New HD6950 - whirring noise in 3D

Hello.

I have about a year old computer (Phenom II X4 945, Corsair 650TX PSU, Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P MB, 4 x 4 Gb G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR3 1066). It used to house a Sapphire HD5770, and it was nice and quiet (in an Antec P183 case).

I got a Sapphire HD6950 yesterday (not flashed to 6970, not tweaked in CCC), plugged it in, got the 10.12a drivers, and went back to playing Fallout: New Vegas. Now, there's this odd whirring noise (sounds a bit like a modem connecting, or crickets, or a crappy car amp getting interference). It's not fan noise (and the pitch doesn't follow fan RPMs). It changes pitch (very modem-like sound) when graphics change on-screen, and is especially high when looking at bright objects.

There's no noise in 2D. The noise shows up when playing F:NV, or when running 3D Mark, or when Windows does it's "performance evaluation" thingy.

It's probably either the HD6950, or my PSU. Overall, the rest of the system is fairly low demand wattage wise, so it should work okay with a 650W PSU. F:NV isn't exactly horribly demanding game either. I have hard time trying to pinpoint the noise to either component - in a P183, the PSU is in the bottom, very close to the video card.

Any ideas what this could be?

 

Looks like you got some coil whine somewhere.

If it is REALLY audible then i'd RMA the part that is making the noise if not then you may have to just put up with it, i had that same power supply with a GTX 295 which draws more power and i had significant coil whine, so it could be that.

Try your best to figure out what is making the noise.