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Apple confirms coil whine is expected behavior in MM

Fishrrman said:
How many of you once used a PowerMac g4 MDD?
You don't know what "computer noise" IS....! ;)
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Didn't own that particular model, but I did have one of the Bondi Blue G3 towers and a G4 Quicksilver. I can't remember how loud those were. Were they louder than the Cheese Grater cMPs? I had one of those too and I distinctly remember how loud those were. I had to put mine in a vented wooden box to shield the noise.
 
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That's a poor response. They don't have a fix and it's not technically harmful so they're punting on the issue. I barely bought this Mini but it's tough to see me buying another Mac. In fact I can almost guarantee this will be my last Mac desktop.

Expected = it's there but we aren't fixing it
 
brentsg said:
That's a poor response. They don't have a fix and it's not technically harmful so they're punting on the issue. I barely bought this Mini but it's tough to see me buying another Mac. In fact I can almost guarantee this will be my last Mac desktop.

Expected = it's there but we aren't fixing it
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It seems it can't be fixed as it's inherent to SSD's.
 
archer75 said:
it's inherent to SSD's.
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I've got one with the same connection in my Lenovo.
It's silent as the dead.
Apple may have picked the cheapest supplier they could find.
I may get a 2020 ARM Mini, but it's pretty clear they didn't put the engineering effort into the 2018 that they should have.
I can wait. I've got a Windows 10 machine for the number crunchy stuff.
No chance for a laptop, as they still haven't fixed the butterfly keyboard problem.
 
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Partron22 said:
I've got one with the same connection in my Lenovo.
It's silent as the dead.
Apple may have picked the cheapest supplier they could find.
I may get a 2020 ARM Mini, but it's pretty clear they didn't put the engineering effort into the 2018 that they should have.
I can wait. I've got a Windows 10 machine for the number crunchy stuff.
No chance for a laptop, as they still haven't fixed the butterfly keyboard problem.
Click to expand...
My mini is silent as well. Or perhaps i'm just not sensitive to the sound. Perhaps it's easier to hear in the mini. Or your lenovo shields the sound better. I don't know. Either way I consider it a non issue.
I think their SSD supplier is samsung.
 
Good name, Samsung. Maybe they have a plant in El Salvador?
Heck of a lot of complaining for a nonissue. I don't think people are hallucinating.
Perhaps those of us with old ears are blessed by our poor frequency limits.
I'm down to 12KHz this year. Maybe someday I'll be able to listen to a 128 kbps without cringing. The wall on those is 15kHz, but harmonics and Nyquist folding affect even ears that can't hear the high notes.
 
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archer75 said:
It seems it can't be fixed as it's inherent to SSD's.
Click to expand...

True, if you have coil whine, it can't be fixed, but thats a broad and incorrect statement to say "its inherent to SSD's", in that all of them share that characteristic. My Mini does NOT exhibit that behavior, nor do several other users, not to mention the countless SSD's we all have and run internally and externally in other computers.

It seems the jury is still out on what exactly causes this specific issue from one SSD to another, but they surely do not ALL have this problem. Video cards are infamous for having coil whine, and they are not SSD's. One might try and find the link between them and maybe narrow down the culprit. All SSD's do is move positive and negative electrons around. Where is the noise coming from? Thats the question.
 
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archer75 said:
It seems it can't be fixed as it's inherent to SSD's.
Click to expand...

That's like saying coil whine is inherent in video cards because some cards do it. Most SSDs don't do this but Toshiba seems to be a repeat offender.

Edit: And just to be clear, video cards are MUCH more likely to do this than SSDs. It's just that the sound video cards makes is usually of the ear splitting variety.
 
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Partron22 said:
Holes, please. Not positrons.
That's antimatter and would do bad things if it annihilated and pushed high energy gamma rays through your electronics.
Click to expand...
Clearly I was speaking broadly. You having fun yet? Lol
 

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StellarVixen said:
Give me the coil whine sound over the seek noise of the HDD any day.
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I didn't mind the HDD noise. It wasn't annoying, loud, or distracting to me. Maybe that's because I grew up in an age of noisy computers while most younger people grew up with silent tablets. I remember when booting a computer you would hear BOIS beeps, a floppy drive, CD drive, the HD, and fans. Of course there was a boot up chime that seems missing from Windows and Mac OS now. Once you got it started you would hear the MODEM connecting to the internet. I'm not against the quiet computers of 2019 but I'm not going to get all upset if mine makes an occasional noise.
 
