Dell Latitude 6430u - Fan Speed

Can't agree more.  This is a horriblly noisy fan, I just received my new work PC on Tuesday. To those who #iworkfordell, it would be very useful to release a patch to fix this

Anyone have an idea as to the best way to get attention from Dell regarding this?  This seems to be a popular device around the office here, I imagine others will be facing the same issue.

And to clarify a previous post, the fan runs loudly even when the machine is idle (i.e. less than 2-3% load), so there shouldn't be anything causing extra work/heat.

I have multiple 6430u's.  

1 running Windows 8 Pro, self install, with a Core i7, and the 1540 wifi card, running A04 BIOS

1 running Windows 7 Pro, self install, with a Core i5, and the 1601 WiGig card, running A04 BIOS.

My Core i7, fan runs a lot, not continuous  But probably 35-45 minutes per hour..  It's not loud per say, but just annoying that it's on so much.   Here are my stats from Open Hardware monitor

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/pparks1/OpenHardwareMonitor_zps581badcb.png

The Core i5, is showing strange behavior with CPU-z.  The multiplier and clock speed is changing radically even when under no load.  If I change to the power savings setting within Windows 7, it will stay at 800Mhz.   But under the balanced setting, it's jumping all over from 800Mhz to 2600Mhz and it's jumping from 8x, to 15x ,to 26x, to 8x, to 12x, in 2-3 seconds.  And this is with nothing running and task manager showing CPU load under 2%.    The fan on the Core i5 seems to run 24x7.

I thank all of you for posting here, I know that I have spoke to some of you via private messaging and wanted to let all of you know that Dell engineering is aware of your concerns and are currently investigating them.  I don't have a lot of info other than that but hope to learn more shortly.  I will post here as soon as I learn more.

TB

Hi all,

We've bought 3 of these 6430u here and have he same problems. One of them run an embedded ubuntu, one with Arch Linux and the last one with windows 7.

The fan becomes noisy if you just open a browser and watch a video on youtube for example. Our BIOS is up-to-date and the ubuntu one had its motherboard changed but it didn't fixed the problem.

The one with windows 7 is the less noisy

We all have an i7 processor, 16GB of memory and SSD disks. We are starting to think that it's just a conception problem :-(

The noise, for me, came back when I updated to v15.31 of the Intel HD Graphics 4000 package and when I was briefly using Win7. Pulling it back to the v15.28 package made the noise go away. My fan will get noisy when I run Firefox or Chrome for an extended period of time whether I am watching videos online or not. This laptop is definitely aimed at and calibrated for Win8 and IE. If I stick to IE (or the modern IE as I'm using Win8), the noise does not occur.

I would, if possible, recommend installing a different version of the Intel package but there is only one Linux package on Intel's site here.

I hope that Dell is working on a BIOS update that also includes a fix for the keyboard/trackpad not waking the laptop from sleep bug. Realistically, I believe this will require some input and assistance from Intel. With Haswell already coming to many devices, this laptop may be left behind unfortunately.

I've just received my 6430u and also having this issue, it's horrible. After 1-2minutes of start up fan starts. I've been working 3-4hours, the fan was almost all the time on. After headache started I've switched to my old laptop, silence is priceless.

After OS has just started I have 65ºC, if I try to do something I've seen 89ºC, in my case I think the laptop is not well assembly because this temperatures are nonsense (my other laptop, sony vaio, has 45ºC, same room similar cpu)

Update: according to dell support those temperatures are normal, so basically this laptop is the worst I've ever had.

For those of you that are noticing abnormal amounts of fan noise on your latitude E630u and would like to try a service to replace the fan please message me with the service tag of your system.  Just click on the link in my signature and click start conversation.  If we have already been discussing this via private message just shoot me a reply.

You can also just post here that you would like to try a service and I will shoot you a friend request. I will likely reply to your messages Monday and start setting up some services and go from there.

Have a great weekend

TB

I've already try to use service support. They changed the full board and the heat sink, something has improved but anyway the fan is still running nonstop after 1h or so if you use it normally (my older laptops were completly silent in comparision with "this").

Basically this is a laptop bad designed imho, you can't say is broken but I cannot be in a library working with this (or at least without being hated by everybody).

Hi Terry,

i would definitely try a service for my fan noise. i am based in France

regards

oren

I agree with you, blaxter - it must be a design issue considering this pervasive amount of issues.  One thing I have noticed that could be improved upon: the fan is off before it kicks on to loud mode - this surprises me.  I would at least have the fan constantly running at an inaudible level to dissipate some heat instead of having it more at an all or nothing setting.

If  BIOS update is released to do this, it may improve things, but unsure of how much.

Hello:

I, too, have the same issue with this laptop.  The noise from the fan is very annoying considering this is a premium laptop.  My 6 year old Lenovo is more quiet.  I could hear the fan noise from 20 feet away so I can only imagine how this translate into a library setting.  We need a fan update from Dell to activate it much less frequent.

For folks just getting their systems and have the loud noise, check to make sure that "Dell Enhanced Settings" appears in Power options.  Under that "Thermal Mode" which then allows you to assign the fan profile to "quiet".   This doesn't actually make the fan always quiet, but it certainly makes it a lot more quiet.  

If that option doesn't appear, download the Dell Feature Enhancement Pack.

Also, my original fan was VERY loud - the bearings were horrible.  After replacing it the noise went from a high pitch scream down to a muffled sound of air moving.  Still there, but 95% of the time it is lower than ambient noise.