Dell Precision 3630 noisy fan

A few tips:

Download HWiNFO64.

https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/sln113205/how-to-troubleshoot-fan-issues?lang=en 

https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/sln151668/how-to-troubleshoot-a-overheating-shutdown-or-thermal-issue-on-a-dell-pc?lang=en 

2nd link is included in case of any other issues causing a noisy fan.

@Titus_ch thanks for getting in touch. Can you advise if this noise is more prominent when you start up the system or is it pretty constant?

Have you been able to identify exactly which fan is causing the noise?

Did the noise change at all when updating to the latest BIOS revision?

Can you try the steps outlined here and advise whether this is the same issue you are experiencing - https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/sln318016/xps-8930-precision-3630-loud-rattling-fan-noise-when-booting-up?lang=en

I'll drop you a private message to get your service tag details.

Alan

Hi @Dell-Alan D,

Thank you for your message.

It is the CPU fan. The CPU is a i7-9700. It is not a "friction" or "mechanical" noise.

The noise comes from a very high rotation speed (it goes to the maximum rotation speed).

The task that can generate this issue are "common". For example when:

- I copy small files and the task last over a few seconds

- the cpu goes over 30-40% over a short time (+10 seconds?)

- I start netbeans

- I browse some heavy (javascript) web pages on Microsoft Edge like youtube.

This is strange because the same tasks on my old Precision 3620 (i7-6700) keep the cpu fan at a barely noticeable noise speed.

Please note:

1) The hardware is clean (dust)

2) No heat source next to the machine

3) Nothing to prevent air flows (in + out)

The bios update seems to have fixed some occurrences like when doing windows updates.

If I leave the case opened, it does not change anything.

PS: When idle core temp are at 25°C. When I copy small files the core temps jump to 65°C after a couple of seconds. Same values when I open Netbeans. When I open this page https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions , core temps jump to 50°C.

At +50°C, the fan is high. At +60°C, the fan is very high. In both cases, it bothers my coworkers and they let me know it.

I hope you have an idea.

Bests,

@Titus_ch that sounds potentially like the fan controller is causing the problem if it is spinning loudly at those temperatures. 

I doubt the heatsink itself is causing the issue unless there isn't enough thermal paste on the processor.

Have you run the ePSA diagnostics or online performance diagnostics to see if they return any error codes?
To run the diagnostics, power on the system and keep tapping the F12 key in rapid succession. Navigate down to Diagnostics. If the system doesn't return any error codes, does the fan spin very loudly when it is testing the CPU fan?

The online diagnostics can be found here - https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/quicktest

Can you also run HWINFO64.sys and tell me what the fans speeds are for those temperatures you mentioned of 50 and 60 degrees please.

Thanks, 
Alan

@Dell-Alan D Thank you for the follow up.

I have done the ePSA diagnostic + PSU diagnostic and no issue has been raised. Everything is green.

Here are the values from the EC sensor by HWINFO64.sys (Thanks for this tool, I love it):

• Idle: Cores temps 39°c, EC0 41°c, EC1 41°c, Fans 1626 rpm / 895 rpm
• Copying 12k files (source code, so lot of little text files. 72MB total) or opening Netbeans (less than 10 sec) have the same range of values which are reached after a few seconds: Cores temps 78°c, EC0 79°c, EC1 79°c, Fans 2952 rpm / 1856 rpm

Actually, I noticed that the PSU fan never spins (startup, during the PSU test (led turned green), during long heavy load + 70%). As the PSU is next to the CPU, could this be the issue?

I am not comfortable to open the PSU unit (scared by the capacitor) or jumper the green-black wires on the PSU cable (not an expert). So I do not know how to investigate further.

Hope you can help.

Thank you very much.

@Titus_ch thanks for trying that. I wouldn't be duly concerned about the PSU fan to be honest and I wouldn't expect you to open up a PSU. PSU's are not serviceable parts, if it fails a new PSU would be sent out rather than the actual PSU fan itself.

Those temperatures and fan speeds are quite low which is a good thing. If, as you say, the fan noise is very loud at those speeds then that would indicate a problem with the CPU fan. If the fan had been running at say 6K rpm and was making the noise then that would be working as designed.

Did you notice the fan noise being excessively loud when you ran the HWINFO64 tests?

Alan

@Dell-Alan D My last message was marked as spam. Maybe you can unspam it. It contains the solution to the problem.

The issue is actually due to Intel Turbo Boost which is having issues with the intel i7 on the Precision 3630.

@Titus_ch thanks for the fix and it's great to hear you resolved the issue. I'll pass on the info to engineering.

I also removed the spam tag and marked the posts as a solution.

Alan

I too, suggested HWiNFO64.  So you're welcome too.

Ok, dumb question... Doesn't turning off the turbo boost slow down the processing speed? We have 3 identical 3630 towers in our office. Only one revs up and lets everyone in our office know it. If I turn off turbo will his workstation be noticeably slower? These are all 3-D Cad stations.

Yes it will affect performance.

3D CAD apps generally love high clock speeds, as they tend to use only one core when handling the wireframe.

Rendering tasks normally "just" want cores, where the number of cores matter a bit more than max clock. Well, CPUs typically down clock the clock speed when running full load on all cores anyhow, so the drop of max clock speed won't be felt as much as when running single thread jobs.

Btw, I just had success limiting fan noise, by turning max processor speed from 100 to 99, then "apply" and then back to 100 and "apply"

Same issue here. I took delivery of a 3630 a few weeks ago and the CPU fan noise has been extreme during short cpu spikes (when loading software, webpages, etc). Disabling turboboost in the bios solves it, but cuts 20% off the advertised cpu speed. Limiting CPU speed in power management also works, with the same net effect. Not sure if this is an Intel problem or an underspec'd CPU cooler. I love Dell workstations, but this is pretty disappointing.

Hello,

I have a precision 3630 with an i9-9900 since December 2019. The fan noise is REALLY annoying.

It can start suddenly without any strong CPU load. But this is not the worst. I bought this computer to perform analysis of heavy biological data but when I ran them it gets really noisy, this is a real issue since those tasks take several hours (or even days sometimes).

I installed the last BIOS version 2.5.0 but observe no noticeable difference. I do not want to remove the turbo since the point of this computer is to be powerful and take advantage of all the cores of the i9 CPU.

What I can do ? Wait for a new version of the BIOS ? Send it back to dell in order to change the Fan ?

Thanks in advance for any help

Cyril

@CyrilR Disabling turbo boost in the bios should improve things. Also, if you're running an Nvidia 20XX series GPU, the fans/controls used by some manufacturers can also be extremely noisy. I have an EVGA RTX2060 Super which has a "Zero RPM feature" which can create massive spikes in fan speeds and noise. Running their -but-effective Precision X1 utility to set a minimum fan speed has helped.