My Xbox one s is making an annoying cricket/pinging sound. Is this a serious issue?

Hello Alex, this is Manuela. I'm an Independent Advisor and community user like you, ready to assist with this.

Not a Microsoft employee.

Your console shouldn’t sound like you describe. It’s likely that it has a foreign object inside.
I encourage you to get your console inspected and cleaned up in an electronic store to avoid a possible hardware problem.

To help pinpoint where the sound is coming from, get a cardboard tube and listen through that, so you'd have one end to your ear and the other end right above the top of the console. Move the tube over the top of the console and you will hopefully notice that there's one area where the noise gets louder.

The 4 components that might be responsible are: -

Optical drive (front left)

Fan (front right)

Hard drive (back left)

PSU (back right)

I think the fan is the most likely cause, for example: -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4bIKQjPmX0

I get the cricket sound periodically on my X1. It's been doing it ever since I can remember. It doesn't affect the system at all but it is somewhat annoying. Is this a serious problem? Does anyone have a solution?

Got my Sunset Bundle a few days ago. Makes an annoying cricket-like/chirping sound the entire time the system is on. When i'm playing a game, it's not too noticeable but definitely annoying when the Xbox is idle on the dashboard.

To me it sounds like a band on a squeaky blu ray drive. If the console works its good, play it till it quits. Though eventually it may quit due to the fact that drive may be giving out.

Big questions though, is your house dusty? Also does your house have a lot of dry air and low humidity? If so it could be dust causing the issue, try some canned air at first, make sure it doesn't spray the moist air so spray it twice before using it. Dust
the fan, dust the front of the Disk Tray (even if people complain that it will cause problems, it wont) and see if that helps. If it does then problem solved, if not it's either failing fan or failing disk drive and will need repairs.