Widespread Laptop Whining / Buzzing problem

More popular than ever, but some are still very noisy.

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cloneman
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Post by cloneman » Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:51 am

shopgirl2005 wrote:I have excatly the same problem on my Fujitsu T4215 Tablet, T7200. It's in repair for s second time now, Fujitsu guys are refusing to acknowledge the problem, I quote "The noise is coming from the HDD and you are hearing it work with the different components in the notebook, it is normal for the T4215". Treating me like a child....

What's up with that? Is it time for a class action?
I suppose you could try putting it in their face by booting off a cd and not have the HD in the system at all.

What's irritating about this problem is that many manufacturer's discount it as a software problem since you don't hear whining in dos mode, but you do as soon as a power management OS is installed.
Last edited by cloneman on Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

shopgirl2005
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Post by shopgirl2005 » Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:58 am

Well, the tablet is in their posession right now, in Fujitsu Service Center, and they are saying this (ha-ha):

"Once I removed the HDD I was not able to hear the noise. I had others from my department and the repair center listen for the noise without the HDD in the unit and they were not able to hear the noise. I put your HDD into another T4215 and the noise was the same. Then I put the HDD from another T4215 in you notebook and the noise was a little different but was still there. I ran your HDD through diagnostic and it passed all tests. We can replace your HDD and the sound maybe better but I can not guarantee the sound will ever go away. If we do replace your HDD it will be strictly for customer satisfaction we have not found anything functionally wrong with the HDD"

Talking to them is like talking to a wall, I don't understand why some people call Fujitsu tech.support good one. It's good that I e-mail them, so I have all this stuff in writing....

Their final conclusion is this (basically they are shutting me down):

"The noise will not go away it is normal for the T4215. The only reason we would replace the system board and HDD would be an attempt to ease your mind. The bottom line is you have reached the highest level of support Fujitsu offers we are not going to break down any explanation on a component level. If there was an issue we would fix it but sound you are hearing is normal.

What we are going to is replace your system board and HDD then send the unit back to you. What you do with the unit pass that point is your business. I apologize the T4215 does not meet with your approval"

Hm.... I especially like the line: <<<What you do with the unit pass that point is your business>>> Nice work, FUJITSU!
cloneman wrote:
shopgirl2005 wrote:I have excatly the same problem on my Fujitsu T4215 Tablet, T7200. It's in repair for s second time now, Fujitsu guys are refusing to acknowledge the problem, I quote "The noise is coming from the HDD and you are hearing it work with the different components in the notebook, it is normal for the T4215". Treating me like a child....

What's up with that? Is it time for a class action?
I suppose you could try putting it in their face by booting off a cd and not have the HD in the system at all.

cloneman
Posts: 448
Joined: Sat May 21, 2005 9:48 am

Post by cloneman » Fri Jul 06, 2007 12:13 pm

We live in a world where quality control doesn't meet SPCR standards. You can try the proposed USB/rmclock tricks. Let us know how this story ends...

shopgirl2005
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Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2005 7:28 pm

Post by shopgirl2005 » Fri Jul 06, 2007 12:21 pm

Story will end when I call my credit card company and request a refund for that laptop. ;-(

Edit 4 cloneman: Actually I don't understand what do you mean... My understanding is that SPCR standards have nothing to do with this issue. SPCR was created in an attempt to lower noise coming from moving mechanical parts of the computer. Here we simply have an issue of defective parts/bad circuit design, whole thing have nothing to do with this forum. I'm just posting here because I'm a frequent reader - I built a lot of super-quiet desktops, thanks to SPCR. Nobody is saying that this noise is super loud, it's just an abnormality to hear from the insides of $2500 "made in japan" laptop.
cloneman wrote:We live in a world where quality control doesn't meet SPCR standards. You can try the proposed USB/rmclock tricks. Let us know how this story ends...

cloneman
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Post by cloneman » Sun Jul 08, 2007 8:08 pm

I'm saying that manufacturers' quality control standards are more lax than SPCR reader quality control.

If you browse through the forum you'll see pleanty of people with power supplies, motherboards, and laptops that buzz/whine/squeal. Especially in the desktop market, these sounds are considered as non-obtrusive since they are usually lower than fan noise, and usually even below what most people would find annoying.

The challenge occurs when you're trying to silence a system, and you have this whine which is very difficult, if not impossible to suppress without replacing completely.

