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mini-pbook · Dec 9, 2003, 04:43 PM

I've had a new 17" 1.33ghz powerbook for a week now, and when the processor is set for highest speed, my powerbook is fairly noisy. It almost sounds like a faint hard drive running all the time, but I'm 95% sure it's not the hard drive. I can hear that when it's running. If I set the processor to reduced power, then I hear no sound at all. I'm listening to music right now, and while it's not too loud, I can still hear my powerbook making noise. This is kind of frustrating, mainly because I had a 12" powerbook that was always silent except for the hard drive. On the other hand, my 17" never gets hot at all, whereas my 12" would get pretty toasty. If I put my powerbook in reduced power mode I really don't have any complaints, and this is the best computer I've ever owned by far. Still, $3000 is a lot of money to spend on something that I have to run with a reduced processor all the time. I've searched for 17" pb noise, and haven't come up with too much. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

RayX · Dec 9, 2003, 07:39 PM

This has been discussed to death on this forum.

Search for 'sizzle'.

SEkker · Dec 9, 2003, 09:46 PM

I have to say, this problem always reminds me of the following story:

in grad school, a friend mine lost his muffler on his ol' beater with a heater. He looked at the cost of a new muffler, $200.

He then went to an audio store, new stereo, $200.

He wasn't very rich, so he decided to just 'turn up the volume' after he got back from the audio store...

mini-pbook · Dec 9, 2003, 10:58 PM

I've searched for powerbook noise before, but will try sizzle now. Thanks for the advice, I found a lot more results when I searched for sizzle.

Maybe I'll just have to turn up the volume then

vancenase · Dec 10, 2003, 10:27 AM

i only heard this noise before 10.2.8 and only when surfing the net (https:// pages) ... is this this /sizzle/ people are referring to?

ul1984 · Dec 10, 2003, 11:45 AM

i have exactly the same sound on my 15" albook.
funny thing i noticed is if you unplug your computer and run it on battery power, you can switch to highest, without the hearing the sound.

another thing, when i transfer files over ethernet, at high speeds, i can hear a much louder sound, coming from the same place.
this sound also goes away if i run my computer unplugged, so its related.

could be intresting to hear if your sound go away too if u unplug it

gif32 · Dec 10, 2003, 01:32 PM

I just started noticing this phenomenon with my 15" Al as well. Today it's gone. But yesterday... the sound would go away when I was dragging windows around the screen. WEIRD. When I wasn't moving a window it was very annoying, even with the volume up. Applecare says it is "within spec." What /is/ it in the first place? I used to get it in 10.2.8 on secure Safari sites too, but I thought Panther made it go away forever. It's clearly software, not hardware, right? Or some weird relationship of the two?

mini-pbook · Dec 10, 2003, 04:09 PM

Here's something weird I found out...yesterday the noise was driving me nuts, and I had the processor set to highest. Today, I switched it to automatic, which should be the same if it's plugged in. Under automatic, there is virtually no noise at all! Unplugging the powerbook also makes the sizzle disappear. So, now my noise is gone and I presume I'm running on highest speed. Don't know if you've tried this option, but it's working for me very nicely right now.

ul1984 · Dec 10, 2003, 04:21 PM

Originally posted by mini-pbook:
Here's something weird I found out...yesterday the noise was driving me nuts, and I had the processor set to highest. Today, I switched it to automatic, which should be the same if it's plugged in. Under automatic, there is virtually no noise at all! Unplugging the powerbook also makes the sizzle disappear. So, now my noise is gone and I presume I'm running on highest speed. Don't know if you've tried this option, but it's working for me very nicely right now.

yea ive tried that, but the thing is automatic is not equal to highest, automatic is just automatic switching between reduced and highest.

one would think that it would work on highest when it need it, on automatic mode, but thats not the case, i notice quite a big difference between automatic and highest, most noticable when scrolling(using the scrollbar) advanced sites in safari(try versiontracker, BIG DIFFERENCE)

i have no doubt that if u do something like rendering or anything else that uses all cpu power left over, it will eventually switch to highest automatically.

but when scrolling and doing other UI tasks, for it to be snappy i need to have my computer at highest.

mini-pbook · Dec 10, 2003, 07:17 PM

That's interesting, I just assumed that automatic would mean highest processor speed when you have power, and reduced power when on battery. Hopefully there will be a software fix someday for this.

jgcan · Dec 10, 2003, 07:56 PM

Originally posted by mini-pbook:
That's interesting, I just assumed that automatic would mean highest processor speed when you have power, and reduced power when on battery. Hopefully there will be a software fix someday for this.

ul1984 is right, automatic is not the same as highest even when plugged, my 17" 1.33 does the same as all yours (sizzle goes away on automatic), a way to get rid of the sizzle on highest is to use CHUD tools and to uncheck the "power nap" option in the hardware preferences, the sizzle completly disappears BUT the fan then turns on easily, if only there was a way to force the system not to turn on the fan up to a reasonable limit. Mine seems to turn on when the CPU gets to around 53 C, and yours?

ul1984 · Dec 11, 2003, 03:14 AM

Originally posted by jgcan:
ul1984 is right, automatic is not the same as highest even when plugged, my 17" 1.33 does the same as all yours (sizzle goes away on automatic), a way to get rid of the sizzle on highest is to use CHUD tools and to uncheck the "power nap" option in the hardware preferences, the sizzle completly disappears BUT the fan then turns on easily, if only there was a way to force the system not to turn on the fan up to a reasonable limit. Mine seems to turn on when the CPU gets to around 53 C, and yours?

same thing on my 15" if i turn off "nap" eventually my fan comes on, and stays on forevever, strange thing tho, my fan comes out at about 60 C.

if u would force the fan not to come on, i think it would overheat.

as i understand it what nap does is it turns off parts of the processor to save power, during idle cycles. which means when u turn off nap, it would be just like running the cpu at 100% usage all the time, which also causes the fan to be on constatly.

i have a feelling this switching on and off parts of the processor at a very high frequency, is what causes the noises, im no expert at this electrical stuff, but wouldnt somehting turning off and on at a fast rate, disturb other things, like the speakers maybe? i dont know, just an idea.

jgcan · Dec 11, 2003, 06:38 AM

Originally posted by ul1984:
same thing on my 15" if i turn off "nap" eventually my fan comes on, and stays on forevever, strange thing tho, my fan comes out at about 60 C.

For the others, at what CPU temperture does your fan turn on?

mini-pbook · Dec 11, 2003, 02:47 PM

My fan turned on when the CPU reached 59 C.

cliff · Dec 11, 2003, 03:15 PM

My 17" makes a screeching noise when it starts to ge maxed out on CPU. Its alot more annoying than a "sizzle". This usually happens working in Cubase when the CPU is set to highest. When I click on something with the mouse, the noise stops for a second