Thinkpads Forum

Just got my X61 3 days ago to replace my X41. I found out that whenever I use it without a power cord, there is constantly a high pitch noise coming from the CPU (or somewhere around the area). This really bugs me a lot because most of time I use my laptop I won't be able to use power cord. It is said that the noise is from the CPU switching between C4 and other states.

I found a way to reduce the frequency of the occurrence of the high pitch noise from here. People use RMClock to prevent CPU entering c4 state.

http://tinyurl.com/ytecwy


However, the problem is after I use the setting, the fan turns on lot more often than before and therefore the battery life will be shortened. I am wondering if there is any way to fix this problem from intel or Lenovo?

From the thread above, some people said that the high pitch noise won't happen if you are using vista. Is there anyone currently using Vista having the same problem? If not, I will probably upgrade it Vista ( I actually paid extra to get an XP one ).

I'm guessing when the cpu switches to a certain voltage (the C4 state lowers the voltage), some component on the motherboard starts making that noise. There are voltage settings in RMClock, I would adjust them so it would only use the voltages that don't make noise. Of course be advised entering the wrong voltage will cause an abrupt reboot (and don't set RMClock to start automatically lest you get stuck rebooting over and over).

Hi,

if of any use to you, when I got my Thinkpad A31 (Swedish) back in Sep 2002, it was delivered with that high pitch sound and it came from "somewhere under the keyboard". I got it sent to me via a store that sells a lot of IBMs and they had never seen the problem before.

The long story: It was extremely annoying, especially since it was brand new. I was moving to Australia two weeks later so I tried to get a new one but IBM (at the time) said it was not a bad enough problem to file it as "dead on arrival"; instead I had to send it in for repair. Before doing that I troubleshooting a lot, because it only happened with certain software (different CPU states?!?), sent it in with a detailed troubleshooting guide and got it back in 3 days. They did nothing - couldn't reproduce it they said. (...after that the support Swedish IBM has been superb).

Short story: Searched the web and found a BIOS firmware patch on IBMs *German* support site. I could not find the same on the US site. Called IBM support and they were not aware of the problem/the patch. Having said that, there might be a patch for your problem, but it might be hard to find. I was lucky to find one, otherwise my first experience with Thinkpad would have been bad.

Cheers

Henrik

Happy Thinkpad X60 owner (A31 is still working)

If you visit the german lenovo site and look for downloads, you will find no german support site but a link to the US site of lenovo.

I doubt there is a german site for BIOS updates. If you happen to have a link, please post.

Gerd

Hi,

I went back to my old mail archives, and I found out more about the solution. So, I had mixed up the high-pitch sound from the motherboard with a problem of a high-pitch sound from the sound card with the power cord connected.

The former was actually solved by the IBM service support, and they did that by upgrading the BIOS (no record of version, but it was back in Sept 2002).

The latter problem was solved early 2003 by a patch that was not found via IBM's US site at the time (and 99% sure it was at the German it was first found). One reason could be that the patch (aftp1gxp.exe, v5.12.01.3524, 2003/01/31) just got out. Details (if of any use at all):

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-41943
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mo ... a239ww.txt

The fix hid itself in the obscure message: "Microphone noise reduction: This noise reduction function is for the internal and external microphone array." (I remember the sound-out noise was there even the mic was muted, connected/non-connected etc, but only when the power cord was connected).

Sorry for adding to the noise ;)

Call technical support yesterday regarding this noise issue. The minute the guy heard the high pitch noise, he asked me to return it. So UPS is coming to pick this machine and I am ordering another one with same specs but cheaper w/ the 15% off coupon. Hopefully, I will get a quite one this time