Spectre x360 Noise

[hasona]

Omg thanks! I was going mad over it and the guy at the HP supoort line told me to turn it in if I was being bothered by it. This wirked wonders and now it never makes a single beep! Battery life wasnt hasnt changed so its all good for now 🙂

[BinaryJay]

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@DanAir wrote:

The fan noise on this Yoga 3 is an issue, it's almost always on, and though it's quiet I think we've established that I'm super-sensitive to noise.  So I opened it up and unplugged the fan, and now, glorious silence.  I'm hoping that the built in thermal protection will save me from disaster, and this Core M chip is designed to work in fanless installations....

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This is a bad idea.  Yes, thermal protection of the CPU itself will turn your PC off if it gets dangerously hot but the fan does more than cool just your CPU.  Even assuming nothing can be "fried" by overheating without a fan, your system performance is going to suffer because long before your system shuts down from getting too hot it will throttle the CPU speed.  You will not get anywhere close to your performance potential without any active cooling and a load on your CPU.

[DanAir]

Thanks for your concern. A couple of observations:

1. Thermal protection is unlikely to ever have to turn off the laptop. As you said, if it overheats (in practice goes above 70 degrees C) it throttles back by using Turbo Boost more sparingly.
2. In practice I have noticed no difference in everyday use.
3. When I've run PassMark benchmarking, from cold it returns identical performance whether the fan is connected or not. If I run it repeatedly, performance in fanless configuration drops by about 20%.
4. For me this is a good trade off. YMMV.
5. I wouldn't even consider doing this on a Core i5 or i7 processor.

[leontesh]

I switched mine for the 2015 model, cause my fan broke, and it still has the coil whine, and the workaround from the Microsoft post doesn't work anymore 😞

So, back to 0.

[stecrz]

Me and many others do still have this problem.

@HP: Is there any solution for this problem or should we return the notebook? Exchanging it didn't fix the problem and working with this notebook in a quiet place is almost impossible.

[hasona]

I havent had this problem on my Spectre Skylake so this is definitely tied to a HW problem and HP should honour your warranty on this as they did for me when I returned my Broadwell one. No questions asked the rep on the phone quickly said that the coil whine should not happen and she sent me a package for me to deliver it back. In return I got a newer Skylake one and this one doesnt make a single peep

[stecrz]

Thanks! I'll send it back in a few weeks because I need it at the moment, so I'll tell you if the coil whine is gone then.

[jlonomo]

I have had three now, all Broadwell models and all of them have exhibited the coil whine, be nice if you found one without it!

I've just installed Linux in a dual boot configuration, haven't listened for the coil whine under Linux yet though. Will report back if it doesn't make the sound, otherwise, assume that it does.

[erico]

I asked HP about it.

The official word from HP is that the root cause is an audio driver.

The following  driver  for the x360 13-4000 notebook series was released to adress the issue 

HP Spectre 13-4000 and 4100 X360 Convertible PC - Distorted Sound Is Heard While Streaming Audio (Windows 10)

http://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c04923072

[foxracinginc]

Sadly, no. The noise we are bothered by does not come from the speakers. It's source is located somewhere on the PCB between the hinges, at the rear of the device. As I read "root cause: audio driver" I was hopeful, but if it solves a crackling noise emanating from the speakers it's unrelated to our issue.