This doesn’t sound like the coil whine I’m used to hearing. The coil whine I got from my dGPU module and I hear on other devices sound like it’s constantly shifting pitches (up and down) meanwhile the whine I hear in the video is quite constant.
That constant shifting in pitch is due to system / gpu load. Constant or not, it still sounds like coil whine (just a matter of whether it’s a constant load or load fluctuating).
For example: On an old thinkpad, I could get coil whine from the laptop…when I scroll up / down a page. Changing my scroll speed would change the pitch (GPU rendering the page). Or, I can get a GPU (or even PSU) to give me near constant pitch in synthetic benchmarks).
Worth watching:
I know it’s not coil whine because it’s the exact same with the shell module and get’s louder with fan speed. I am controlling the fan speed directly without putting load on my CPU/GPU (via ectool) and it is the same with the laptop plugged in or unplugged. So basically I have removed all coils that could be whining from the equation.
I believe you. I’m just saying, if you didn’t mention anything about the fin, my thought would have been coil whine.
Could it be vibration from the spin of the fan? (i.e. looking at the mechanical since of things)
I am tempted to try to power the fans outside of the laptop case and see what the sound profile is. Just haven’t had the time to go through that process.
These are some things I think could be tested to see if the source could be narrowed down:
Run the fans outside of the module
Put the in the shell module and run them outside the laptop
Install the module with 1 fan hooked up
I was hoping someone from Framework would be able to investigate this more deeply since these tests would be immensely easier for them and might have already been done (seeing as fan noise was one of the reasons the Framework 16 got delayed).
Although this system does have some coil whine. I can hear it in my benchmark software when I move the 3d render around from the top of the board. You can of course hear it very loudly when you have the midplate/top cover off.
It’s very weird for sure and possibly I am wrong about my assumption. All I know is if I run the laptop without the top cover/midplate, I cannot hear the whine coming from the fan motors nor the intake side. I only hear the whine on the exhaust side. This to me says either it’s the heat sink fins or maybe something else causing turbulence in the chassis. Although it could maybe just be that the fan motor noise is getting projected and reverbs within the chassis. Once Framework puts some engineering time into figuring it out, I am sure they will. Until then, we just have to make sure they notice.
This is the best solution I have found for cutting back the fan noise physically, electrical tape over the first four vent slats closest to the charging port. It gives a small temp hit (saw a rise in game from 58c to 62c on GPU while on 100w power, but cuts down on the whistle dramatically. I only have a picture of the one side, but you have to do both sides for the full reduction.
Can confirm that I can hear that and would be pretty annoyed by it. Seems too consistent to be coil-whine tome me.
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Found the video I was looking for, this:
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Consistency is not a rough determining factor. If you came across those old 3/5/6/9v AC-DC adapter, sometimes you’ll get a steady pitch whine. Another example: With a Lenovo 65W USB-C adapter, I can get a steady pitch whine when it’s used to charge by Technics AZ70 earbuds case. It’s a matter of load / current.
I do agree when your load is constant like charging the battery of an earbuds case, I however don’t agree if the case is very not constant like a running laptop. Under variable load the pitch may or may not stay constant but the volume certainly won’t. In a laptop or pc the things most likely to audibly wine are in the cpu/gpu vrms where there are pretty extreme currents that change very quickly.
Either way I think we can all agree it’s most likely not coil whine given my testing methods.
Given you made it stop by stopping the fan that is a pretty sound conclusion
Yeah, I filled one of my cars with this kind of tape to stop all of the panel rattle. The problem with this would be the vibration that’s causing the whine is either the plastic on the back or the heat sink fins… Or maybe it’s another fluid dynamics response that an engineer at framework with simulation software can figure out 
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Edit: I missed framework’s support email the first time it seems, so I am advising them on all this stuff now.
Hey @Tarian, I just took my Framework 16 into a quiet room with no AC running and plugged it into wall power and ran Heaven benchmark (Heaven Benchmark Download to drive the GPU at 100% and my laptop makes the exact same noise that you recorded higher up in the thread. I’ve also heard other laptops and even high-end network switches make a similar noise when pushing high pressure air through a restricted path using tiny fans. I’m not sensitive to the sound so I didn’t really notice it until you pointed it out and now I can hear it even in the loud room but it doesn’t bother me at all because I’m used to sounds like this in my environment.
That being said I can totally understand how someone with tinnitus could experience pain from a sound like this because I had tinnitus for about a 6 month period a few years back when I got a really bad double ear, double eye infection from swimming in a public pool (lesson learned) and there were so many noises in my environment that drove me absolutely nuts that I didn’t have any problem with before. Even my car revving at certain RPM ranges would become painful when driving.
There is no doubt that the fans on this laptop are loud when the dGPU is going at full chooch since this laptop has a lot of GPU power for its form factor even before you consider the modularity of it which also takes up more space that other laptops don’t have to deal with. But even my Razer Blade Pro is annoyingly loud when the GPU runs at 100% when it’s sitting on the right surface like glass since it also makes a high-pitched noise but it’s down firing so you don’t notice it as much unless it’s on a surface that resonates and amplifies it.
