Whining Components

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jaganath
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Post by jaganath » Mon Feb 27, 2006 7:11 am

I believe the noise is coming from underneathe a heatsink (see pic of silver heatsink in between cpu and back-endports)
Yup, those are the VRM's.....I didn't realise you had a heatsink over yours though. Could make the application of the Blu-Tac tricky.

However I found it was the actual coils themselves that were making the noise, and not the black squares that are probably under the VRM heatsink (dunno what they actually are, MOSFET's?).

Of course another option is to sell this motherboard and Ebay and buy a different one.

jpinard
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Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2006 3:41 am

Post by jpinard » Mon Feb 27, 2006 7:41 am

jaganath wrote:
I believe the noise is coming from underneathe a heatsink (see pic of silver heatsink in between cpu and back-endports)
Yup, those are the VRM's.....I didn't realise you had a heatsink over yours though. Could make the application of the Blu-Tac tricky.

However I found it was the actual coils themselves that were making the noise, and not the black squares that are probably under the VRM heatsink (dunno what they actually are, MOSFET's?).

Of course another option is to sell this motherboard and Ebay and buy a different one.
I tried applying pressure at different angles to the coils, but could not get a tonal difference. It's so difficult nailing it down since it's a "surround sound effect" more than a single point. kinda makes me think it must be under that heatsink, as it muffles and spreads out the electrical current sound. You know, it sounds like I've got powerlines in my computer room.

atari1980
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Joined: Sat Mar 04, 2006 4:36 pm

whining

Post by atari1980 » Sat Mar 04, 2006 4:54 pm

i have the ''singing'' coil/and or inductor problem. but it really looks like it's coming out from the cpu. it's a really thin noise, it's like having a can of pepsi opened hearing the gaz coming out of it. it may have always been in my system, since it got quieter by buying new fans.

the best way to hear it (for me) is by opening WinRAR (version 3.51), clicking on help/about winrar. theres a little animation there, as soon as it starts, i hear that weird whining. it's doing it just before the adobe splash screen also, and when in bios, for example when changing the time keeping pressing on ''+''. all im worried about is that it's gonna blow up something as i just injected 500 CDN $ in my system.

i tried removing the soundcard and the modem. overclocking did reduce the noise. but i prefer to keep everything at stock speed.

here's my specs:
Antec SmartPower 450Watts PSU
Asus P4P800 Deluxe - Hyperpath enabled.
Pentium 4 3.0e 800mhz bus/1mb L2 cache. HT enabled.
2GB Kingston DDR 400 ram
BFG Geforce 7800GS OC AGP 256MB
SoundBlaster Audigy2 ZS
Actiontech v.90 h/w modem
2xMaxtor Diamondmax 30 /40gb (the thinner drives)
LG L1730S flat panel

all rails (3.3 , 5 and 12v) are stable. the cpu does not get hotter when it happens.

jpinard
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Post by jpinard » Mon Mar 06, 2006 7:38 am

overclocking reduced the noise? or did you mean underclocking?

jaganath
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Location: UK

Post by jaganath » Mon Mar 06, 2006 7:49 am

I tried applying pressure at different angles to the coils, but could not get a tonal difference. It's so difficult nailing it down since it's a "surround sound effect" more than a single point. kinda makes me think it must be under that heatsink, as it muffles and spreads out the electrical current sound. You know, it sounds like I've got powerlines in my computer room.
JP, I thought I should let you know I solved the problem by getting a new motherboard (different model). However before I got rid of the old one I discovered that the whining/buzzing was highly correlated with the CPU voltage; at voltages below 1.0V the buzzing was much reduced, but still audible.

atari1980
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Joined: Sat Mar 04, 2006 4:36 pm

Post by atari1980 » Tue Mar 07, 2006 3:57 am

yes! overclocking. just tought i'd try it for fun and it went away, well, almost, i could barely hear it.

jAMBAZZ
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HP CRT P1230

Post by jAMBAZZ » Tue Mar 07, 2006 8:44 am

My HP P1230 22" model P9613W CRT Monitor has a buzz!

I JUST bought it, and I couldn't believe my own ears when I first heard the nasty buzz sound. I had replaced my old 19" CRT monitor with this beast, and when I heard the buzz I was sure that my monitor was faulty.

So I called HP and they said "Well all CRT monitors make a slight buzz.."
Hm.. did my old CRT do that? I turned on my old CRT and sure enough, it too makes a buzz, except not as audible as my new HP CRT.

Now I am really sad, as this is by far the most noisy component of my desktop PC, and I just paid 400$ for this beast.

