Sudden buzzing noise on laptop - GT540M GPU

[Inthernet]

I have been using an Acer 5750G laptop for almost 2 years and have thousands of hours of gaming on it. I noticed only today that the GPU started to make a buzzing/chirping noise. It's not a high-pitched squeal but nevertheless, I'm led to believe it's coil whine. The noise definitely is from the GPU and it only happens when I play games. Should I be concerned that the GPU is about to let go?


A little history of my laptop:
I have never let the GPU go above 85c and it has spent most of its life at 75-80c load. More recently, I've disabled TurboBoost on the CPU, lowering GPU max temp to 70c. Stock speeds are 672/800 and I have been playing games at 720/900 recently (still 70c max) as this seems to be the highest stable overclock I can achieve. From reading other GT540M overclocking results, this is a phenomenally low max overclock.

 

[pete1229]

You could try opening it up, and cleaning the old thermal paste of the cpu and gpu it may be completely dried up by now,, and reapplying new paste, it may cool things down a bit allowing the fan run a bit easier. Check the fan out also, it may need cleaning too. From what I have read this is a pretty common problem with that model.

 

[denis280]

You could try opening it up, and cleaning the old thermal paste of the cpu and gpu it may be completely dried up by now,, and reapplying new paste, it may cool things down a bit allowing the fan run a bit easier. Check the fan out also, it may need cleaning too. From what I have read this is a pretty common problem with that model.

I agree with pete. you could also clean the fans.

 

[pandemonium]

Sounds like that laptop needs a proper cleaning on the fans/shrouds, intake/exhaust ports. The extra weight from the gunk could be causing the whine from the fan ball-bearing/shroud/magnetic assembly, etc.. If after the cleaning the noise is still there, the bearing for the fan could be going and can be replaced relatively cheaply.

 

[Inthernet]

Thanks for the replies. I've run Prime95 to stress only the CPU and it's definitely not the fan causing this noise.

It really seems like a sudden case of coil whine from the GPU. It is strange because my temperatures are very healthy for a laptop.

Edit: I've managed to confirm that I've killed my GPU.