8500 fan runs constantly & LOUDLY

i have noticed this too with my 8500.. anyways, it's best to use a program called i8kfangui that lets you control the fans..

http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html

I had a situation today at work where I let McAfee do a full system scan.  I walked away for a while and came back to a blank screen and the fans running as fast and loud as I had ever heard.  I moved the mouse and keyboard, but I could not get anything to come back.  It was probably busy doing the scan.  It was pretty weird.  I ended up just hitting the power button.  It shutdown normally and I turned it back on.  Everything is running normal.

I have exactly the same problem with both DELL Support and my I8500.

The funny thing is that my girlfriend got a identical laptop, except it has a 1.9GHz P4M and 512 Mb ram. See my specs below. Both the 1,9 and 2,5GHz P4M's have a low activity frequency of 1,2GHz which is the state the CPU is in most of the time. Here laptop has what I would say is a normal level of fan noise and activity on a laptop in this pricerange. It makes much less noise and runs for about 5 minutes every 20-30 minutes. I actually ordered a Inspiron because I thought hers was quite nice. Mine however starts to run the fans after about 10 minutes, is more noisey and runs constantly.

Dell support agreed to that is strange and sent me a new fan which I just installed, but it did not help. I will have to talk to them again.

I also tried the i8kfangui, but it does not really solve the problem. I also don't trust it because you cannot control the fans on other temperature parameters than the CPU, which means other parts can be overheated. I had a few situations where the memory reached 75C even as I had the secondary fan running constantly and the primary started at 65C CPU temperature, and stoped at 43, which means it was running pretty much all the time, except on low activity in cold wether.

Dell has been changing the fan control table in about every version of the BIOS so far. I noticed in particular that the fans runs on a higher speed on the lowest level with A05 than with A01 and A02. There is definitly less noise with A02, but they still run constantly.

It apears to me that there might be a problem with the Remote Heat Exchanger or its heatpipes which degrades the heat transfare to the ribs.

I got a coolpad which had some positive effect, but the fans are still much more active than on my girlfriends laptop.

 

Inspiron 8500
Mobile Intel Pentium 4-M @ 2.50 GHz
15.4" UltraSharp WUXGA LCD
1024 MB PC2100 DDR RAM
NVIDIA GeForce4 4200 Go 64Mb
Microsoft Windows XP Professional

That's quite interesting.  My I8500 is a 2.4G with the high ended video card.  It is very quiet and i can't even tell when it is running most of the time.  My roommate has a I5150 with the 3.06 in it and it won't shut up.  It runs constantly and loud.

the geForce 4

That strongly suggest that there are something wrong with mine.

Do you have the ATI Radeon card or the GeForce 4? I heard the GeForce produces some more heat. It should still not be a great deal compared to the CPU.

Users:

If the fan runs constantly on your sytem, it is likely due to the BIOS not reading the temperature correctly.  You should either reset or update the BIOS on your system.  If this fails, there is a third-party software program which helps to bring this back to tolerable levels.  This program is the fangui program.

Edit:

Fixed the link, thanks to bluetracker for pointing this out for me.

Message Edited by DELL-BobT on 11-07-2003 06:29 PM

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@DELL-BobT wrote:

Users:

If the fan runs constantly on your sytem, it is likely due to the BIOS not reading the temperature correctly. You should either reset or update the BIOS on your system. If this fails, there is a third-party software program which helps to bring this back to tolerable levels. This program is the fangui program.

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HEY BobT yer link don't work...good job viper got it right in his post huh?
;-)

 

My I8500 came with BIOS version A02. The A02 runs the main fan at ~3300 RPM at low speed, the most resent BIOS, A05, runs it at ~3600 RPM, eg. more noise and still running constantly.

I tried the fangui an set it to start the main fan at 65C and stop it 43C and the small secondary fan to run at low speed constantly, it does not produce any noticable noise anyway. I am not sure what "tolerable" temperature levels are in these machines, but I imagine that one should try to stay clear of temperatures above 70C. By comparing these setting to the behaviour of BIOS controlled fans I found that the BIOS is likely to have limits of something like 40C off and 62C on for the main fan.

What I then found was that by moving the scale up with the fangui I only moved the average resident heat in the system, and therefore ended up with pretty much the same fan behaviour.

By the way, if the BIOS is not reading the temperatures correctly, shoulden't I then contact Dell and get them to fix it instead of trying to apply some hacker software fix? It is only 3 months old.

I also tried to reset the fan control system by + Z. No improvements.

Message Edited by henki78 on 11-09-2003 06:58 AM

Okay, I downloaded the fangui program.  I have not idea what to change using the program or what settings to switch in order to control my fan from incessantly running.

Please advise how to use the fangui program after installing it.   And pls advise on where to find the BIOS and reset it.

Bob, the moderator, says to reset the BIOS.   How does one reset the BIOS?   The incessant fan noise is driving me crazy,. and it is unacceptable in my new 8500 laptop.

 

Hallo,

 

You find the newest I8500 BIOS at:

http://support.dell.com/FileLib/Type.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&Category=1&OS=NAA&OSL=EN&SvcTag=&SysID=INS_PNT_P4_8500&DeviceID=3583

I guess what he ment was to reset the fan system, which you do by pressing and Z. Don't expect much improvements by the way, I have tried all of this.

Personally I would not advice you to use the fangui if you don't have a sense of how the fans should behave and what temperatures that are ok. You can potentially damage your laptop.

I discovered that there are two versions of the main fan for the I8500, one noisey ineffective one and one that works. The one that does not work well is labeled ADDA. It also says REV01 and has a part number like string: K371F. The much less noisey one is labeled SUNON, REV00, Y0307.

also remember to not putting anything near the fans as it'll block the heat from getting out of the laptop..

for my 8500, under light usage (eg. web browsing), the fan is usually off when i use the fangui program and temps are about 45 celcius... i don't have any other heat issues with this laptop..

but i have noticed that when i let the bios control the fans, it'll constantly run all the time the first time that it turns on.. it never turns off after the first time it is on.. therefore, the best solution would be to use the fangui software to manually control the fans.. it'll help run your laptop at cooler temperatures and the fans will frequently be off under light usage.