I just got a new XU4 and I tried to run both the official ubuntu 18.04 image with linux 4.14 and the armbian stretch 4.14 image (both minimal).

 

I can hear a constant electrical squeaky noise (similar to noise from certain power supplies, usb chargers, etc) coming from the XU4 when running Armbian. The same noise is not present in the Ubuntu image. This occurs immediately after first boot (no additional configuration) and is constantly there. This is especially noticeable when the fan is off.

 

Has anyone experienced this before?

No, but I would start by comparing the DVFS config between the two images. Also the cpufreq governor being used.

55 minutes ago, chrisf said:

cpufreq governor being used

 

This seems the be the culprit! Wow. Thanks so much.

 

It seems like Armbian is using ondemand and the official image is performance. As soon as I set the governor to performance, the noise is gone. Once I set the governor to ondemand, the noise is back. This occurs on both images. I've not tested pinning the CPU frequency as it was just a quick test. I noted that CPU frequency is pinned to 1.5Ghz and 2Ghz on performance while the ondemand governor puts the little processor to 600Mhz. This is probably the reason for the noise?

 

One thing that I find strange, I noticed that armbian's boot.ini, there's the line setenv governor "performance". However, this seems to be overwritten by /etc/default/cpufrequtils.