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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2564 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 19, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I’m fairly clueless, but I think it only has one fan, and it seems to be spinning fine (including at different angles).

We’ve had it at multiple different angles, stand and flat. In the shop the guy had it on its side for five minutes.

It seems to happen in the house with almost nothing running (we disabled all boot apps) and with RAM and CPU under no pressure.

Shop guy said extremely unlikely but possible is some sort of speaker interference in the house, but I just can’t believe that’s a possibility. Will keep investigating and observing here.

For what it's worth, I threw this into some LLMs

Both ChatGPT and Gemini also think it's environmental. Both seem to think you should be running it at home on battery only, because if that fixes it your problem is the laptop AC adaptor or your electrical circuits.

Are you using your laptop cord at the shop, or theirs?

You could also disable the speakers in device manager, which will eliminate the speaker cause.

Try booting into BIOS and see if it happens there. If it's just happening in windows it might be from power settings.

"4. Fan resonance check.

Does the pitch change when you: lightly press near the left palm rest/vents, lift a corner, or place it on a folded towel? If yes, that's resonance at a specific RPM. Ask the shop to replace the fan module; cleaning won't fix a bearing or blade imbalance."

Try different wall outlets, and if possible, different chargers.

I'm so curious!

Cheers for the curiosity. Will aim to report back on progress. It also happens when not plugged in, so I don’t think it’s the circuits. Environmental issues - will be interested to try to triage those. Radar path, that would be a wow!

Best way to rule out speaker interference would be to take it to a cafe or something and do something on it (taxes? Minecraft? Watch a movie?)

If it happens in a different environment you'll rule out a weird EM field in your house (lol)

Sounds like you've ruled out fan noise. I guess you could try messing with the fan curves (you can in bios, but it's better to do it with an app that allows you to do it real time) when it makes the sound and see if the sound changes (when it's happening) with different fan speeds.

I am not an electrical engineer, but I cannot think of anything that could generate sound in a computer that isn't a fan or its speaker. I don't think solid state electronics can make noise?

I am not an electrical engineer, but I cannot think of anything that could generate sound in a computer that isn't a fan or its speaker. I don't think solid state electronics can make noise?

I think power supply components can generate coil whine. Lots of laptops do this but it tends to be fairly quiet and not a swarm of bees.

Will do the cafe test tomorrow. Worth a shot to see if the issue can be raised outside these four walls.

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