I wonder if there is a way for the Framework folks to modify the firmware on this laptop so that some kind of fan control software would work for creating custom fan curves. This way you could sacrifice some dGPU performance to drop the fan speed low enough that it doesn’t murder your ears when you’re not wearing headphones. I tried installing Fan Control (Get Fan Control) but it doesn’t find any fans that it can control on the CPU or the GPU since I’m pretty sure those are locked down right now in the current Framework 16 firmware and I’ve seen other threads where people wanted to control the fans also that didn’t have a good solution yet. But, if Framework could do that then people could create a fan curve that dropped the fan speed down by 30% which will change the pitch to a range that doesn’t bother you when you need it and then you can flip the curve onto full power when you need it when wearing headphones or you’re in a noisy environment that masks it better.
Just a suggestion, I’m not really sure what the solution is here since it seems to be normal for this hardware configuration to make this noise at 100% dGPU fan speed because of the channel the air is traveling through and perhaps it’s something they can address in future designs since this thing is so modular but it’s always going to be noisy regardless of the pitch it makes because there is no real way to move this amount of air under the pressure required without an annoyingly fan spinning blender wheel. Well, except for maybe using those little flapper things Linus Tech Tips reviewed back in the day for server racks that cost a gazillion dollars but I don’t think those are going to be cost effective. 
Good luck and I hope you find a solution that works for you in the end. I honestly think the custom fan curves could be really helpful or maybe even using pulse width modulation on the fans to alternate their speed slightly might break up those tones as well. Or maybe the engineers at Framework could play a sound through the speakers that cancels out the sound from the fans like noise cancelling headphones work. I genuinely don’t even know if that is something that is possible with the speakers that are in the framework unit but man that would be something cool that I’ve never seen any other laptop do before if it did actually work or make a difference. But, maybe playing some white noise through the speakers that is just as loud as the fan noise to try and distract away from it or mix up the sound waves could give you some kind of relief also. Look up what frequences would be required to create the destructive waves to break down the 5000hz sound and go from there and see what happens. But, I’m not audio engineer so I’m sure some guys reading this thread right now are like “C’mon Barnacules, this ain’t Star Trek bro, you need to adhere to the rules of phystics, etc, etc”. 
I wish you the best my man,
Jerry (aka. Barnacules)
http://linktr.ee/barnacules
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Finally got a conclusive response from Framework… sad to hear and I hope they address this in a future revision or new parts…
"This ticket has been escalated and upon review, we find nothing wrong with how the fans are sounding in your system, the most noticeable part only is the jet of air running through the air vents of the laptop chassis. We’d say that it’s normal since the air-exhausted jet will depend on how fast the fan’s RPM is when it’s happening. We repeatedly played the audio/videos and we didn’t find any abnormal fan noises such as scraping or something like blade fins touching something inside that can produce odd or out-of-spec spinning sounds. And aside from the high-pitched spinning sound which is also normal depending on the fan speeds. Let us know if you have further questions or concerns.
Regards,
Framework Support"
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I’m sorry that the sound is so bothersome to your tinnitus @Alexander_Patchin. Honestly, when running at full power it is a pretty loud laptop, but given the form factor and how much heat they have to evacuate through such small channels it’s something that isn’t easily avoidable since any attempt to slow the airflow is going to affect heat dissipation.
You’re always having to make a choice between performance or noise. I’m curious, have you tried setting your power profile in Windows to “Battery Saver” to use the iGPU over the dGPU and drop the CPU performance? This should cause the fan speeds to come down also since they won’t have to dissipate so much heat and might be a more tolerable experience for when you’re doing things on your laptop that don’t require a ton of power.
Also, another option might be to experiment with building a silencer for the ports on the back of the laptop. I noticed that when I placed a little piece of paper in front of the ports and angled it the tone of the air coming out changed significantly. Perhaps it would be possible to design, and 3D print a little shroud that could go over the ports that could have baffles in it to dissipate some of the noise. I had a problem with my CPAP years ago where it made this insane noise that drove me crazy next to my head all night while I was sleeping. I ended up buying a “silencer” for it which was just a little box with baffles in it that slide over the exhaust port and it changed the tone dramatically and dropped the SPL to half what it was. I bet something like this could work for the framework laptop, I’m just not sure how big the unit would have to be, it might even be possible to make something compact that just snaps into the port. But, this would require some playing around with trial and error and then getting someone to design it if you don’t have CAD skills.
Ideally though it would be nice if Framework would give us control of the fans inside of the unit since everything has thermal limits that will throttle things, so you won’t hurt it. This way anyone could trade exactly the performance they want for less noise and more longevity of the battery. Then you could create a fan curve that just completely avoid the 100% fan speed which creates that noise that is messing with your tinnitus.
Framework does have a good record of taking users feedback so hopefully there will be more options to resolve this in the future both with software and hardware. In the meantime, grab yourself a nice paid of noise cancelling earbuds like the Sony WF-1000XM5 or Airpods Pro to help filter out the noise so you don’t go insane from the tinnitus. I know when I had tinnitus for a few months listening to music at low volume was the only thing that would drown it out enough for me to feel normal. I even slept with music or white noise playing most nights because that high pitched ringing I always had in my ears was driving me nuts.
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Yeah at the end of the day I still like the laptop, even though I have to kneecap it in performance and heat dissipation. Hopefully they take the feedback to heart and figure out the resonance frequency that is causing the noise in the rear heatsink for their next dGPU release. My fear is they will never address it. At risk of being a broken record, my XPS never had this kind of whine, always just fan whooshing noise, but I know Dell put a lot of RND into making that laptop sound that way… And it cost WAY more brand new (I bought mine at Dell outlet last time for around the same price as this framework 16 with dGPU, where the XPS MSRP was in the 3-4k range brand new).
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