In my opinion, is the single greatest annoying to achieving silence, intensity wise but mostly in terms of sound character (high frequency & intermittent = painful).

Well this is all a little off topic but what I'm getting it is that most people don't notice, unless it's pointed out to them, and most people don't care. People have take _a little_ more notice because it's a laptop (closer to your ears) but still most people don't care - it's a difficult issue to complain about to store or manufacturer without sounding really anal, even though there is a very legitimate situation.

So, in summary, what I mean to say is, electrical noise & trying to suppress it are very much a part of SPCR, and is very neglected in terms of quality control.

The fact that we're dealing with expensive personal items makes it a little easier to get sympathy from a repair center. Although it makes it impossible (unless you're very rich or insane) to consider drastic silencing action (hot glue?).

Ok, this rant was so not needed. lol.

jaganath
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Post by jaganath » Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:06 am

Here we simply have an issue of defective parts/bad circuit design,
if it is bad circuit design, do you really expect them to redesign the whole thing just for you? and issue recalls to thousands of laptops? much cheaper to just have one unhappy customer.

raddiux
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Post by raddiux » Wed Jul 11, 2007 5:24 pm

Yeah, I had the exact same problem with my Inspiron 9300. Very annoying high pitched whine. Like others have said, enabling a USB device seems to fix it. What I ended up doing is using bluetooth instead of plugging in a USB device, since its internal and out of the way. I went into device manager, and checked off the "allow device to go to sleep to save power" option in the bluetooth controller. Presto, annoying sound gone, and there is little impact on battery life (perhaps 10 minutes less out of 3 hours). Its a good tradeoff to keep my sanity intact.

bevross
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Post by bevross » Thu Oct 11, 2007 4:10 pm

Thanks for the youtube clips, sounds just like my laptop -- a Lenovo Thinkpad T61p I recently bought (Sept.07). Here's a recording of my laptop:
http://dcguitar.net/MP3/T61p_noise.mp3

cloneman
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Post by cloneman » Thu Oct 11, 2007 6:42 pm

What kind of microphone did you use to record that?

bevross
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Post by bevross » Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:18 am

microphone -- Neumann KM 184's with Millenium Media preamp & Lynx L22 soundcard.

priscared
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fix noise on fujitsu tablet

Post by priscared » Sat Nov 03, 2007 8:05 pm

to the guy with the fujitsu t4215 tablet. Did try goin into system, clicking on each USB hub, turning off power management? Worked for my tablet, thanks to the guys who put that info up, noise was shitting me.
If all else fails, play some music?
Daniel

justlnluck
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Post by justlnluck » Tue Mar 11, 2008 1:44 pm

Is this problem only with Core2Duos or Turions as well?

shoebox9
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Post by shoebox9 » Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:43 am

justlnluck wrote:Is this problem only with Core2Duos or Turions as well?
As stated previously in this thread, it's only an Intel problem. However what I don't know is whether it also effects the u7600 1.2 ? The rest of the family is effected, but I'm yet to find a post with a U7600 owner complaining of a buzz ??? Any knowledge of this?

IonOne
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Post by IonOne » Thu Mar 20, 2008 5:30 am

bevross wrote:microphone -- Neumann KM 184's with Millenium Media preamp & Lynx L22 soundcard.
:shock: :shock:

KM 184 : $849
Millenium Media preamp $1500?
Lynx L22 : $650
-------------------
total : $3000

not bad, i hope you didn't bought this only to record the fan noise ^^ haa :D

cloneman
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Post by cloneman » Wed Sep 01, 2010 9:15 am

3 years after I created this thread, I'm still annoyed as heck about this problem. about 70% of the laptops I've tried have coil whine, including brand new 2010 units.

I don't think enough people care about this issue for it to be a priority for any of the motherboard designers. Just me and a few other people with dog hearing seem to be ticked off enough.

This problem has turned me into a compulsive laptop returner, and I can't buy at all from companies who charge a restocking fee for returns (or I have to fight them on it - so smaller retailers are out of the question)


It's gotten to the point where I've gotten annoyed by other people's laptops in university in some classes. I also have half a mind to complain about the overhead projectors in my classes that seem to have the same problem , only worse.

