D430 chipset whine

A high pitched whine comes from the CPU area. It changes frequency if I turn the wireless on and off. Is this normal? Also, on battery, every so often, the screen flickers quickly. Any ideas?

 

I think electronic whine was pretty common on Santa Rosa platform machines... The D830 I had did a lot of it for sure. I'd say the screen flicker is a little more worrisome... expand on your definition of "flicker" here? Is the machine still under warranty?

 

It's still under warranty. It doesn't happen often, and, so far, only when it's on battery. I've changed the driver. It's not the cable since it doesn't happen when I shake it. It's a quick flicker on part of the screen.

 

I had a similar problem with my D620, for me, disabling Bluetooth power save (or disabling the Bluetooth card from the BIOS) helped a lot. Eventually, that motherboard had a GPU failure, and the replacement board didn't make any noise at all.

 

The flicker happens with an external monitor as well. So far only on battery.

 

Have you tried checking for a BIOS update or reinstalling Windows?

 

It has the latest bios. I hope it's a software thing as I'm going to upgrade to Win 7 after I finish playing Icewind Dale 2 with my son.

By the way, thanks for helping me on this lovable, but outdated laptop.

 

Hi. Do you mean it had not whine at all. I think it's normal for all laptops to have some chipset buzz or whine. Also, did your monitor flicker as well or just buzz?

 

There was a pretty noticeable whine/buzz with that system when off AC power. With BT disabled, it was much quieter, but still there. I had another D620 that was half a year newer that did not make any noise. Some noise is normal, but it should not be so loud that it gets bothersome. I didn't have any LCD flicker.

 

Thank you Robin. I really appreciate it.