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Thunderbolt monitor makes faint ticking noise

It's only a month old. At first thought it was my Apple wireless keyboard, but figured out it's the TB monitor.

It's a faint ticking/clicking sound every 30 or so seconds upon waking up from sleep or start-up. After 10-20 minutes it finally goes away (or I just don't notice it). But if I put the monitor to sleep then wake it up, it starts all over again. Tried installing the firmware update (version 1.1) posted by Apple on Dec 12, 2011 but when launching the installer, I got a message saying I didn't need it.


Any suggestions please? It's connected to an equally new 15" MacBook Pro on 10.7.2.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2), MacBook Pro w. Thunderbolt Monitor,

Posted on Jan 10, 2012 7:03 PM

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17 replies

Aug 5, 2017 2:40 AM in response to mwatters

mwatters wrote:


Interesting. It seemed to be coming out of the grill in the middle of the back of the monitor, I'm not sure what is back there. I'm guessing the speakers are along the bottom.


The sound seemed to go away for a day, and then came back for a bit. I haven't had time the passed few days to work on it, but will see if I can pinpoint it this weekend. If it persists I'll follow up with Apple support.

I'm now experiencing the same issue on my 2 y old TB Display. A ticking sound coming out of the grill in the middle of the monitor. Is there a fix or sthg?

Apr 1, 2012 7:20 PM in response to mwatters

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one, but sad that it's happening to you too. I called up Apple and had a great guy helping me. He said there's no record of other people having the problem so it would be great if you called about it too. Maybe if enough people complain, there will be a fix. He found a photo of the interior and guessed that it might be coming from a fan (or was it a speaker?). He said if it bothered me, I should take it into my nearest Apple Store. But after reading about all the other issues people are having with the TB monitor, I'm afraid they'll swap it out and I'll have a worse problem.


Please let me know if you get more information. I bought the extended warranty and the guy made sure there was cleardocumentation that I was having this problem early on.

Apr 2, 2012 12:19 AM in response to Susan A.

It's a faint ticking/clicking sound every 30 or so seconds upon waking up from sleep or start-up. After 10-20 minutes it finally goes away (or I just don't notice it).


My theory on this is it is the fan possibly hitting its housing and the reason you only hear it while starting up or waking from sleep is that in both those state the machine is basically off and cooled down. When you start it up it starts heating up again and some things start expanding as materials do when they get warmer. Different materials expand at different rates and amounts. So probably the fan is just touching its housing. It warms up and then it doesn't touch anymore.


As I said, just my theory.

Apr 4, 2012 8:43 PM in response to Susan A.

Interesting. It seemed to be coming out of the grill in the middle of the back of the monitor, I'm not sure what is back there. I'm guessing the speakers are along the bottom.


The sound seemed to go away for a day, and then came back for a bit. I haven't had time the passed few days to work on it, but will see if I can pinpoint it this weekend. If it persists I'll follow up with Apple support.

Apr 4, 2012 8:48 PM in response to X423424X

I'm not so sure it's the fan (I didn't know there was one in there), although I wouldn't rule it out. The ticking/clicking is intermitent and not consistent like I would expect from a fan. For my monitor, it made the sound long after I had been using the monitor, i.e. it would have been fully warmed up. I'll see if I can figure something out this weekend.

Apr 4, 2012 9:05 PM in response to mwatters

It might be such that only a small variance in the temperatures causes small changes to the expansion/contraction of the touching pieces. Temps don't remain constant. Your temps vary as a function of what you are doing (cpu temps) how heavy the video load is (video card chip) and of course the room temp of the air being sucked into the machine for cooling it.


You should consider adding a temperature utility like iStat Pro, iStat Menu, Temperature Monitor, Hardware Monitor, etc. and see if yo can correlate some of the temperature readings with the sound.

Apr 20, 2012 3:44 PM in response to Susan A.

I have the exact same problem. At first I thought it was coming from my own speakers, but after few tests I can affirm it's not related at all.


The ticking sound seemed random, but as mwatters said, it does look pretty related to CPU usage of my MacBook Pro. Try if for yourself: just launch a YouTube video in HD (Flash), you'll probably hear it too.


I really hope Apple could release a firmware update as they did before. That's really boring.

May 4, 2012 10:36 AM in response to Ricky Eggersman

i'm pretty sure the display is the point lol, but yeah, is definitely a touted feature... my other thunderbolt display doesn't do it, just one of them :shrug: not worth it to me to drag it into the zoo of a crowded apple store in portland to try and get the issue addressed... am guessing it could be something to do w/ cables not properly shielded, is hard to say though... anyways, i'm not sure if we're talking about the same ticking sound, you can hear mine primarily when doing things like zooming in safari... unplug the magsafe and the sound goes away.

Jun 3, 2012 8:04 PM in response to chaoflux

Unplugging the magsafe power adapter did stop the ticking, but like Ricky Eggersman said, it is part of the reason to get the display.


At any rate, I contacted AppleCare, explained the situation, and they sent me to my local Apple Store to get it fixed. The Apple Store replaced the power supply in the monitor and tested it but it failed to fix the problem so they ended up just replacing the whole monitor and gave me a new one. So far so good, no ticking. I'll follow up in a week or two to confirm that things are still good with the replacement monitor.

Thunderbolt monitor makes faint ticking noise

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