The buzz increases as vertical Hz go up. Although at 60 Hz its definetely annoying, my 120 Hz makes it scream :o) I've tried tinkering with every single option in the OSD of the monitor, but none of them has effect on the buzz.

I searched around this thread for information about noisy CRTs and now I can see that Im not the only one who suffers from this. So I am currently working of a DIY solution. :wink:

jpinard
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Re: HP CRT P1230

Post by jpinard » Tue Mar 07, 2006 2:08 pm

jAMBAZZ wrote:My HP P1230 22" model P9613W CRT Monitor has a buzz!

I JUST bought it, and I couldn't believe my own ears when I first heard the nasty buzz sound. I had replaced my old 19" CRT monitor with this beast, and when I heard the buzz I was sure that my monitor was faulty.

So I called HP and they said "Well all CRT monitors make a slight buzz.."
Hm.. did my old CRT do that? I turned on my old CRT and sure enough, it too makes a buzz, except not as audible as my new HP CRT.

Now I am really sad, as this is by far the most noisy component of my desktop PC, and I just paid 400$ for this beast.

The buzz increases as vertical Hz go up. Although at 60 Hz its definetely annoying, my 120 Hz makes it scream :o) I've tried tinkering with every single option in the OSD of the monitor, but none of them has effect on the buzz.

I searched around this thread for information about noisy CRTs and now I can see that Im not the only one who suffers from this. So I am currently working of a DIY solution. :wink:
When I run my super high end 22" CRT Miisubishi monitor at 1024x768 @85 HZ or 1152x864 @ 85 Hz it does that too. It's wicked bad. So I have to make sure I set the refresh rate real high or real low at those resolutions. None of my other resolutions @85 Hz does that though. So, just keep trying tdifferent Rez's plus refresh rates. If it's not manageable return it! Monitors are NOT supposed to do that - and that tech person is full of shit.

jaganath
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Post by jaganath » Wed Mar 08, 2006 1:46 am

Monitors are NOT supposed to do that - and that tech person is full of shit.
Actually it is fairly well-known that CRT's tend to buzz; this is caused by the electron gun 'rastering' the image on the screen. LCD's/TFT's don't have this problem (but other things in a TFT can buzz, like the inverter for the backlight).

jpinard
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Post by jpinard » Wed Mar 08, 2006 7:56 am

jaganath wrote:
Monitors are NOT supposed to do that - and that tech person is full of shit.
Actually it is fairly well-known that CRT's tend to buzz; this is caused by the electron gun 'rastering' the image on the screen. LCD's/TFT's don't have this problem (but other things in a TFT can buzz, like the inverter for the backlight).
If it's anything liek what my monitor does it's not normal. It's not a buzz, it's more a WHHHHHEEEEEE!

jAMBAZZ - it can't hurt taking it back and replacing it with a different one.

SleepDeprived
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Weird fix for my buzzing motherboard

Post by SleepDeprived » Thu Mar 09, 2006 4:47 pm

If you have the motherboard buzz while the CPU is ide, try just opening dvdshrink. For some odd reason, the buzz is not audible when I do this. You do not have to be doing anything in dvdshrink. There is also no CPU activity due to dvdshrink.

I have no idea why it works.

Siempre
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Contact:

Post by Siempre » Sat Sep 23, 2006 11:25 am

Very "whiny" configuration:

Mobo: ASUS P5B-VM (mATX)
CPU: Conroe 1.86Mhz
Memory: Geil 5300 DDR2

At some bootups it makes a really high pitched noise coming from somewhere around the CPU. The Mobo-temp is constantly to high at 46 degrees Celsius. I can get the sound to go down considerably by messing around with the memory speed and cpu voltage in the bios.

Gonna return it to the shop tomorrow and hope they take it back!

Regards

Bad Reviewer
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Post by Bad Reviewer » Tue Oct 10, 2006 1:27 pm

I was reading this thread in its entirety and here are my comments:

- I use an Antec TruePower 430 PSU and it has no whining at all, despite having two fans; it does make some noise but, to my taste, very tolerable, because I am still looking for a fan that makes no noise; it's just impossible because noise is air in movement and the function of a fan is to move air, so... I had, prior to this Antec, a SilenX PSU (that had one fan) and it was quieter than the Antec but unfortunately it died after some months of use; I contacted customer support and they were very nice to send me an RMA that I never used (I was living in Brazil by then), so they are not to blame.

