Dell Precision 690 is noisy

No answer yet!  I'm shure that I'm not the only one with this issue. Shurely someone has dealt with it. I wouldn't like to change to another computer because this Dell Precision 690 performs well but the 'sound' of the fans or flowing air is not acceptable. So if anyone can help me to get this computer silent  please share your knowledge.

Thank  you

Tom

I wouldn't mind an answer to this too. There's a lot of noise from the fans and I'm not stressing the machine at all. There must be some replacements that are silent?

Any info out there? How about an app to control the fan speeds?

I got in touch with Dell about it and what they said was that the moment you start to interfere with the fan speeds you're stepping out of how the machine was supposed to run. Maybe I've got used to it now, it seems quieter. I don't know how your machine is configured (mine now has 6 hard drives installed), but I spent some time sorting out the cabling so that all the cables were out of the way of the fans as much as possible. This way air could flow freely. I've installed a couple of WD Black drives - the OS is now on SATA0 port with a 640GB drive. I also have another 1TB WD Black drive. They're very quiet. I've got 4 x 15K SAS drives as  RAID0  on the SAS connectors.

I think airflow is important as it can keep the fans from ramping up. And we know the fans on the 690, at full throttle, can sound like an aircraft engine! I've got a second 2.66GHz Dual-Core 5150 on it's way and it's going to be interesting to see if the speed goes up. Other than that, I think it's ok. I was thinking maybe I could make it almost silent but then I look at the temperatures of the drives, CPU etc. and perhaps it's best to leave things alone.

I hope that helps.

MT

if you ever get a reply or have you sorted this problem out please let me know as im in the same boat

samething here, help the noise is so painful?

DELL please help, it seems there is a quality issue here!!!

thanks

w

I'm Wil_IT. Here is a suggestion. I work in an IT Department where we have several Precision 690's. What I found to be the cause of the problem is the video card that is installed. We have Nvidia 4600s in the computers that have the fan problem. Once we replaced the cards the problem went away. We now have Nvidia 4500 and 4300 cards installed.  Check and see what kind of video card is in your Precision. What tipped me off to this is because the computer wasn't running hot. Some CPU fans run based on the load put on the power supply, not the temperature of the chassis. I'm still researching this problem to see if maybe there is a Bios update that will fix this as well. I'll keep you posted. Hope this helps!

I'm Wil_IT. Here is a suggestion. I work in an IT Department where we have several Precision 690's. What I found to be the cause of the problem is the video card that is installed. We have Nvidia 4600s in the computers that have the fan problem. Once we replaced the cards the problem went away. We now have Nvidia 4500 and 4300 cards installed.  Check and see what kind of video card is in your Precision. What tipped me off to this is because the computer wasn't running hot. Some CPU fans run based on the load put on the power supply, not the temperature of the chassis. I'm still researching this problem to see if maybe there is a Bios update that will fix this as well. I'll keep you posted. Hope this helps!

wil07 I'm Wil_IT. Here is a suggestion. I work in an IT Department where we have several Precision 690's. What I found to be the cause of the problem is the video card that is installed. We have Nvidia 4600s in the computers that have the fan problem. Once we replaced the cards the problem went away. We now have Nvidia 4500 and 4300 cards installed.  Check and see what kind of video card is in your Precision. What tipped me off to this is because the computer wasn't running hot. Some CPU fans run based on the load put on the power supply, not the temperature of the chassis. I'm still researching this problem to see if maybe there is a Bios update that will fix this as well. I'll keep you posted. Hope this helps!

The BIOS is likely programmed to increase the fan speed on certain configurations (RAID card, > so much RAM, second or third expansion card, quad-port NIC's, etc.) because of the potential/likelihood of additional heat (there may not be much additional heat on boot, but once things get crunching away things could get hot).

If Dell has changed its evaluation of the potential for these configurations to cause heat problems, they may have released a BIOS update to change those speeds/configurations, but if not, then just know you are not doing anything wrong - it is by design.

P.S.  I think your CAPS LOCK key got stuck.

HI WIL_IT

 MY PRECISION 690 HAS A (NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX) WHICH HAS NEVER CAUSED ANY PROBLEMS SO FAR WITH FANS.

MY PROBLEM IS WHEN I FIT MORE THAN 4GB THE FANS RUN FASTER AND FASTER BUT NO NOTICEABLE HEAT GAIN,

IM USING VISTA ULTIMATE 64BIT,

 4GB MEMORY

1KW POWER SUPPLY

IM TRYING TO INSTALL RISERS AND ADD ANOTHER 8GB OF MEMORY CAN ANYONE SHED ANY LIGHT ON TO WHAT IM DOING WRONG HERE?

 THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR ANYONES HELP

 GARY

I don't know if this has been resolved or not, (noisy) but I had the same problem the first time I cracked the case;

turns out the only reason the thing started making noise was because I had not closed the case properly, just a small gap right at the release latch is enough to do it. Just a thought.