Surface Laptop 3 Faint Buzzing Sound

Anonymous
2019-10-23T21:50:20+00:00

Hello,

I’ve got the i5 8GB Surface Laptop 3 (13.5-inch), and today, while browsing the internet, I noticed a fairly faint  buzzing sound coming from under the keyboard. It was faint enough you couldn’t hear it from a couple metres away, and sometimes buzzed continuously, other times buzzed in short repetitive bursts.

It didn’t sound like the fan to me, so I opened up the task manager to see if browsing was straining the computer in some way.

I have updated the computer completely, but the buzzing persisted.

Is this a normal electronics problem? Is it actually just the fan? Or is it possibly a defective unit?

Edit/Update:

I took the device into the MS Store today to see if there was something wrong. The staff took it into the back and tested it. They found increasing the computer's workload caused the sound to increase and described it as a popping static-y sound. They replaced the device and I have a new one now. Unfortunately, I've found through usage that this one is also making the sound. I am waiting to see if a firmware update reduces the noise since it seems pervasive across the devices.

Surface | Surface Laptop | Install and update

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-12-04T13:53:46+00:00

    I got the same model, the black one, with Toshiba SSD and its in buzzing as well =/

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-12-03T22:45:15+00:00

    I also have this problem. Now on my second surface laptop 3 it is much louder than it was on the first one. First one had an sk hynix ssd second one has a toshiba ssd. This buzzing is driving me crazy.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-12-01T14:45:32+00:00

    possibly

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-12-01T14:44:29+00:00

    hi karen I have got the same problem and it is prominent when it is plugged in.

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-11-29T12:47:29+00:00

    This is most likely a hardware fault and could even be a design fault that's hard to do anything about, and It's probably not a big enough fault to warrent a recall. I mean, seems like a lot of computers (or even gameconsoles, phones etc.) have problems that shouldn't be happening, not just buzzing/coil whine but all kinds of different faults, but these fault are still happening, and they are usually not fixed unless It's something that makes the machine unuseable for a huge amount of users (like the butterfly keyboard on macs).

    Hopefully the problem will be better on future production lines of the SL3, but even that might not happen. 

    But of course it is a shame, and makes what is a pretty exclusive and tempting looking computer, feel kind of cheap. 

    I still have a small hope that a firmware update or some other fix could make the sound less pronounced. It seems to me that the sound does change or even almost disappears under certain circumstances.

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