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4 Posts
1
92955
XPS 13 whistling hissing noise from motherboard
Does anyone else with a Dell XPS 13 hear a whistling/hissing noise that changes in frequency randomly? It's very distracting for me. A Dell engineer has replaced the mobo and unplugged the screen, battery, keyboard backlight, speakers and disk, So the noise has to be coming from the mobo. He told me that probably all XPS 13s make this noise, but I can't believe that I'm the first person to be driven crazy by it. It's not very loud, and if the fan is running it masks it. But in the dead of night without the fan running it's very plain and annoying even from a few meters away.
So far Dell has told me: "Perform these steps should resolve your issue" and linked to a massive thread about ALSA on ubuntuforums, which says to try millions of different things. (I did, nothing fixed the problem). (it's a Sputnik, but the noise is there in the bios so it has nothing to do with linux.) Interestingly I do not hear the noise while the diagnostics are running.
They have also told me: "We are working on an issue that seems similar to what you have." But as yet not replied to my request for more details.
markstos
25 Posts
0
April 1st, 2014 06:00
I have a Dell XPS 13 Haswell, and it also hisses. It's worse with the keyboard backlight is on. It's also triggered by some USB 3 products plugged in.
I have a Anker 3.0 USB hub plugged in as kind of dock, so now the machine hisses constantly. It's very annoying.
I suspect the issue is due to electromagnetic interference (EMI), which could possibly be solved by better shielding.
The potential for USB 3 to cause EMI is well known. Intel has a whitepaper about it:
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white-papers/usb3-frequency-interference-paper.pdf
Dell should know better.
It particularly ruins sitting in a quiet room with the laptop, where all you can here is the focus-destroying laptop hiss.
I expected better from a premium laptop and will reconsider purchasing another Dell in the future if this goes unresolved.
30yearexpert
459 Posts
0
February 21st, 2014 07:00
The noise goes when the backlight is off on my keyboard.
phm42
4 Posts
1
February 21st, 2014 08:00
The engineer said he unplugged the keyboard backlight. And it was still making the noise. Also it seems to get slightly louder when I plug headphones in.
gaiaphoenix
2 Posts
2
February 21st, 2014 08:00
there is a big thread about this basically it seems its a problem that cant be fixed. I got my laptop today and cant stand it ... if u google backlight xps 13 fix u ll find the thread here on this site its the xps 9333 constant noise thread.
I might have to return this lovely but faulty laptop
gaiaphoenix
2 Posts
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February 21st, 2014 08:00
same goes for me. no sound on backlit turned off. is this a problem on every xps 13? how can we solve this as its not normal to have it as an error.
phm42
4 Posts
1
February 21st, 2014 09:00
I'm considering removing my ear drums. That's how much I love this machine. I love everything except the Substitute character removed as per TOU> whiny hissy noise it makes that is Substitute character removed as per TOU> driving me crazy. And I'm not happy that Dell wasted my time by sending an engineer to replace the mobo when they knew it was gonna fix it. So what's the closet thing to it? Must run Linux good. Lenovo X1?
phm42
4 Posts
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February 21st, 2014 11:00
" "
You are freaking kidding me. They're censoring me censoring myself? Substitute character removed as per TOU>
shmoltz
1 Message
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September 30th, 2014 07:00
try this BIOS update :
http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2012/03/21/xps-13-fan-noise-fix/
marathonchris
1 Message
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October 19th, 2014 10:00
I have had my XPS since June 2014 and today is the first time I noticed the noise. I am sure I would have noticed it earlier as I work all day in a fairly quiet area. This post pointed out the USB 3.0 hub issue. I had recently plugged in a Sabrent USB 3.0 4-port hub just the other day for some quick USB access for a camera. After reading this I unplugged it and the annoying sound went away.
I have the Dell high speed docking station / port replicator that I normally have all my extra's plugged into - the Sabrent is a small portable one I take with me on the road. I don't notice the noise at all with the dock. It could be that the dock is far enough away???
I do use a wireless USB mouse and keyboard with a dongle plugged right into the laptop - that doesn't seem to be an issue and I have not experienced any degradation in performance with those devices (this was mentioned in the article).
I have really enjoyed this machine so I am glad I found a solution here! Thanks for sharing!
Omi Azad
1 Message
0
July 30th, 2016 14:00
What solution you found mate?
Got my XPS 13 9350 last week and as soon as everything became quite I started to notice this sound. When I copy datam, when I scroll pages, whatever I do it makes some noise. Feels like it has an old motor based hard drive inside. As soon as I got the laptop, I have upgraded the hard drive, so I thought this is the new SSD's problem. Later I put the original one back and found the same problem. I have a USB-C dock, I took that off, turned the backlid off, no change.
I had an XPS 13 before (the old version) but did not have this problem in that.