M1330 whine...is it your CPU or Southbridge?

Right, I've noticed that 99% of people are confusing CPU whine with Southbridge whine!

Can all of you who have ANY whine from your M1330 vote & post here?

You can tell if you have CPU whine if the noise is coming from the top left (by the CPU, surprisingly...), and you can tell if you have southbridge whine if the noise is coming from the bottom right, just under the express slot (the Intel 82801HBM chipset)!

I just want to know if CPU whine is more common than southbridge whine, or vice versa...

Cheers!

 

Well as of 5 minutes ago my laptop doesn't make a sound. The technician just left. He came to my work place and did his thing. So far it's performing really well.

My original m1330 the whine was too loud to determine where it came from. The replacement the whine came from two places. A faint whine from the top left, and a loud ass whine from the bottom right.

The motherboard was replaced on the replacement with an a04 board and now it's silent. Even if i put my ears next to the laptop i hear nothing.

The technician was good too, he asked for somewhere to sit down because, "the m1330 is very finickey." I got my boss to get him a desk close to where i work and about 30 minutes later he called me to inspect. So far, so good.

So this whine got me a free 2 year warranty upgrade (with next business day reparis) and, if things continue the way they are now, a very silent notebook.

I'm happy as hell right now that i chose dell .

Edit:
Oh yeah, and the screen on this one is superb!!

Edit2: Although i appear to have no more whine, i voted southbridge, because that was the loudest whine.

Edit 3: Oh sh1t-cakes. It's whining again. bottom right. And well it was quiet for a couple hours. Lol.

 

southbridge >.>

 

The CPU whine, although minutely present on mine, is not bad enough to bother me. I can only hear it if I put my ear really close to the laptop. And I'm pretty sure I have the A01 motherboard, because I got my system in August.

 

only 7 votes so far, but 3 are for southbridge, 3 have no whine, and only 1 person has CPU whine....interesting!

 

This topic needs to be bumped. So here i go: Bump.

In regards to the southbridge whine. Has anyone noticed that when you make the computer load something the whining stops, the instant loading starts, then starts again when loading stops?

Try this: Open the start menu, and start clicking on some of the folders so that they expand. Don't click the same folder twice. Also try opening some programs. For instance, open MS Word, while the loading screen is on, the computer is silent.

It's a shame my computer is so fast, everything loads really fast so i don't get much silence.

Also note that i found loading web pages doesn't make the whining stop.

Can someone try what i just said to try and let me know if the whining stops for the couple seconds that it takes for programs to load? Also anyone have any idea why this is happening? And what exactly is southbridge? A manufacturer? If so what do they make?

 

I don't have a M1330, but I was thinking capacitors sometimes make a whine. So maybe the motherboard changes some capacitors.

 

ellianth: that same thing is happening with mine. although the southbridge whine for me is minimal, if i open/load MS word, the whining will temporarily stop while it's loading......albeit only for a couple seconds or so :T

anybody know why this is? and what exactly is southbridge for that matter?

 

capacitors dont whine mate...its transistors that whine! And these days we have 100's of millions of transistors within the chips. There's not a single capacitor within a chip!

I know for a fact its the 82801HBM southbridge cos me & my mate took apart his M1330 to find out where the whine was coming from, and it turned out to be the 82801HBM southbridge (noise was coming from under the express slot)!

The current poll results show that 60% of M1330 owners have whine coming from the southbridge!

 

where is the option for "CPU AND the Southbridge"

 

oops! Forgot to add that! Can a mod or admin please add it??

 

there, I voted
my whine is inconsistence..but most of the time it whines.. well I noticed before when I wasn't plugging in anything in the usb port, there was no whine, then I plugged in my mouse..and the whine came on..:S

 

I'm guessing I have a soutbridge problem...bottom right..expresslot area=high pitch whining

Yeah, the whine stops when the processor is working/when I open things...
It also stops when I use the scroll thingy on the touch pad...

I don't think I have cpu whine then, I don't hear anything from the top left of my laptop...maybe it's because theres the fan and the harddrive right next ot the cpu so it drowns it out..

Iunno...
But yeah. soutbridge here.

 

the hard drive is by the bottom left, and the fan are not always on. So if you dont hear any whine from the CPU when the fans are off, then you dont have CPU whine...simple.

 

Cool, no cpu whine. Just this "southbridge" whine...sigh...

 

I was looking around and someone on here posted what I think is a solution for the lower right hand side (Southbridge?) whining sound.

I tried this and the noise stopped instantly. Mind you it's not the first time I thought the noise was gone, only to have it return later. But it's been quite for a bit. I just wanted to post this here in case I lost this thread later. And to stop peoples suffering as soon as possible. It sucks to keep asking for new laptops when you have one that's physically perfect. Especially when there's a chance that you'll get one with a defect. If the noise comes back I'll edit this post to let you know.

Anyway what i did was following the guys instructions):

Start> Control Panel> Device manager>

- Click on the Bluetooth radio's node (the plus sign)
- right click on "Dell Truemobile 355 Bluetooth + EDR"
- Go to properties
- Click the Power Management tab
- UNCHECK: Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.

Click OK and you're done.

If this is gonna for you, it'll have worked by now. It's instant! So the whining should be gone. Also note that you might feel funny/weird after this. My ears have been hearing the whine for a month now and silence is something new to them. My brain is also forcing my ears to search for a new noise. I sure hope I don't find one.