- I have an ASUS mobo, P4C800E-dlx that has no whine, no sound at all; I do have some noises coming from the speakers (best noticed when using headphones), when I move the mouse and the volume is high, and I am still to find a solution; this is a driver problem, not a mobo problem, imo. I am using the on-board sound.

- My LCD monitor is a Samsung SyncMaster 213T that has no whine, no sound at all. It is just a wonderful monitor.

- My Linksys WRT54G v3.0 emits no sound at all.

What I do have that whine are three hard disks that I keep in my old computer (on purpose, because they whine badly) and an APC 600BR nobreak, bought in Brazil, that has some humming: it powers my main computer.

My case, an Antec P160, is prone to ressonance: the best way to avoid it is to remove both side panels; for as weird as it may be, my system is quieter with the panels removed. Lately, I have them on, to avoid dust inside the case.

Other noisy equipments are my printer and my scanner :-)

My main system is:

Pentium 4 3.2GHz
Asus P4C800E-dlx
Corsair TwinX1024-3200XL (2-2-2-5)
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro w/ Artic Cooler VGA Silencer v3
Samsung 213T 21.3"
570 GB @ 4 HD's
Maxtor DM9 - 200GB (6Y200P0) - ATA133
Samsung SP0812C - 80 GB - SATA
Samsung SP2504C - 250 GB - SATA (mobo doesn't rec SATA-II)
Seagate Barracuda IV - 40GB - ATA100
DVD-RW NEC ND-1300A
DVD-RW Lite-On 812S
Antec Aluminum P-160
APC BE600-BR (Brazil)
Wacom Graphire2
Wireless Natural Pro Microsoft desktop

Second system - in another far away room :-)
Pentium III 733MHz
Asus P3V4X
512MB RAM
ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 8500DV
Sony E200 17"
150GB @ 3 HD's @ Promise ATA-100
Maxtor 30GB
Maxtor 40GB
Western Digital WD80 80GB
DVD Pioneer DVD-116
CD-RW Creative
SMS Manager III (Brazilian nobreak)

PS - oh, I forgot to say that all four HDs are mounted inside the case with no screws, to avoid humming (it gets a loud humming if I use the draws that came with the case). I just passed some jumping cord through the openings and I sit the HDs on top of them, so they are actually loose (I can't carelessly move the computer) and no humming comes from the four HDs.

Hagis
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whining coils :p

Post by Hagis » Tue Jan 02, 2007 9:34 pm

Yes i have them in a lot of stuff mine 19" TFT viewsonic has it
the old switch had the problem this is really a common problem
with most dc/dc converters the best coils are the molded/packaged
in an box but the easiest way is simply to put an drop of the gluegun
on each coils it prevents the "wire" to vibrate to fix them the harder way is to rewire the coils and stretch the wire harder and in the v-r-m modules the
capacitors are really an crucial part if the dry out the stress on the mosfets get higher and higher and will effect the coils to (whining etc) so replacing the caps sometimes wont hurt but this is an pretty hard task to do i have renovated a few mobos...

gomme
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Location: CA

Post by gomme » Mon Mar 19, 2007 11:45 pm

I have a cyberpower 750 surge supressor that whines intermittently near threshold level. The strip has been used 2-3 years, but only noticed it now because it was hooked up to noisy SFF dell till now.

Also my compact EL(blue glow) keyboard(Zippy EL-620) buzzes(2-5kHz) when on :(

jaldridge6
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Post by jaldridge6 » Thu May 10, 2007 1:52 am

I just want to say that, being new here, its good to know I'm not the only person whose noticing these things. My roommate, as far as I can tell, thinks I'm crazy because I'm always swapping out computer parts. I can offer a few noticeably loud whiny things...


Gateway FPD2485W: power supply, right out of the box is whiny... as is the 21" model.. the older 21" model is also whiny [in addition to the new one]

DFI ICFX 3200 + corsair HX520... throttle the cpu up to 100% and you'd sware the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse were having an orgy in your computer case.

Samsung 244b: slight CRT type high pitched noise when the monitor is on.

----

I'm pretty happy with a neoHE 430, evga 650i ultra board, and a dell 2407WFP. They seem to play pretty nice together. I still have yet to find a case that eliminate harddrive resonance other than the p180 and p150. Anyone have any suggestions? I'm not a fan of either.

jaganath
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Post by jaganath » Thu May 10, 2007 1:57 am

you'd sware the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse were having an orgy in your computer case.
:lol:
yet to find a case that eliminate harddrive resonance other than the p180 and p150. Anyone have any suggestions?
almost any case can be modified to either suspend or soft-mount the hard drives. here is a thread about the subject:

HDD vibration & noise-reducing methods ranked

jaldridge6
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Post by jaldridge6 » Sat Jun 02, 2007 12:54 pm

Just like to point out that I'm very annoyed by motherboards that create coil whine. I can tell you that an EVGA 650i ultra is dead silent. I tried an Asus 570 recently which created minimal whine, a gigabyte ds3 which was very noisy, and a DFI icfx3200 which was also very noisy. All with the same power supply and identical idle/load wattage =P Identical components.

