Inspiron 530 noisy CPU fan - final solution?

Reboot and press F12 before Windows starts to load. Go to the Utilities partition and run the fan tests. If it fails, you need a new fan.

If the fan is running at max all the time, the temp sensor not be working. But it's also possible the heatsink failed or isn't correctly secured in place so the CPU is heating up, making the fan run at max to keep things cool. So you may want to check that. You may need to remove the heatsink,

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

clean off the old thermal paste and apply a thin layer of new paste (eg, Arctic Silver) and then reinstall the heatsink.

On some systems, if the video driver doesn't load correctly or gets corrupted, the CPU fan may continue to run at top speed. As weird as that sounds, you might want to try updating to the latest video driver. You probably should get it from either the ATI or nVidia site because Dell tends to be behind in video driver offerings.

And keep in mind this is only a users' forum. If you want an official response from Dell, you need to contact Tech Support.

Ron

Ron,

Thanks for your reply.  I checked into the possibility of the CPU overheating but that's not the case.  It's under 50C.  Also, the fan stays at max right from a cold-boot so overheating is unlikely.  I will try reapplying some new thermal paste as a long-shot.  I tried upgrading the video drivers direct from Intel to no avail.

I'm pretty sure this issue is caused by a design flaw somewhere but it's impossible to find out the right solution.  In another thread a Dell rep instructed people to deal with the fan issue by downgrading the BIOS to 1.0.5 and then back up to the latest.  Sadly that didn't help.  All I'd like to know is if a new fan will run at some generic RPM speed and not get pushed to turbine level by the motherboard.

Other fascinating glitches with this system: 

- At times the system will turn on and just beep every four seconds forever.  No beep code listed matches "infinite beeps."

- Other times the fans will power on but the system never attempts to boot.  Also reported by others in this forum.

Presumably all the issues stem from a single source but the question is which component?  The motherboard or the CPU seem to be likely candidates.  RAM has been swapped to no avail.

Dell tech support has been contacted twice but 1) the system is out of warranty and they're mostly interested in selling an upgrade and 2) they made me go through the usual lengthy diagnostics that have nothing to do with BIOS/firmware issues.  I'm hoping the wisdom of the forums can help squeeze a little more life out of this workstation.

Thank you.

If the problem started while it was still under warranty, Dell should fix it even though the warranty has expired.

If the CPU is under 50º then it's probably not a heatsink issue.

I can't say if a new fan will solve the problem. What I can say is if it's a generic (non-Dell) fan, you'll get that fan failure error at every boot, and it will run at a fixed speed. Whether that fixed speed is slow or fast, that will depend on the fan. Will a non-Dell fan even fit on the heat-sink and shroud..??

If the BIOS downgrade and then upgrade fixed the problem for others, try this:

Power off and unplug

Press/hold power button for ~15 Sec

Open the case and remove the motherboard battery

Press/hold power button again for ~30 sec

Reinstall the battery (right-side-up!) and see what happens when you boot with only mouse, monitor and keyboard attached.

BTW: When was the last time you replaced that battery?

Ron

Hi,

My dell Inspiron 530 CPU fan was so loud I couldn't enjoy music on my PC. I was contemplating replacing PC, then thought is replacing CPU fan (replacement cost about 30GBP) but actually have fixed the problem.

But can of air duster (approx 5GBP). Power down PC and remove mains cable. Remove side panel. Spray between fins of CPU fan.

The CPU heat Sink has very narrow slits which fill up with dust. My PC is near silent now (and is running with less freezing as CPU is cooler).

this is an old issue, but just in case.

I found that two things fixed this problem.  One - clean the heatsink.  Totally remove the fan and the heatsink and clean it.  It's dirty.

This alone didn't fix it.  It wasn't until after I updated the BIOS that the fan stopped running full speed.  Don't know why it worked, but it did.

I know this particular issue is an old one now, but I'm still running this PC alongside a more modern model. The fan still runs really erratically from full speed to mid speed and back again. Is there any fix for this yet?

Is it worth just taking the CPU fan out as I never use it for anything other than reading articles and emails?

If you take the CPU fan out, it will almost certainly overheat and could fry the CPU. And you'll get a "fan failure" error at every reboot.

Did you clean the heatsink and fan as others recommended in this thread?

look for large cpu process 130,000) in task manager. kill that process. if it changes fan you have a svhost.exe running away...

This thread has been locked due to it's age, if you have a similar issue, please use the 'New Post' feature at the top of this page and start a new thread.
  
Bev.