I just found an image of the AMD W9100 with the cooler taken off. Can people in the know identify the caps and make some judgment calls based on that?
Noise from the W9100's voltage regulators was louder than on my own Nvidia GTX 780 (Ghz Edition) even when the load and frame-rates were the same. These puppies are sold for around 3500 EUR now and are expected to suffer through long hardships of high load scenarios. I don't know what the TDP numbers for the W9100 are, my GTX 780 caps at 250 Watts.
As far as I understood capacitors can be made less noisy by design. On the other hand I read that capacitors can bend the PCB underneath them and thus create audible noise!? One workaround seems to be to place caps on opposite sides of the PCB, but that surely isn't too viable for PC motherboards and graphic-cards.
Can coils be made less noisy either by design or by implementation? What about higher count phase-designs vs. lower counts? Does it matter as far as noise is concerned, both audible and induced into ground lines?