Das_Saunamies
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Post by Das_Saunamies » Mon Jun 04, 2007 2:24 am

Noisy:

Viewsonic VP171s, 17" TFT monitor
Emits a quiet, constant "eep -- eep -- eep" sound while off or on standby. Enough to infuriate even at distance, not audible through solid objects. Flipping main power off from switch kills sound, just turning the monitor off from the button isn't enough. Same problem for four years, hasn't gotten any worse so it's a 'feature'. Has been in a house with grounded electricity with and without an UPS(Powerware 3110), no change, is now in an apartment without grounded electricity but with same UPS, no change.

Antec Smartpower 450W, Sonata II default ATX12V v2.01 power supply

After less than a year of service a piercing whine started. Setup is a defaulted AMD A64, Asus A8N-SLI and a GeForce 6800GT, but this doesn't matter: the PSU makes the sound even when everything but the on/off button is disconnected. Probably a busted PSU, so not really a whining component: my own workstation's 8-months-old Sonata II is doing fine still. *fingers crossed*

jaldridge6
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Post by jaldridge6 » Mon Jun 04, 2007 7:57 am

You guys, I've come to the realization that coil whine out of PSUs is related to which motherboard you choose. Motherboards themselves do not whine, but cause whine to come out of the PSU!! Depending on the board, your PSU can be dead silent or noisy as hell...

For example... recently I had a DS3 and it made all sorts of high whiny noises, but it was coming out of the PSU. I put my ear to the PSU and each noise which I noted was indeed right next to my ear.

Swapping it out for an intel board created a whole completely different set of circumstances. now my mouse makes electrical noises, again out of the PSU!! It's all relative to the board, and, load. I notice when I throttle my CPU to 100% most of the whine goes away and is replaced with a tiny clunk clunk sound out of the PSU. VERY BIZARRE! I really am getting kind of sick of it though.

I think if one were to have a higher idle load, most whine would be gone. Going with low wattage configs apparently is the problem. I personally wish I had gotten a dual CPU config when I had enough cash to do so. I am considering going with a Mac just to get rid of this. I was at the store with my ear inside a Mac Pro and its pretty damn silent right out the box.

Das_Saunamies
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Post by Das_Saunamies » Mon Jun 04, 2007 10:12 am

Not every component may play together nicely in a randomly assembled machine, a fact ever since DIY became possible. Not everything is of the best possible build quality, nor has it been extensively tested for compatibility. Manufacturers have different ideas of how things should work and how much effort should go towards making their products compatible with a wider range of applications, such as low-power rigs.

Macs and other prebuilts have been tested thoroughly and built around a working recipe. They cost more because of this, among other things, and it would be a disgrace were they not competitive for the huge lumps of money that the customer is expected to pay for decent models.

Rather than cough up over 2500€ for a Mac Pro, I'd rather swap out the 100€ components until I can tweak a working combo going. It's not hard, and definitely not impossible -- people are even willing to share their working solutions. But if you have more money than time on your hands, why not buy a prebuilt and live a dull ever after. :lol:

wally
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Post by wally » Sun Jun 10, 2007 12:08 pm

Edwood wrote:The LCD in the Wacom Cintiq 15x makes a high pitched noise as well. It is at a pretty low level at least. I'm guessing it's the inverter for the LCD's backlight.

-Ed
Right on the spot!

Today I modded my NSK-3300 rig with 3 Nexus fans (120 for case fan, 92 for PSU and another 92 for CPU) and replaced my noisy&hot Samsung SP2504C with a 80gB Seagate Momentus 5400.3 2.5". I was really stunned at first, but then noticed something weird:

The noisiest component of was my 20" LG l204wt LCD. Thanks to Edwood, I now know what's the problem. The less brightnes the more whine from inverter, as usually. That particular monitor is totally inaudible, when brightnes is set to 91 (of 100). Normally I use brightnes under 50.. So you can choose between tired eyes or ears..

Maybe some voltage mod for that backlight would solve the problem, not sure I'll do that.

