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    Lenovo E531 i7 - High Pitched Screaming Noise

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by jbeecher, May 8, 2014.

  1. jbeecher

    jbeecher Notebook Guru

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    So I bought 10 of these laptops for our office. I swapped out the 500gb drives for SSD's and upgraded the ram to 8gb or 16gb depending on the users. These laptops - while they feel a little chintzy are amazingly fast. My team has been very impressed and happy!

    Today I have 3 reports of a crazy problem.

    During normal usage - they suddenly start "screaming" or "making a high pitched noise" with some vibration. My only thought is that something is up with the CPU fan. It is very strange - I have 10 of these machines and if this starts happening to everyone.....it will be a mess.

    Anyone have any ideas?

    I appreciate all the help.

    Thank you.
     
    jbeecher, May 8, 2014
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  2. Aniras

    Aniras Notebook Enthusiast

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    Does it sound like any part of the following sound clips? (You'd have to have your ear next to the area around the processor for it to be this loud.)
    https://soundcloud.com/discostrings/t420s-coil-whine-16-speedstep
    https://soundcloud.com/discostrings/t420s-coil-whine-11-speedstep

    If so, it's probably coil whine--components on the motherboard are vibrating at a very high frequency and making the noise. They're either low quality components or Lenovo hasn't taken measures to fix them in place properly. ThinkPads have been notorious for this problem, and Lenovo has been notorious for not doing anything about it, since 2008 or so.

    A mechanical hard drive or a noisy fan often covers up the noise, but when those aren't aren't present, a laptop with coil whine can be very difficult to use in quiet environments for those with good hearing (or at least those with sensitivity to high-pitched noises). Before all the recent changes, it was my biggest complaint about ThinkPads.
     
    Aniras, May 8, 2014
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  3. jbeecher

    jbeecher Notebook Guru

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    The sound is somewhat similar - but you don't need to amplify it. Everyone in the office can hear it - that is why I called it "screaming" It is LOUD. The reaction you get is "! Something is wrong with my computer!!!"
     
    jbeecher, May 9, 2014
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  4. Aniras

    Aniras Notebook Enthusiast

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    If it's that loud, and there's vibration, my guess is it's the fan or the optical drive. Can you tell which area of the computer the sound is comping from? Does it happen all the time, or only when the CPU is under load? A utility that shows you the fan speed might help diagnose whether the sound starts when the fan spins up.
     
    Aniras, May 9, 2014
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