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LedCop

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 7, 2008
249
0
Hey everyone,

My 17" MBP emits a fairly high-pitched whine whose intensity varies with the brightness of the display (thus why I attribute the noise to the display).

When the display is off or with a brightness of up to 50%, no high-pitched whine is emitted. From one bar above middle to two bars from full brightness though, a high-pitched sound can be heard in a silent room. And finally at one bar from full, and at full brightness, the MBP is perfectly silent. The sound is most audible (and most annoying!) at roughly bars 10-12 out of the 16 bars.

So I'd just like to ask all you 17" MBP owners whether yours exhibits this as well.

While my 17" MBP is the June 09 Core 2 Duo model, the panel it uses seems to be used in the new Core i5 + i7 refresh as well. So I'm curious if the display or something else has changed enough and whether the whine persists.

Typing the following into the Terminal app will give you the model of the LCD you have:

ioreg -lw0 | grep IODisplayEDID | sed "/[^<]*</s///" | xxd -p -r | strings -6

Mine is the LTN170CT10.

So please, post whether you have this display whine and post your LCD model. You MUST be in a near dead-silent area to be able to hear this whine if it exists.
 

Chupa Chupa

macrumors G5
Jul 16, 2002
14,835
7,396
The whine is a bad screen inverter. It's not normal -- though a genius may try to convince you otherwise. If you are in the return period swap it out for a new one. If its beyond return but still on warranty get them to fix it -- will require a new inverter board and probably new screen.
 

jjahshik32

macrumors 603
Sep 4, 2006
5,366
52
The whine is a bad screen inverter. It's not normal -- though a genius may try to convince you otherwise. If you are in the return period swap it out for a new one. If its beyond return but still on warranty get them to fix it -- will require a new inverter board and probably new screen.

Ever since the switch to led backlight technology, there is no screen inverter. That's one of the perks of led technology.

I dont seem to hear anything even putting my head up close.. I believe every mbp varies in sound?
 

LedCop

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 7, 2008
249
0
Thanks for the replies so far, guys.

I once had a chance to play around with a Jan 09 17" MBP and the whine wasn't present and I think it's because it was a different screen to my June 09. Jan 09 had a 9C98 while mine has a 9C99.

Anyway, it looks like I wasn't the only one:

Apple Discussions: New MBP high pitch noise from screen

Since the screens carry on to your core i5 and i7 ones, I'm really interested if something was done by the screen manufacturers to remove the whine... or if nothing has changed at all.
 
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