LCD buzz/hum on window movement/drag??

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kev009 · #1 Post by **kev009** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 11:40 pm

My ThinkPad is a brand new T42 FVU with Samsung LCD. I just started noticing a slight buzz whenever a drag a window around, and even when I move the mouse a lot. As far as I can tell it is coming from the LCD. It is very faint but enough to be annoying, and is audible to me even with the workstation behind me blairing (15k RPM HD). I've used 3 input devices (trackpoint, touchpad and external mouse) to make sure it wasn't something rattling. Does anyone else notice this?

kev009 · #2 Post by **kev009** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 11:45 pm

Turns out to be the hard disk seeking the page file rapidly since I only have 256MB RAM

. Time to get a 7k60 and some more RAM..

Kenn · #3 Post by **Kenn** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:23 am

kev009 wrote:Turns out to be the hard disk seeking the page file rapidly since I only have 256MB RAM . Time to get a 7k60 and some more RAM..

This also happensbecause of the video chipset. If you drag windows around (or scroll a non-standard scrollbar like itunes) you'll hear a high-pitched buzzing from the GPU.

kev009 · #4 Post by **kev009** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:39 am

Maybe I was right originally. What causes it? It really gets to me if I don't have a song playing or something to mask it.

andypenguin · #5 Post by **andypenguin** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 1:40 am

I'm no electrical engineer or anything, but I'm thinking it probably has to do with the fact that the components are packed so closely together and some sort of electrical interference is probably going on. I get a very noticeable high-pitched buzzing whenever I do something intensive, like rotate a model in modo.

rhobite · #6 Post by **rhobite** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 4:44 pm

Yeah, it's annoying. It's happened on every Thinkpad I've used regularly, as well as laptops by other brands. It's a quiet buzzing sound which seems to happen while dragging or scrolling windows. I don't know what causes it but it's a very common issue, so I'd say the likelihood of a fix is low.

James314 · #7 Post by **James314** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 5:01 pm

It deffinately has nothing to do with ram as i have this problem and have 1gb of ram. The noise is at its worst if i go to add/remove programs in control panel and scroll up and down - give it a go and maybe you will see what i mean. I have no idea what causes this but i dont really care as it is a rare occurrance.

J.

jeeva · #8 Post by **jeeva** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 5:53 pm

Strange: Under Linux you have other symptoms: When I use the network Card (Intel EtherExpress PRO/1000 MT) it buzzez at a very high frequency and very loud (even louder than the cooler) but there are no other sounds.

Kenn · #9 Post by **Kenn** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 6:19 pm

It's not a software issue or a bug. It's just electrical noise from a component that is normally low-power on idle and ramps up at load (blitting from dragging windows around or scrolling, or anything else that taxes the display chipset). It's annoying, but not anything to worry about (but I doubt there's really much that can be done about it).

dvorak · #10 Post by **dvorak** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 6:19 pm

Either my ears do not catch so high frequencies or it isn't produced on my Samsung SXGA+. I've tried throwing my Firefox window around and listening very closely, didn't hear a thing.

Agent69 · #11 Post by **Agent69** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:09 pm

I've seen this with other laptops. I had assumed that when you were hearing is the GPU working.

Kenn · #12 Post by **Kenn** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 8:42 pm

dvorak wrote:Either my ears do not catch so high frequencies or it isn't produced on my Samsung SXGA+. I've tried throwing my Firefox window around and listening very closely, didn't hear a thing.

It's actually a very quiet sound. I can only hear it when the room is completely silent, and then sometimes it seems very loud. Yesterday, I put my ear to the keyboard and still wasnn't sure I heard it at all.

It's not the LCD screen btw, it pretty clearly comes from the area of the CPU/GPU on the keyboard side of the clamshell.

LCD buzz/hum on window movement/drag??

LCD buzz/hum on window movement/drag??

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