I should maybe clarify, that that LG's whining is maybe too faint to notice for 'normal users'.

Torajirou
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Post by Torajirou » Wed Sep 05, 2007 6:23 am

gustavs_a wrote:My ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 motherboard has noticeable coil whine that only starts after Windows is loaded and only with LOW CPU load. Not sure I'm going to live with it.

Anyone else has the same?

Update: I have identified that the whining starts only after installing the Creative Audigy 2 Platinum drivers.
I registered only to confirm that ! ^^

I used to have an ASRock939SLI-DualSATA2, and it started whining right after switching from a 3500+ to a 4600+. Since I'd bought the CPU from ebay, I thought I got ripped off by the seller, only to realize later that the whining was in fact caused by my Adaptec 1220SA PCIe Raid adapter ! I had forgotten to turn the (external) SATA drives back on when I installed my new CPU, which made it check the whole array; this checking made my MB squeal, don't ask me why ^^ As soon as the verification was over, the squealing would stop. It started when its drivers were loaded at Windows startup. There obviously is a faulty component on this motherboard that squeals when put under too much pressure (like your Creative drivers, or my Raid array verification procedure...).

kkant
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Post by kkant » Mon Oct 01, 2007 10:07 am

EVGA 680i SLI SE: Has coil whine, gets worse when overclocked.

Abit IN9-32X-MAX: Has coil whine, gets worse when overclocked.

Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6: NOISE-FREE!! :)

gb115b
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Post by gb115b » Sun Oct 28, 2007 6:47 am

Linksys WRVS4400N Wireless-N Gigabit Broadband Security Router w/ VPN - lots of Whine

NETGEAR DGFV338 ProSafe VPN ADSL2+ Wireless Router - even more whine

Solid Snake
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Post by Solid Snake » Thu Dec 06, 2007 1:17 pm

StarTech 450w PSU

Suddenly started emitting a loud high frequency whine after six months of use. I had previously converted the PSU to fanless operation by extending the components off the board and mounting them to a large heatsink. All of those components are still alive and well, however, a majority of the capacitors on board had ruptured. Most of these blown caps were undersized and underrated. Many were rated at 10v/16v, barely above their respective rails. It seems StarTech isn't aware that capacitors dissipate heat, or they just don't care. I replaced the caps with oversized ones, but the whining did not go away. The PSU started out dead quiet, but developed the whine, I believe due to defective caps.

jeffopus
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ECS KA3 MVP

Post by jeffopus » Wed Feb 20, 2008 7:15 am

I have the ECS KA3 MVP and started noticing a squeal when opening Outlook 2007. It does it slightly with other programs like Photoshop CS3 and Dreamweaver CS3 but it is loudest and very noticeable from Outlook.

I have tried various solutions like new graphics cards, power supplies and even a hard drive replacement so it is definetely the Mobo. All coponents but that have been changed out over the last six months so it has to be the Mobo.

I have changed some settings like fan control, cool & quiet, and ddr speed on Bios but I have no idea what else to do.

hiower
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Post by hiower » Tue Apr 01, 2008 2:12 am

alglove wrote:
Likif wrote:Both of my Soltek NV400-64 mainboards, with AMD socket A processors, have a faint whine when the CPU idles. This is not a problem at all, though, because I'm folding all the time anyhow.
Fold for quiet computing!!! :lol:
I second that. I still have an old system with a Abit KD7-S motherboard with an AMD 2500+ Barton. Whenever I play any sound and there is any search/write to any harddrive (Sata or Pata) there are lots of cracks coming from the speakers. But this disappears if the cpu is under heavy load

Go Folding!

P.S. see this thread for more info viewtopic.php?t=38049

Das_Saunamies
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Post by Das_Saunamies » Sun Apr 06, 2008 11:54 am

Whoops, looks like someone forgot to include the Logitech MX5xx mice in this.

Whining Logitech mice:
-MX500
-MX510
-MX518

See http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=26117 for reference. Am replacing my whining MX510 with a Deathadder, it's a really piercing sound. :x

AuraAllan
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Post by AuraAllan » Mon Apr 07, 2008 4:59 am

Das_Saunamies wrote:Whoops, looks like someone forgot to include the Logitech MX5xx mice in this.

Whining Logitech mice:
-MX500
-MX510
-MX518
Thats wierd. I have never heard of this before.

I recently replaced my MX500 with a Deathadder, but my MX500 has never whined.

At work I use a MX518. That doesnt whine either.
Nor does any of the other MX510, MX518s we have at work (25-30 mice).

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