The Intel XTU benchmark triggers coil whine.
The Intel XTU benchmark triggers coil whine.
Hello everyone,
I’ve just completed my build with a 9900k and a Gigabyte Z390 Aorus PRO motherboard. At this stage, I haven’t overclocked the CPU yet. I performed extensive stress tests using programs like Intel XTU, Realbench, and Prime95, and also ran Memtest for several hours. Everything is functioning properly—no BSODs or freezes have occurred. I’m using a manual voltage of 1.23 volts, paired with an NH-D15S cooler, and temperatures remain stable (reaching up to 90 degrees briefly during stress tests with AVX). Games won’t exceed 70°C.
What’s noteworthy is that when I run the Intel XTU Benchmarking app (and only this app so far), my motherboard produces coil whine—likely from the VRM. This matches a video I saw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nb5EBYgTes. It also appears the benchmarking sometimes triggers random restarts or BSODs (about once every 10 runs).
Given that I’ve successfully run Prime95 for around 20 hours, it seems my BIOS settings are stable. It could be a bug in the benchmark app or something else. Since it’s the latest version, I’m curious if others have encountered this problem and found a solution.
Thanks.
P.S.: I didn’t spend much time tweaking BIOS settings; most things are set to defaults except for XMP, which I enabled. I manually set the CPU voltage to 1.23V. I’ll try disabling C-states or adjusting the CPU voltage to see if the issue persists. I also recall someone mentioning that using a single 8-pin connector (my motherboard has an 8-pin + 4-pin EPS) might cause coil whine—I’ll test connecting the 4-pin version too.
Adjust the load line calibration two times before the maximum, and include the VRM frequency switch in the settings. The default setting is set to a very low value.