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archer75 said:
It seems it can't be fixed as it's inherent to SSD's.
Click to expand...

Respectfully, I disagree. I have a gaming PC with tons of Samsung SSDs, none make this noise. My MM 2012 has a Samsung EVO, no noise. Even folks on this forum have said their MM2018s don't have this noise. I think it is luck of the draw based on mfg tolerances. That is why when you buy gaming PC parts, it is recommended to research incidence of coil whine first. Some GPUs are more prone to it than others.

The disappointing thing, IMHO, is that Apple has always been the "no tolerance" company when it comes to expected working behavior. Their reply to me feels like I was chatting with MSI or Dell.
[doublepost=1554306019][/doublepost]
Partron22 said:
Good name, Samsung. Maybe they have a plant in El Salvador?
Heck of a lot of complaining for a nonissue. I don't think people are hallucinating.
Perhaps those of us with old ears are blessed by our poor frequency limits.
I'm down to 12KHz this year. Maybe someday I'll be able to listen to a 128 kbps without cringing. The wall on those is 15kHz, but harmonics and Nyquist folding affect even ears that can't hear the high notes.
Click to expand...

The problem with coil whine, to me as a gamer, is that it is very distracting. It isn't the "same" frequency or harmony over and over like read/write on a spinning HDD. It varies in both how loud it is and the type of noise it makes is always different. So it is more distracting, at least in my opinion, than the sounds that my gaming PC makes which are more rhythmic. Also, FWIW, I can hear the Mac Mini coil whine over a gaming PC with a massive Noctua cooling system, 3 case fans, a standard HDD reading/writing, and a EVGA massive PSU fan.
 
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palebluedot said:
Respectfully, I disagree. I have a gaming PC with tons of Samsung SSDs, none make this noise. My MM 2012 has a Samsung EVO, no noise. Even folks on this forum have said their MM2018s don't have this noise. I think it is luck of the draw based on mfg tolerances. That is why when you buy gaming PC parts, it is recommended to research incidence of coil whine first. Some GPUs are more prone to it than others.

The disappointing thing, IMHO, is that Apple has always been the "no tolerance" company when it comes to expected working behavior. Their reply to me feels like I was chatting with MSI or Dell.
[doublepost=1554306019][/doublepost]


The problem with coil whine, to me as a gamer, is that it is very distracting. It isn't the "same" frequency or harmony over and over like read/write on a spinning HDD. It varies in both how loud it is and the type of noise it makes is always different. So it is more distracting, at least in my opinion, than the sounds that my gaming PC makes which are more rhythmic. Also, FWIW, I can hear the Mac Mini coil whine over a gaming PC with a massive Noctua cooling system, 3 case fans, a standard HDD reading/writing, and a EVGA massive PSU fan.
Click to expand...

It's all about the frequency you can hear, it's not that it's not there, it's that your ears can't pick it up. I have lots of SSDs too and I don't hear a thing(but I wouldn't over the fans in my PC). But then there are frequencies I can't hear. Not due to hearing damage, just age. There was a time I could hear a whine of sorts from just about any electronics. And I work in semiconductors so i'm surrounded by it all day.
 
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This explains why 2018 minis are raining in the refurbished store lately !!
3 back just from me, until I got a pretty silent one ;)
 
Jean Du said:
This explains why 2018 minis are raining in the refurbished store lately !!
3 back just from me, until I got a pretty silent one ;)
Click to expand...

Makes me wish I had purchased mine directly from Apple! I foolishly assumed the product would be high quality like every other Mac/iDevice I have purchased! :p
 
Fishrrman said:
How many of you once used a PowerMac g4 MDD?
You don't know what "computer noise" IS....! ;)
Click to expand...

I think this is part of the problem: things are so much better than they were that small annoyances become noticeable. We are stuck living with it for now but in another few years I could see higher quality brands (of components and machines) making an effort to mitigate coil whine.

SUN hardware was brutal enough to drive you to hearing protection. The shriek of fast spinning rust and blow dryer fans will not be missed.
 
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