SSD emits weird humming noise during PM usage

[fillerup]

on Antergos x64, PM 27.9.1, my laptop (SSD?) makes a soft but noticeable humming sound whenever PM is in usage e.g. new tab, visit new page, etc. a curiosity i discovered is that, scrolling by dragging the scrollbar up and down on any page creates this sound, but scrolling using the mousewheel doesn't.

this only happens on Linux and not Windows. i tried SlimJet browser on Linux and no sound there either. in fact i think it's happened on PM Linux for a long time but it wasn't until i got this new laptop that i really paid attention to it. possibly something related to SSD caching?

edit: just moving the cursor around creates this noise on my current profile. not on a new profile though, but all my previous scenarios remain the same

edit 2: my friend suggests that it could be that PM is unable to write to RAM and is constantly swapping to SSD

edit 3: my PM was installed using the pminstaller tool

[Thehandyman1957]

If this doesn't happen on a new profile then it's definitely not PM causing it. What add on's are you using?

[fillerup]

you misunderstand. on a new profile, the humming from moving the cursor does not happen. but in other scenarios like i listed (new tab, open new page, moving scrollbar with mouse), the noise still appears

[fillerup]

another discovery: i don't think it is related to ssd caching, as that option is disabled in my current profile (browser.cache.disk.enable = false)

[Thehandyman1957]

Ahh, my mistake. Sorry about that. Strange that it does not happen on windows. I too have an SSD and
am running W7 64. Never heard my SSD make those noises. I only had that type of noise issue with my
speakers when they were getting a weird ground noise loop issue from the usb power from my computer.
The only way I was able to solve it was to simply plug the sound bar usb into a dedicated separate power supply.

Every time something on my screen changed the noise could be heard on the speakers. It sounds to me like
your hard drive is somehow picking up those same signals. I wonder if this could be some sort of driver issue
like a sata driver or such, just guessing. Hopefully someone has experienced this
somewhere and can help you out. Not much of a Linux guy myself.

[Moonchild]

I don't think it has anything to do with your SSD

Off-topic:
(As an aside, disabling disk caching is not recommended, not on an SSD either! I've already explained this a long while ago when this topic first came up; storing cached web content will not cause unnecessary wear on your SSD at all.)

If you experience noises when performing actions like scrolling or other GPU-intensive operations, you may actually be experiencing "processing noise" from the hardware. Especially in compact laptops, this can be a problem -- either leaking to your sound card or actually be a form of coil whine emitted by the hardware components themselves. Whether you hear this or not depends greatly on the internal timing of the software in use, which hardware features are being used, and many other similar low-level factors.

[fillerup]

Off-topic:
yes this was a recommended config i picked up a long time ago, back when SSDs just started appearing on the consumer markets (circa 2012)

If you experience noises when performing actions like scrolling or other GPU-intensive operations, you may actually be experiencing "processing noise" from the hardware. Especially in compact laptops, this can be a problem -- either leaking to your sound card or actually be a form of coil whine emitted by the hardware components themselves. Whether you hear this or not depends greatly on the internal timing of the software in use, which hardware features are being used, and many other similar low-level factors.

yes it's definitely a form of coil whine and not soundcard/headphone related. it's not a big deal for me personally as i've lived with it for years now, but i just want to get to the bottom of each of these 'mysteries' for the sake of curiosity. you would too if you experience such weird consistencies like scrollbar dragging triggering it, but not regular mousewheel scrolling

[Moonchild]

As said these things are very timing dependent. dragging a scrollbar is a very rapid-fire input->repaint event. Mouse wheel scrolling uses a different and independent timing.