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Dell XPS 15 fan is very noisy
My 2-week old XPS 15 (L502X) has an extremely noisy fan. Even when the CPU is idle, the fan is humming quite loudly. The fan runs loudly for several minutes, goes silent for a few seconds and the cycle repeats.
Is this normal? Any way to make the fan run silently?
Thanks
Abhi
DELL-Terry B
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May 17th, 2012 12:00
abhivm
Some fan noise may be noticeable from time to time but a specifically noisy fan may be an indication of something wrong.
Fans can become loud or have abnormal sounds due to:
An out of date BIOS
Obstructions in the fan or vent area.
Physical Damage
Dust accumulation in the fan or vent area.
Usage while not on a flat surface or proper ventilation clearance
Using near a heat source or in a hot environment
Here is a link to a good troubleshooter on fan noise.
support.dell.com/.../document
Using a Laptop on a hard, flat, non-cloth surface will increase airflow and reduce heat from underneath and inside the system.
Use compressed air to clean the vents on a regular basis. Since this is such a new system is unlikely an issue caused by dust build up.
I certainly suggest making sure that the system shipped with the most up to date BIOS. The most up to date version is A10 and may be downloaded from the following link
www.dell.com/.../DriverFileFormats
Run diagnostics. Start the system tapping F12 and choose diagnostics. Here is a link that goes on detail the different diagnostics tests.
support.dell.com/.../document
Please let me know if the fan noise problem continues or you receive errors running diagnostics.
TB
abhivm
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June 14th, 2012 05:00
Update on this issue:
Contacted Dell support. They first fixed the heat sink and fan. That reduced the fan noise, but it was still fairly noisy.
Dell support was nice enough to ship a replacement XPS 15.
The new XPS 15 is also noisy.
Dell technician ran all diagnostic utilities, checked bios. Nothing is wrong.
Seems like a design flaw in XPS 15.
kimi.w
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August 7th, 2012 20:00
I received the XPS 15 a week ago and have been having the same issue. I just called the tech support. I will ship my xps and they say they will fix it. The tech support person was really friendly and nice. I hope they will see the problem and fix it. If they can't fix it, I don't recommend this to students. I wanted to bring it to school but I don't think I can. The noise will interrupt everybody in the library, lab, or wherever. :-(
Kerio_Orisa
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July 29th, 2016 19:00
I have similar problems with my laptop, so posting here on your thread...hoping that someone will respond..:-)
My laptop was heating up a bit too much (temperature above 90’s in normal load, and sometimes shutting down after hitting 100C), so I finally decided to open up my Dell XPS 15 (L502X) and replace the thermal paste. I have few questions:
When I opened it up, apart from the thermal paste on the cpu (i7-2630QM) and gpu (Nvidia GT-540 2gb), there were several white pads, and one grey pad. The grey pad was above the motherboard HM67 chip. This is the first time I ever saw a heat sink with thermal pad needed to cool down the motherboard. Or am I missing something? And what are all these small white pads? They seem to be covering different chips on the motherboard. Does anyone know the width of these white pads, and grey pads? Are all of these thermal pads to conduct heat? Or some are meant to block heat? I think the white ones are meant to block heat, but I may be wrong.
Anyhow, after replacing the thermal paste (didn’t do anything with the pads, since I wasn’t expecting to see them anyway), the temperature of CPU and motherboard remains in 80’s C, and GPU in 70’s C under normal load (20 browser tabs, and some MS Office work alongside). So, although it is not in the dangerous zone (90s and above), it is still quite warm for not so intensive tasks. I have cleaned the heat sink, and fan etsc also. I also used good quality thermal paste (CoolerMaster Gel Maker Nano). And the the fan still works in an annoying manner with bursts of sounds, instead of constant sound. It is very annoying, and I rather have the fan working the whole time than these annoying bursts (fan on, fan off, fan on, fan off, and goes on like this constantly). Any solution to fix this?
I am also considering downgrading to I5-2540M (lower TDP, and dual core), but its not worth it if the fan is going to behave in similar manner. Please share your experience if you use any other CPU on this laptop. I don’t think the GPU is replaceable on this one?