Ah, lots of supposedly solid state computer stuff, including CPUs, did that. I, too, used it for debugging. This wasn't very conscious on my part, but if some whine became unusual and constant, it was often a sign of something hanging.

As I got older, not only did computers stop doing that, my hearing also got worse (entirely normal for my age, but still), so that's mostly a thing of the past.

The sound usually comes from inductors and capacitors in the power supply circuitry, not the ICs themselves as they draw pulses of power in patterns at audible frequencies. Modern CPUs and GPUs will still whine audibly if given a suitable load; the amount of current they consume is amazingly high, dozens to hundreds of amps, and also changing extremely quickly.

I used to hear the 16KHz whistle of CRT monitors. Of course, there is no whistle with LED monitors, but I stopped hearing the CRT whistle before they went obsolete. It was my first sign my hearing was declining.

I thought I was protecting my ears from loud noises like rock concerts and gunshots. But I didn't know that driving with the window down damages the hearing. I crossed the country many times with the window down. I'm pretty sure that was the cause as my left ear is much worse off than my right.

I don't need a hearing aid yet, but I'm pretty careful in wearing ear plugs whenever there are loud noises.

I had a Radeon 5850 that did it. I ran someone's simple test unity project with vsync disabled, was getting around 3000 fps, and heard a tone that was probably 3000hz. Supposedly the 5090 FE's are pretty bad too.