Long story short, I'm trying an AMD thinkpad edge... my 8th laptop in 3 years. Only 3 of these laptops had no coil whine, or supressible coil whine with RMclock.

RMclock doesn't work with the new Core i3 CPUs. :/

Shamgar
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Post by Shamgar » Thu Sep 02, 2010 7:06 am

Craptops are made for the average consumer who couldn't care less or are ignorant about the things that makes SPCRers depressed and poor for years on end.

It's sad to hear that even professional minded laptops (as testified by the users in this thread) aren't that much better despite being much more expensive than budget consumer models.

When will these companies take responsibility for their rubbish that are detrimental to our health and causing us to waste our hard earned money?

MikeC
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Post by MikeC » Fri Oct 08, 2010 7:39 am

Funny how this thread came back to life. :!:

I'm here because I just ran into a serious case of notebook electronic whine, really for the first time. I guess I've been much luckier than cloneman. ;)

Seems to happen only during low loads -- which is of course when such noise is most noticeable as nothing else is going on. Not very loud, but easily audible when the laptop is held upside down. Then, in a quiet room, I can hear the slightly stuttering whine from up to a meter away. In my lap, it's less audible -- the noise has to be at least 3-5 kHz and fairly directional -- but still there.

Haven't tried many things to stop the noise yet -- just discovered it. Plugging in a USB key only stops the noise while the thing is being recognized. Anything that pushes the CPU power state up stops it. Then battery life goes to shit. hmmmm.

BTW, I am in complete agreement with your rant post 3 yrs ago, cloneman, that starts with, "I'm saying that manufacturers' quality control standards are more lax than SPCR reader quality control." This whine problem could definitely be solved on the design/mfg level -- but the cost/benefit is not good enough for the makers. They only have to keep a majority of their customers happy enough.

MikeC
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Post by MikeC » Fri Oct 08, 2010 3:07 pm

After a bit more investigation, here's what I found.

The whining noise happens most (afaik) when firefox or chrome browsers are open, especially on gmail. It happens also with IE Explorer, but considerably less.

So the temporary solution is to switch to IE.

Very weird but true. This notebook wants me to stay true to MS!

cloneman
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Re: Widespread Laptop Whining / Buzzing problem

Post by cloneman » Wed Dec 21, 2011 12:24 pm

Might as well post an update :^)

I have long given up on laptops as a primary workstation. For reasons of:

- Lack of IPS Displays
- non-upgradable graphics, very few dedicated GPUs in thin & light, usually comes with a loud fan
- coil whine, coil whine, coil whine
- a lot of creative stupidity in new touchpad designs

I might be back on board someday if we get IPS ultrabooks, with external videocards, and whine-free.


I go for weeks without using my laptop. But, I still need one. I'm now the owner of a Sony Viao VPCEG190S , since about 5 months now. My sample is 100% whine-free.

It's 14" Consumer-centric model , neither thin nor light, but it provides good performance, has a nice keyboard and touchpad, and has entry level nvidia graphics without associated "fan penalty". It's the first unit I've used for a long time where I've been unable to hear any disturbing electrical sound on a consistent basis. It also cranks out about 5 hours of battery life in real-life scenarios, and I didn't even select the highest capacity battery. The fan profile is a tiny bit aggressive, but should remain somewhat quiet during light usage. It does a very good job of keeping all the surfaces very cool.

here are the specs as configured:
Product: CA-VPCEG190S-LBOM
Component: 14" VAIO Display with LED backlight (1366 x 768)
Component: High capacity battery
Component: No Fresh Start
Component: Norton Internet Security™ 2010 (30 day subscription)
Component: Microsoft® Office 2010 Starter (32-bit)
Component: NVIDIA® GeForce® 410M (512MB VRAM) dedicated graphics
Component: Intel® Core™ i5-2410M processor (2.30GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 2.90GHz
Component: CD/DVD player / burner
Component: Microsoft Windows® 7 Home Premium
Component: 4GB (2GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1333
Component: Bolt Black
Component: Adobe Bundle (Free - $448 value)
Component: 500GB (5400rpm) hard drive
Per Unit Price: $549.99
Quantity: 1
Total Price: $549.99
Description: VPC-EG190S Configure-to-Order
Ship Method: Express Delivery
Estimated Ship Date: 07/13/2011
Review: (not mine) http://chrisyim.netne.net/?tag=review

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