this with the 30 series FE Nvidia cards? Is your tinnitus new or was it exasperated? Is it persistent?

 

Hi,

First of all, sorry that this is happening to you, hang in there!

This is an interesting topic, I will say straight away that I have no experience with those GPUs, but my tinnitus is in my right ear and my PC used to be on my desk, to my right.

My first tinnitus sounds like my HDD, and it got worse when I got open-back headphones. I thought that it was because of the volume (most likely thing, right?), but could it be a specific sound from the HDD?

What would be the mechanism for this? HDD- or GPU-induced tinnitus?

 

Like... the fan noise or the induction coils or voltage regulators?

There is no way on God's bluish green earth that caused anything but slightly mild tinnitus.

Turn the fan speed down or stream the desktop to a laptop.

 

I want to agree with this. Unless maybe there is a spike in ultra-high frequencies, this should not be a thing.

 

My first response was to freak out at this since I'm trying to get a 3080 FE. But thinking about it more, I'm skeptical that correlation equals causation and I don't think it would induce tinnitus unless it was about to happen anyway.

Having said that I will comment that "coil whine" with high end GPUs is definitely a thing and high frequency tones can definitely temporarily spike my tinnitus. Switching power supplies under high stress can drop down into audible frequencies, and the Founders Editions have the reputation for being the worst at this but all can be affected. This problem is getting evident as GPUs get more powerful and power hungry and cases get more and more ventilation holes in to let noise out.

Some suggestions from the GPU people to try to mitigate this:

• Use closed headphones when gaming
• Cap the refresh rate of your GPU to what you can actually display
• Use a closed case with fewer vents
• Undervolting might be a thing to try. A lot of people do it since Ampere from the factory is essentially "overclocked" well into the point of diminishing returns. You can save 30% of the power (and put less stress on the voltage regulators) at the cost of only a couple of percentage of performance

 

Coil whine exists but is not sufficient, on its own, to do anything more than piss your ears off short term. Also you are likely way too early into this to call anything "permanent". If multiple people in the household are having the problem, don't be afraid to consider other causes.

I know how whiney 3xxx RTX's can be because I've been mining crypto on a 3080 close to 24/7 for months in the same office I work in. It's an obnoxious sound and people with noise sensitivity or existing hearing damage might well be pissed off by it but it's not nearly loud enough to cause hearing damage; I don't even know it's especially worse than the 2xxx's.

Sorry to sound unhelpful, but if you have 2 people in the house that have really developed intractable tinnitus I'd be more suspicious of a number of other things. For instance, asymptomatic COVID-19 infections have been shown to cause hearing damage in a disturbing number of cases and could just be timewise-related (and for which the vaccines are protective but not nearly fully, as Delta becomes dominant). I don't think it's the RTX card, but if you want to send me your RTX card I will be happy to start mining crypto on it, also, 24/7 and let you know if it makes my ears bleed.

 

I just can't imagine this being the cause of OP's tinnitus lol. Sorry, that's just very odd.

 

It sounds rather bizzare. Are you sure you do not have TMJ or something? That's more likely a potential cause.