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Fans will not turn off ever...any suggestions?

post #1 of 16
5/14/06 at 3:11pm
Thread Starter 
Whenever I power my 8790 on, the fans will come on at some time during boot as normal, but then never shut off until I power the machine down. This has been going on for a month or so. Any info on this or possible solutions would be appreciated. Thanks.
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post #2 of 16
5/14/06 at 3:23pm
Do you monitor your temps with something like MobileMeter? It's likely your computer is just running a little hot and may require cleaning of the fans and heatsink.

My fans always start up when the processor is at 50 degrees C, and usually never shut off unless I am on battery power and the processor is throttled down.
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post #3 of 16
5/14/06 at 3:34pm
Thread Starter 
Well my PC seems to run at a pretty constant 51 C and I never use it with battery power, so it sounds like this is pretty normal.
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post #4 of 16
5/14/06 at 4:46pm
Yeah, it's normal. If you don't already do a routine cleaning, I recommend doing so. Blow the fans and heatsink with a can of compressed air and set all those dust bunnies free. You might see your temps hover a little lower with some extra TLC.
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post #5 of 16
5/14/06 at 7:46pm
The effective range of the fans' off/on sequence is as follows for the 8790.

On: 50/51C
Off: 35/36C

Once the fan turns on, if the ambient temperature is not too hot and the machine is not "clogged", the fan speed should slowly decrease every 2C until such time as it levels or turns off. For my machine, the temperatures often waiver between 42C and 43C under medium load.

51C would indicate either a moderately heavy load or a need to clean out the heat pipe vents.
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post #6 of 16
5/15/06 at 4:15am
After a little more than 2 years, I still find my NP8790 pretty fast, and overall a very decent machine. The main problem I have is noise. This machine is so loud!

The fans make so much noise that I can't sleep in next room if the laptop is running, even if I close the bedroom door. To be able to sleep, I need 2 closed doors between the laptop and the bedroom!

Also, I have started to use a Bluetooth headset. I connect the headset to the laptop and then use Skype. It works great, except that because of the noise produced by the fans, I can't hear people very well if I stay in the same room with the laptop.

1) I clean the fan regularly with a dust blower.
2) After cleaning, temperature is 57 degC, with no load.
3) Needless to say that fans on this machine are *always* running.

Any advice?

Alex
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post #7 of 16
5/17/06 at 4:11pm
take the heatsink fully out!

this is what your dust can look like:

http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=138273
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post #8 of 16
5/17/06 at 4:19pm
I guess I will have to do that one of those days. The web site where the images are hosted does not seem to work right now; too bad. Thank you for the response doggie96.

Alex
--
Blog (XML, Web apps, Open Source):
http://www.orbeon.com/blog/
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post #9 of 16
5/17/06 at 6:39pm
@ 57C with no load, your machine is about 20C too hot. If the cooling system is clogged, the fans will be very very loud as they attempt to force air to/from a place that they can't because of blockage. A good cleaning is in order (IMHO) - or you can just continue to accept the noise and wait for the eventual "meltdown".
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post #10 of 16
5/17/06 at 7:22pm
G-Omaha,

I followed your advice, opened the beast, and took out the heat sink. I expected to find the heat sink in a sorry state, clogged with an insane amount of dust, but... nothing. The heat sink and the path to the fans was already virtually cleaned. I cleaned it a little more, but of course that doesn't make any significant difference.

When the machine is running, I have the smaller fan running all the time. That is the fan on top of the memory, I believe. The smaller heat sink fan also seems to be running. But it is the first smaller fan that bothers me the most. That fan just makes an insane amount noise, with a particularly high pitch compared to the other fans.

Is this just what everyone has, or is there anything I can do about this?

Alex
--
Blog (XML, Web apps, Open Source):
http://www.orbeon.com/blog/
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post #11 of 16
5/17/06 at 9:11pm
If the noise is comming from the smallest fan (over the memory), then there is something wrong with that fan as it should be almost quit (or at least mine is) and I do believe that it does run most of the time (mines does each and every time I have checked).

Still - all in all 57C on idle is high. What type of processor do you have?
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post #12 of 16
5/17/06 at 9:38pm
G-Omaha,

The CPU is a 3.4 GHz P4 and the machine has 2 GB or RAM, if that make any difference. Now the reported temperature is 52 degC and the machine has been idle for a while. The other day it was 57 degC maybe because the room temperature was also higher. So it looks like there are two problems:

1) The temperature when idle is at least 10 degC higher than yours. (I think you were saying that yours is in the low 40s degC.)
2) The smaller fan, closer to the center of the machine, makes quite a but of noise, in particular some fairly high pitch noise.

I am not sure how to take it from here.

Alex
--
Blog (XML, Web apps, Open Source):
http://www.orbeon.com/blog/
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post #13 of 16
5/18/06 at 11:04am
Sounds like it's time to open up the topside and do some internal cleaning around there. Might be time to try some Artic Silver, too. 57C is just too hot. Mine's 42C right now (Firefox w/ 8 tabs + PowerDesk running) and I think it's running a bit high at the moment. Part o' that might be because it's ~80F in the room, tho'. But I recently cleaned the bottom out and it started running hotter, so I think I've knocked something loose inside and plugged something up.

But yes, definitely remove the keyboard and get inside there to see what you've got going on before the heat puts you in a world of hurt. Might want to check out G's review thread. Lots of good info in there re: cleaning specifics.
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post #14 of 16
5/19/06 at 2:33pm
I opened the machine, took out the heat sink and I think did all the cleaning I could. Is there more that I can do than clean the heat sink and the area around it? Regarding cleaning, after more than two years the heat sink was pretty clean, which make me think that dust is not the problem.

FriedToast, do you have any pointer to a thread about this subject that I should look at?

Alex
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post #15 of 16
5/20/06 at 12:21pm
apply arctic silver 5 thermal compound
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post #16 of 16
5/22/06 at 8:05am
Avernet, I don't have a direct link at the moment. Just popped in here to do a quick howdy. I've been meaning to correlate quotes from different threads and make one big How-To thread regarding this. But dang it, I'm busy being lazy and whatnot First suggestion would be to hit G-Omaha's review thread and work your way backwards (it's a long thread). Might skim quickly because if I remember correctly, the info's a few pages back. But much quicker than going into it from Page 1 onward. 8790 Artifacting thread's got good info, too, but it's not exactly all in one spot.

Will try to be a little more on the ball next time I've got more time!
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