Low humming noise in Y400?

I just got mine in the mail today and it makes this low pitch humming noise from towards the center of the laptop. It goes on and off depending on how hard the cpu is working.

I can't tell if its just a dusty fan or a separate cpu issue. Anyone else experiencing a low humming noise in your Lenovo Y400?

 

Are you sure that it's not your hard drive? If it's not hd, then the noise that you are hearing is probably coil/CPU whine.

You can try turning off CPU idling temporarily (either in bios or in Windows) and see whether the noise goes away or not. If it does, then it is most likely coil whine.

 

Thanks for the response. I don't think its the HD since it goes on and off depending on how hard the CPU is working. With minimum to no processes the whine is gone. As soon as i open a couple browser windows, or play video/game the fan starts up and the whine follows immediately. And vice versa, the whine disapears as soon as the fan shuts off.

Is the coil whine normal for a fresh out of the box device? Lenovo is processing a replacement but want to know what to expect from the replacement.

Appreciate your feedback!

 

I can't speak for Y500 since I returned mine, but my brand new out of the box Thinkpad W520 whined a lot. Turning off CPU power saving features helped reduce the noise, but I could still hear it. My old'ish Ideapad Z570 and Asus X53SV have the same problem. On the other hand, my ancient HP laptops are whine-free. I guess it's the luck of the draw, although I would expect the newer laptops to whine much quieter, or, preferably, not whine at all.

It sounds like you are only hearing the whine when the fan is on... could it be that the fan is the culprit? Here is an example of coil whine (someone else's recording):
https://soundcloud.com/discostrings/sets/t420s-coil-whine

 

The fan is always on and never shuts off on any laptops, it's just that when it is idle you don't hear it and it seems off so you can't really blame the humming or high pitch noise on the fan.

Is this some kind of high pitch humming or sound? It could be bad wiring and usually that causes a cpu whine or a gpu whine. Is it the same sound you hear wheen a Power supply is humming or with some kind of high pitch whine?

 

You lost me here. If the fan is idle, it means that it is not spinning, which means that there is no [mechanical] noise. So, why can't one blame the humming noise on the fan?

Also, I seriously doubt that bad wiring is the major cause of coil whine.