Mac Mini M4 buzzing sound. Buzzing stops when stressing CPU.

Update 1:

I found another reddit post titled:

"

Noise from you mini?

"

by StarwayPatrol

The sound described is similar to mine, but with my hearing (once I hear it) it becomes easy to identify it; such that I can hear it from a foot away in a reasonably quiet environment. The sound becomes clearer the closer I get to it.

The sound is not the sound of the fan.

I live next to a busy street, so reasonably quiet is the constant passing of vehicles.

The buzzing sound is not present (either that or it went too low to be heard) when the Mac Mini M4 is powered off.

Update 2:

Using 2013 Macbook Pro to see screen of Mac Mini M4:

Accessing the Mac Mini M4 through screen share began to experience increasing latency.

Accessing the Mac Mini M4 through Parsec increased latency so much it was as if the screen was frozen.

I turned off the Mac Mini M4 and tried adjusting the power cable in a manner pleasing to the eye.

I turned on the Mac Mini M4 and the buzzing disappeared, but the high latency was still there.

I tried turning off login items and unchecked "reopen windows on login" and restarted both the Mac Mini M4 and the 2013 Macbook Pro.

Now the buzzing and the high latency has been somehow solved.

Update 3:

The buzzing started again.

It was after I typed "sudo shutdown -s +1" in the Terminal.

What this does: Enter Sleep Mode in 1 minute.

The previous steps in Update 2 did not work this time. I can't test high latency screen share if it does not happen again.

Endurance on 4 cores gets rid of the buzzing, but this is not a solution.

Update 3.1:

When I enter a folder with a large number of files, I select the first one and hold the down arrow key.

The buzzing stutters when I do that.

When I enter Force Quit and relaunch Finder, the buzzing stops for a second and comes back when Finder is done relaunching.

Update 4:

I opened Activity Monitor and pulled up the CPU History, CPU Usage, and GPU History.

I also opened Endurance.

Background noise is a busy street of passing vehicles.

The plan is to use Endurance to test 1 core, 2 cores, and 4 cores.

I started with 4 cores and the buzzing went down enough for me to not hear it. The only sound I heard was when I placed my ear directly on the Mac Mini M4.

On CPU History and CPU Usage, Core 7,8,9, and 10, all performance cores, hit the top of their respective charts.

It looks like CPU History can replace CPU Usage in this case, so I'll ignore CPU Usage.

Stressing 2 cores and 1 core did not sound too different from each other. Rather than a constant buzzing, the sound became a focused periodic hum of electricity when I placed my ear directly on the Mac Mini M4. From around 15 inches away, the sound became a periodic quiet dash. From further, I heard nothing.

On CPU History, 2 cores showed slightly above 50% usage on all 4 performance cores.

1 core showed slightly above 20% usage.

On 0 cores, the buzz came back. To describe it:

ear on Mac Mini M4: constant dotted screeching

15 inches away: constant dotted screeching but quieter

15 inches away and further: scaling from knowing it is there to silence.

Self discovery note:

From this study, I discovered that my left ear picks up sounds much more easily than my right ear.

My right ear could only pick up the buzzing clearly(when 0 cores are stressed by Endurance) within 0 inches, somewhat clearly within 3 inches, and a constant whisper no one would normally notice from further away then scaling to silence.

I don't have other Mac Mini M4's to compare to, so I don't know if this buzzing is actually normal.

The next course of action is to borrow someone else's ears.

Update 5:

I put my Mac Mini M4 to sleep mode and came back a few hours later to hear no buzzing.

If I do something and it starts buzzing again, I might update this.