Latitude XT2 Concern

The laptop runs great, but now as it gets later in the night, things begin to quiet down.

As I sit here in front of the tablet in complete silence, there is a constant buzzing(kinda high pitched, you can't hear it over the fan when it's on) noise coming from what seems to be right under the touchpad, which is where the harddrive is located. Could it be the harddrive?

Any thoughts? And also, is there anyway to test this seeing as how I don't have another 1.8" drive to swap out with?

(I hope it's the HDD, seeing as how i plan to get an SSD soon)

 

Complete silence? Really? Consistently no fan activity?

You can see if it's the HDD by pulling out the HDD and booting into BIOS... no noise, probably the HDD... noise, probably not the HDD.

 

Yeah, I actually just did that. I believe I've confirmed that it's the HDD.

I booted to the BIOS (no HDD installed) and there was absolutely no noise coming from the laptop.

Big sigh of relief.

BTW, I meant "complete silence" by no music, no tv, no one talking, etc. Just me in my room, with only a small lamp and my computer on. I noticed it as soon as I turned the laptop on.

Also, depsite having a ULV processor, this thing is very snappy. Much more so than I was expecting, especially for coming from a full power 2.16GHz C2D. Can't wait to get an SSD.

 

Well, ok, what I want to know is how often the fan runs, how noisy it is when it does run, and what're the temps that trigger fan activity (the first part is the most important). The fan on the XT1 was like a hairdryer and it ran _all_the_time_, so I want to know if the XT2 improves significantly on that.

 

Well, I don't have any numbers for you yet, but I can say that the fan isn't on very much. And when it does come on, it isn't for very long. I've been very satisfied with it thus far.

Dell made a wise choice moving to the Intel chipset.

 

That's excellent news. If the XT2 fan is only as active as the E6400 fan, that'd be great. Any preliminary figures on battery life?

 

I was too busy today to do a proper test, but I'll be sure to let you know.

I hope to run a battery test within the next few days.

 

Does the buzzing disappear when you set your laptop is set to powerSaver and unpluged?

If so, that that is the Intel CPU power system. This plague all Intel CPU's on laptop starting with the first Mobile Intel Core 2 Duo. Intel always denies the problem, because they all lost their hearing. Yes, the Intel Atom has the same problem as well.

The only solution is to go with AMD, or have something that always uses the CPU, like turn on a bluetooth adapter, or play music for example.

 

The noise isn't present without the HDD.

Also, when I shut the laptop down, I can hear the HDD literally spin-down. It's definitely the HDD. It isn't the high pitched whine the XPS's experienced early on.