I also hope that the noise won't come back. School starts in a month and I don't want to be ashamed to bring the greatest laptop ever made to class.

I hope (I seem to be doing a lot of that tonight) this works for you. Good luck everyone.

 

@ ellianth, I've heard that the bluetooth method you mention is quite hit & miss really!

Would be nice to find a 100% working solution!

 

Didn't work for me
I'm finding the whine kind of entertaining now. Still annoying, but it's weird how it changes constantly. When I tried the bluetooth method above, it went from a constant whine to something like a shuriken flying through the air.

 

bump bump...

 

what is southbridge whine?

 

im not gonna explain that cos its in the 1st post!! READ BEFORE YOU POST!!!

 

WOW - H3rmaN - aaaag!

was looking for a little more than 'southbridge problem - bottom rite-expresslot hare- high pitch whine'

How'd it come to be called southbridge? ok?

 

that was...southbridge problem -bottom rite expresslot area-high pitch whine.

 

because "southbridge" is the technical term for it! And "northbridge" is the technical term for the 965GM chipset...because the southbridge is the the bottom by the touchpad (the south), and the northbridge is up top (the north).

That question is like asking why a processor is called a CPU!

 

H3rmaN--Thanks very much for the info. it takes me a bit longer than most
folks to get it - i'm challenged for sure. I'm learning though (albeit slowly).

thx again for the great info!

 

Mt9 mate, the best way to learn is by searching for yourself...this is for 2 reasons.

1) if you search on goolge and find the answer, you will probably understand it better.

2) it saves us repeating the same stuff over and over.

I personally think that you should never ask someone UNLESS you have tried to find the answer yourself and failed.

That is how I have learnt most things I know, and thats why I recommend others do the same. Cos it allows the people that do know their stuff to help people with more difficult problems.

Sorry for snapping earlier, but I really do hate it when people just ask without looking first...

A classic example of finding out for yourself is when me and my mate took apart his M1330 to see where his whine came from, then finding out it was from the southbridge, and not the CPU! And according to the poll results, it turns out that half the M1330 owners suffer from this issue. I can bet that a few (if not most) of them originally thought it was CPU whine, cos they didn't digg deeper to find that it was really the southbridge.

 

You're right. No worries. Thanks again!

 

bump bump...

 

bump bump....

 

the Southbridge does not necessarily have to be located on the "south" end of the computer. It's generally the I/O that ties stuff like the USB ports to the CPU. ALi used to make Southbridge chips before they were bought out by NVidea (I think NVideo. Could have been AMD).

Northbridge is usually integrated with the main CPU. In some instances, it is not, and I think Transmeta made some processors with no Northbridge built in a long time ago before they discontinued their chip business (the Crusoes, before the Efficeons).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southbridge_(computing))

C

 

I know mate (I'm an electronic engineer), but incase you didn't notice, I wasn't really in the mood when I wrote that, and just decided to give a basic explination, cos most southbridges iv seen are at the bottom, and most northbridges iv seen are at the top.

I could have got your definition by doing "define: southbridge" in google as follows.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?clie...=define:+southbridge&****=&btnG=Google+Search

 

thanks Charadis

 

thanks H3rmaN

 

Southbridge here and I dont know if it was mentioned before, but I also have another high pitched noise from the bottom when in standby. Compared to the whine, it is a more constant sound.

 

I just ordered the M1330 for my fiancee. Should I worry about this whine you all are talking about?

 

its not something to worry about (nothing is wrong with the lappy), but it is very annoying and can give you a headache!

 

i could be mistaken, but it seems like the incidents of 'whine' noise is decreasing. would anyone agree?

 

Oh btw Caps do wine. If you have owned a desktop motherboard you would know.

 

I have the whine coming from the southbridge. One thing though, which I don't know if people have written on this, is that if I put the fingerpring reader to the sensor scrolling mode while on battery the whine changes pitch and becomes much more bearable. At least on my system.

 

System ordered on 12/23/07, arrived like two days ago, and I've got southbridge whine. On checking out parts, I notice I've got a Rev A01 mobo. Techs've had me try BIOS-flashing from A07 back to A06 and A02 with no luck... looks like I get either a mobo swap or a replacement machine. Joy.

 

I have the A04 motherboard and A07 bios, still have the whine.. I guess I have to go the replacement route..

 

ive got the southbridge whine.. and RM clock solved it. Stopped using it though

Gotta get used to it i suppose

 

Should we make a petition to Dell and ask Dell to seriously face this issue? Their attempt to make a new motherboard is great but this new motherboard still can't solve the whine issue.

 

When I got my M1330 I had to have 2 replacements, both had CPU whine.

 

Ok I got the whine noise on the Southbridge too. I received my computer in september, with mobo Rev A01. Jsut got it replaced yesterday with Rev A6, hoping for the whine to go off... and know what.. It didn't disappear!!! The tech was like... ok check it in Safe Mode, because it only happens in the OS, as you have noticed... and god... it was not there. As soon as i went in Normal mode in the OS the whine was back, I am using Win XP Pro SP2, Dell Edition, with all the Dell drivers... what a surprise... this is driving me nuts!!!! And as you can see it is driver related (Safe mode doesn't use drivers).