I did several runs through Port Royal to find an approximate threshold for the whine I'm hearing by changing GPU power and core offsets in Afterburner.
Power Limit \ Core Clock Offset \ Avg. Clock \ Score \ Whine
133% -- +100 -- 2805mhz -- 412W -- 25803 - Yes
133% -- 0 -- 2715mhz -- 25425 - Yes
100% -- +100 -- 2805mhz -- 25671 - Yes
100% -- 0 -- 2715mhz -- 25312 - Yes
90% -- +100 -- 2790mhz -- 25574 - Yes
90% -- 0 -- 2700mhz -- 25287 - Yes
80% -- +100 -- 2677mhz -- 25131 - Yes
80% -- 0 -- 2598mhz -- 24842 - Yes
70% -- +100 -- 2553mhz -- 24274 -- Yes but much less... almost certainly not audible with side panel on.
70% -- +0 -- 2484mhz -- 23967 - Same
While I was running these tests, I stuck my head inside my PC with my ear (dangerously) close to the top fan on the GPU. One, the "pass through" fan on the 4090 is impressively quiet. Two, I became less convinced the whine was from the GPU. I ran the 133% power limit again, pulled off the back of my case, and Lo! The whine seems to be coming from my Corsair HXi 850 power supply. I've never heard a sound from it or known its fan to spin (even coming from an EVGA 3080 FTW), but the PSU fan was spinning slowly and the buzzing seemed to come from within (not from the PSU fan). So, it appears my PSU has whine that occurs when it is pushed harder than it was by the 3080. It probably isn't a coincidence that the whine mostly disappeared when the power draw of the 4090 was limited to 70% and was pulling about as much power as my 3080.
My sincerest apologies to Jensen and Nvidia's engineers for accusing the card of coil whine
! Fortunately, a PSU is more easily replaced than a 4090.