Is coil whine an issue with every XPS 15 9550 unit?

Hi all,
I am aware that we have a thread dealing with hardware and software problems in general. Since I would like to make a poll for the coil whine issue, opening a new thread for this seemed to be a good idea.

Why am I asking 'Is coil whine an issue with XPS 15 9550 unit'? I have the second board in my XPS 15. The first board had a relative low coil whine, which was more like a crunching noise. I was kind of fine with that, but due to heat issues it was replaced. The second board has now a high pitches coil whine, which is audible to me and really annoying. Discussing this issue with Dell Germany, the support told me, that every system has coil whine issues.

My question to you, owners of Dell XPS 15 9550 notebooks, is: is that true? Since I am aware, that not all people can hear high pitched noises (due to age, loud work environments or other factors), I reformulated my question to 'Can you hear coil whine from your XPS 15 9550'.

PS: According to a posting here in the forum, a bad power supply could cause coil whine. I got two power supplys and with both of them the problem persists.

 

My system (i7) suffers from coil whine while on battery. It might also be while it's charging but I can't hear the whine over the fans then.
A 'fix' is to disable the Intel Graphics software. You won't notice any coil whine but it decreases the usability of the system so much that it wasn't worth it for me.

 

I have problems with things around me whining all the time, but I dont think it's the coil in my 9550.

 

I've got pretty good whine on my couple year old XPS 13 (when plugged in), but none on my 9550.

 

Mine has, and really bad. Especially with the Nvidia card running.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8feeezwJVaLUnVxRm1Vc1Q0Y2s

0:00 AC in, Win Error Sound
0:23 Opened Unigine Heaven;
0:51 Fans Start;
1:30 Pull Plug;
2:00 Shutdown UH;
3:28 Plug In

It's very pretty noticeable the whole time, although on battery idling was quieter than the fan.

 

I have tinnitus so buggered if I know.

OK so a little if the fans are off and the rooms silent but you can't stop it, it depends how bad each one is.

I wouldn't warranty repair one that can't be heard over fans on quiet from my engineers perspective.

 

I also would not aks for a replacement if the fan could drown out coil whine. But I can hear it while the fans (at least for the lower fan speeds).
From your engineers perspective, could you elaborate why so many units (maybe all) are affected by coil whine? Could this be avoided by Dell if they would have used better quality components? I had an Alineware 15 R2 for 6 months with the same i7 6700hq CPU and never experienced any coil whine.

Could you tell us what you used to the noise? I tried to place my iPhone directly on the notebook, but could not record any whining. But what you recorded is really bad. Rattling noises combined with high pitched ones

 

These things don't have any insulation as they are all about cutting edge performance, size and weight. Those alienwares are well cooled and better insulated. Yeah they could use bigger and better parts but then it is a heavy laptop and wouldn't sell.

 

The Dell support guy told me today, that they have a new(ish) revision of the board, which supposedly reduces coil whine. I will see next week when they replace it again, if that helps.

So this is a problem with all slim and light notebooks? I have no experience with MacBoos or for example the Razer notebooks, but a short google search showed more issues with Dell XPS notebooks then the other two brands.

Regarding the charger: in the Dell forum specific PSUs were identified for causing coil whine. One of my PSUs it a defective one, tomorrow I will check if the other one I got also belongs to this group.

 

Toshiba ultrabooks used to have it (Don't know about curent as I don't fix them now)
Every laptop will have it, it all depends how close you have to get to hear it, even SSD's make noise, you should hear my 950 pro when it is under load, it has a chattering screech that you can hear when it is exposed.

Young people hear it more as they can hear higher pitch noises, us old farts lose the ability as we age.

 

I have the 9350 and I have the coil whine too. i5 processor with intel graphics only.
The last laptop that had this whine was a really old Vostro from like 2009 or 2010. My other laptops never had it. Really annoying but I'm learning to ignore it. It's not as high pitched as the Vostro lol.

 

I had a look at my second PSU, which is the newer unit without the buzzing. This does not help with the coil whine of my XPS. Today a technician will come and swap the mainboard again. I will report if that helped and if I actually got the second revision.

 

Any luck with the "newer revision"? For some reason I have trouble believing this. Dell has proclaimed they have "fixed the issue" several times in the last few years on their XPS line, but it seems 50%ish of units still have it, including the new Kaby Lake model.

 

I feel like most, if not all XPS units have it. My 9350 has it. It was annoying at first but I got used to it

Edit wow I didn't realize that I already replied here lol!!

 

Sorry for the late reply! I was busy with life.
I actually got a newer revision of the board, at least regarding the serial number. The high pitched whine is gone with the second replacement board, but some muffled whine is still audible. Considering the two boards I had before is the third one a major improvement for me. Even muffled coil whine is sometime audible, thus I am still not sure if I should be happy with it or not. In the last few week I was at least not annoyed by my XPS as with the board before the current one ^^

 

You will never get rid of coil whine, quit while you are ahead. Every silent laptop will have some form in a silent room with these chips.

 

This guy claims that coil whine issue was resolved when he upgraded the SSD on his 9350...

 

I am not 100% sure but the coil whine seems to come from two places.
One is the upper left corner of the keyboard (even when the laptop runs on battery).
The other is from under around the touchpad. It is super noticeable when I compile my Android app, which involves reading/writing a huge amount of small files.

So I guess changing SSD will address the later source.