High pitched very disturbing noise off my Surface Pro

Anonymous

I have had my first surface pro sent on a warranty run because of it producing a very annoying high pitched disturbing noise which came (in "waves") a little now and then, whenever I am using the tablet. It did not come from the fan, I know how that defect sounds, it was more of a electronic noise. The noise isn't very loud, but sounds like you get tinnitus and is so disturbing that I can't use the tablet at all in my quiet room. The noise comes also when I have disabled the sound card, bluetooth device, wifi etc. I've tried to disable most of the drivers that are disableble ;) It doesn't get rid of the noise.

So now the company which I bought it from, sent me a new surface pro 128Gb. The sad thing is that my new tablet produces the very same noise as the one I got changed. So what is the chances that I've gotten two defective devices (assuming that the import company I am ordering from isn't sending me defective devices on purpose...) twice?

With this assumption I guess that most of microsoft surface pro have this defect and I badly need a solution for it. I have waited for one year for a product that I could use effectively for taking notes of lectures and when it comes, I get this noise issue which I have never encountered with any other tablet I've used, ever. When everything else is perfect, why does this thing have to ruin it :(

The fan isn't even on when noise present, but one interesting thing is that the noise disappears when I press the tablets sleep button and it goes into sleep. Is there a way to get rid of the noise? I can live without most things except wifi, screen, soundcard, touch and wacom. Even with only these things functioning (as long as the noise would be gone) it would be worth the 1400$ it has costed me. But this noise makes it impossible to use the tablet.

**Thanks in advance for the help!**All suggestions are welcome.

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Anonymous

That sounds like machine noise from the SSD and is dang annoying! I would definitely return it as you likely have a malfunctioning or dying SSD in the SP.

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Anonymous

2013-03-15T21:03:33+00:00

If possible, make a recording of the sound and upload it and share via SkyDrive or another sharing service.
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Anonymous

2013-03-16T18:31:16+00:00

Thx for the replies!

I have local warranty since I am buying from an importing company in my country, which go under the countrie's laws, which is that the "resellers" have to give 3 years of warranty on the products they sell :)

That's partly why I have been able to get the product changed in my country, but that doesn't really matter. The important thing is that I understand that this problem isn't usual at all since many thousand people have bought the same product and I've only seen 1 other thread with the same problem and that person got rid of the high frequency noise when he/her got the product changed.

Therefore I will return the product to the company for the money back and wait half a month till the microsoft surface pro gets released in UK and Germany, which I then will order from.

To show you the problem to you, I have recorded the noise with a studio condenser microphone (you will also hear a tiny bit of my computer in the background but you will notice the high pitched noise from surface pro if you aren't too old ;) ). You will need to turn up the volume on the speakers to hear it. On the recording, the high frequency noise is present (since the device is on and I am using it with my finger) every now and then until around 28 secs into the recording, when you will hear a click, which is me "fast clicking" on the power button, which puts surface pro into some kind of sleep. Soon after this you can't hear the high frequency noise anymore. Then you hear a buss pass my house :)

Around 40 secs into the recording, you will hear a second click, which wakes up the device (and I start using surface pro with my finger) and you start hearing the high frequency noise again.

Here is the recording, one file in mp3. and another in wav. , uploaded via dropbox:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/k5fwfg3dqmgicst/xARGRjWoQl

Again, thank you all for responding!
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Anonymous

2013-05-24T23:40:56+00:00

It is the CPU. MacBooks had a similar problem a few years ago, as well as a few other Intel based machines. If you disable idle on the CPU (by first enabling a hidden power setting via Registry Editor and then going into power options to disable idle; there are posts online with instructions) you'll see the CPU will run at 100% and it will be completely silent. The fix for the MacBooks was to run a program that increased CPU load by a user specified percentage, adjusted with a slider. You could hear the squealing and beeping sounds raise in pitch until it became inaudible. I also recently used an Asus Vivobook with the same issue.

So yes, it's directly related to the CPU.

I installed all of the system updates and it's been quieter. However, I've also been downloading and installing Steam games and syncing my Dropbox folders, which are increasing CPU load enough to quiet it down a little.

It's extremely annoying and I hope Intel is aware of it so they can make sure their next generation of processors don't do this. I was thinking of sending mine in for it, but I feel like it might be better to wait in case there was maybe a batch of processors that make noise, while maybe another batch might not.
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Anonymous

2013-05-27T16:02:35+00:00

This is not the answer. It's the sound from the CPU idle, also known as C-State
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