Question Odd laptop fan noise - no improvement after fan exchange

[baspacc]

Hi, I'm struggling with odd behaviour of my laptop's cooling system (Dell Precision 7530). The fans make very annoying pulsating high-pitch noise, which affects my work a lot. It's not loud, but I use this machine mostly in evenings and quiet environment causes it to be noticable. Since, for the time being, I have a second unit, without this problem, I swapped the whole heat sink assemby (with fans) to find out that the problematic sound didn't dissapear. The other laptop, which got the fans form my unit, still doesn't produce this annoying sound.

So I have two identical laptops, same software/drivers, same conditions. And one producess this odd sound, which is not caused by the fans themsevles. Any ideas what the source of the problem might be? It's definitely related to the fans working and the sound characteristics match fan speeds. I thought it might have something to do with airflow outside the heat sink assembly, but there's really not much plastic there and I checked it thoroughly.

 

[helpstar]

some possibilities:
charger, power supply (voltage regulators) on the motherboard, chipset, CPU, HDD, SSD, GPU

 

[KarathVanashta]

Hi, I'm struggling with odd behaviour of my laptop's cooling system (Dell Precision 7530). The fans make very annoying pulsating high-pitch noise, which affects my work a lot. It's not loud, but I use this machine mostly in evenings and quiet environment causes it to be noticable. Since, for the time being, I have a second unit, without this problem, I swapped the whole heat sink assemby (with fans) to find out that the problematic sound didn't dissapear. The other laptop, which got the fans form my unit, still doesn't produce this annoying sound.

So I have two identical laptops, same software/drivers, same conditions. And one producess this odd sound, which is not caused by the fans themsevles. Any ideas what the source of the problem might be? It's definitely related to the fans working and the sound characteristics match fan speeds. I thought it might have something to do with airflow outside the heat sink assembly, but there's really not much plastic there and I checked it thoroughly.

Was the whining 7530 a recent purchase? If so -- I can't tell you what the issue is, but I can tell you that Dell threw the 7530 under the bus as they were prepping for the release of the 7540. It's probably something to do with the hardware.

I bought a 7530 with a UHD screen and got a defective panel from a known bad lot -- made in week 36, 2015.

(Yeah: Four. Years. Old.)

I've found a few other people who got 2015 screens in 2019 Precision 7530s; would not be surprised to find similar issues with other components.

If switching the components didn't void your warranty, try going to Dell and exchanging it for a 7540.