High pitched whine when laptop is plugged in

Question

My relatively new Toshiba Portege r705 laptop (running Linux) has started making a high-pitched whine when plugged in. The sound is usually only noticeable when the laptop is in use and the battery is being charged.

The sound is definitely coming from the power system as unplugging the laptop makes the sound go away as does jiggling the plug that connects to the laptop.

From some online searching it seems that this is probably caused by vibration of the inductors.

Aside from being annoying, is this going to damage my computer or shorten its usable lifespan? If yes, is there anyway to fix/mitigate the problem?

Answer 1

Hard to say if it's really going to cause any damage, but I would be contacting Toshiba about it for sure. Better safe than sorry.

Even if it's just annoying, you're probably going to be using it for a few years yet, given that it's fairly new. That's a long time for even mild annoyance to be hanging around.