new w520 power adapter makes whiny chirpy noise

Never had an a/c power adapter make this sort of noise before. I'm wondering if it indicates a defect.

Seems to work OK. The noise occurs when charging or when plugged into fully charged battery.
Stops if I pull plug out of the laptop.

I don't seem to have any excessive heat or anything like that.

 

It's probably some components inside that are vibrating. If you find the noise disturbing then see if you can get Lenovo to replace it. PSUs should be quiet.

John

 

Thanks. I did find a bit of discussion in the Lenovo forums also, though not about this particular PSU. No absolutes for how much noise is too much noise, but several said if you can hear it several few feet away, it's probably a slight defect of some sort.

 

I have four of these PSUs for my W520 (they're a bit big and heavy so I want one in each of several places instead of having it in the bag constantly) and I can't hear any of them - so I think it may be a defect.

 

Thanks.
On my do list now to give 'em a call and see what they'll do for me.
I'm thinking of picking up a 2nd one myself since I'm mainly in two locations. Usually I'm doing pretty well on battery though. And I've got "one size charges all" that seems to charge just fine when the unit is sleeping or shut down. Won't power it live.

 

They are sending me a new one. No hassles.

 

Hi There,

I totally missed your post and had posted separately but was sent here by a moderator. I talked to Lenovo today having the same problem and they gave me the option to either get a new PSU or send the whole thing to them and have it analyzed as they claimed it could be a mainboard defect causing noise in the PSU when drawing power. While I think it should be a PSU defect, I agreed to send them the whole thing. The turn around time should be about 1.5 weeks they told me. But the noise is very annoying and can be heard from long distance.

 

Got my new one today. Silent as the grave. A good thing in this case. Doesn't look like any mainboard issue in my case.

They really got the new to me fast!

 

Thanks for the update and it's good to know that the problem has been resolved.

John

 

Good to know glad it worked out for you... I ended up shipping the whole thing back to them and with 1 day shipping, it's no big deal.

 

So I got my computer back, the turn around was rather quick, but the experience dealing with lenovo support was meh...

First of all, they changed my case number once they got the depot, so I had no update on their website. Finally when they send the thing back to me, I receive this email with tracking number that corresponds for the AC adapter, and nothing about the laptop. So I called the customer service and after challenging them, they found out that there were two case numbers, one for the depot, one for the AC replacement. So I ended up getting two boxes, one with the laptop + AC Adapter & Battery that had been serviced + one with a brand new AC adapter which did not whine.

Apparently I don't need to send the bad one back to them...