E5440 Fan Speed and Noise

This is a sound recording of one of our E5430s. They have this sort of fan behaviour all the time unless the machine is left idling.

This is a sound recording of one of our E5430s. They have this sort of fan behaviour all the time unless the machine is left idling.

To be fair the E5440 rarely does that, and only in the first couple of hours after boot.  There has to be a sustained burst of high CPU load before it comes on for a few seconds to get the CPU below 50C.

Problem comes when a E5440 has be up for more than 2 hours, the same burst of CPU activity triggers the fan but it won't switch off until the ambient sensor temp comes down (at least 10 minutes).  From the long running E5430 thread I think it's similar?

Sounds like the E5430 also has an annoyingly high minimum fan speed?  I really don't get it, in that situation a HP machine would keep the fan spinning slowly and quietly, rather than LOUD, OFF, LOUD, OFF...

They must be able to come up with a better algorithm than this using a combination of sensors and time delays?  Hopefully that's what they've been working on.

Hi,

I'm joying you in this matter, I had the same issue within a E5430, now I have a E5440 and it started to have a high speed fan since the Bios has been updated to the very latest version (A11 - Feb 2015)

I should says that this behaviour it is affected when laptop is connected to a a Docking Station (port replicator) or with a power supply.

The high fan behaviour doesn't happen so often while it is used as regular laptop off the AC, rarely happens.

By the way, Dell should or better say MUST provide a Thermal Management, from software or BIOS, doesn't matter how, it is really needed.

Latest power management software tool
www.dell.com/.../DriversDetails

has this feature but with E5440  ti show "Warning: unable to retrieve Thermal Management Information"

I'm wondering in which model it'll works...

Hi Mar-Par

Agree, using a docking station with the lid closed makes things worse, no heat can escape through the keyboard.  Ideally the BIOS/driver should detect the lid is closed and allow the machine to run a little hotter.

I've already raised the problem with "Power Manager 2" on a different thread.  Dell are aware thermal management is actually broken on many machines and it should be fixed in the major July 2015 BIOS update.

Shawn,

Do you have any update on this?

I've sent Shawn a message but no reply yet.

Also wondering what happened to the July BIOS update  Have seen a new version of Power Manager released a couple of weeks ago (v2.1) but no sign of a BIOS to support it.

Oh great, new BIOS update for the E6440 and they still haven't fixed the fan and thermal issues.

So much for claiming that a BIOS update would fix this in July Dell...

The changelog is kind of a joke they still haven't improved the keyoard issues either...

www.dell.com/.../DriversDetails;fileId=3485034426&osCode=WB64A&productCode=latitude-e6440-laptop&languageCode=EN&categoryId=BI

Same here, nothing had changed with the update from July.

I got fed up and switched to one of our new Lenovo T450 and...it's completely silent.
There's a setting for the fan in BIOS, for use on battery and on power and it actually makes a difference. Now I really have to challenge the device to make the fan start and even then it's not nearly as loud as the Dell's.

Have just chased Shawn for an update.

It's a year since people first pointed out thermal management was broken on several Dell devices and still nothing.

Luckily I'm using a work HP mostly and the E5440 only for a short time in the evening so I don't have to listen to it drone on all day.

Clearly I'm not the only one who's experience with Dell has been ruined by a simple issue that would take a couple of days to fix.

Have just chased Shawn for an update. It's a year since people first pointed out thermal management was broken on several Dell devices and still nothing. Luckily I'm using a work HP mostly and the E5440 only for a short time in the evening so I don't have to listen to it drone on all day. Clearly I'm not the only one who's experience with Dell has been ruined by a simple issue that would take a couple of days to fix.

Same thing for the keyboard issue...it was reported to Dell > 1yr ago... needless to say I'm not going to buy another Dell notebook for a lonnnnnng time. The trust is gone.

Anyway, It might take about a moth or so before we see another BIOS update so keep checking from time to time :)

Installed the new A13 BIOS a couple of days ago and no noticable change.

Haven't tried reinstalling Power Manager yet to see if it works.  Revision history didn't actually point to any power management changes.

Even Volkswagen writes better software than Dell...

Fixes: -Addressed AMT loses connection without MEI driver -Fixed on key of German Keyboard returns incorrect key value. Enhancements: -Added WMI patch.

Thank you all for this comprehensive thread on Dell Thermal management. Special thanks to CurbedLarry.

This is on a Dell E5540 with mechanical hard disk:

I can say that the enhanced Dell Thermal profiles are available via Windows Power Management but they do not affect fan bahaviour at all (see screenshot). But, I'm not telling you anything new here. .. My laptop has been on battery power for the past 1,5 hour and using Prime 95, I can tell the fan kicks in at about 65 - 67 degress celcius. When going below that temp. it immediately stops. In the office today, the fan had been spinning for 20 minutes before it stopped while the CPU temp. was only around 40 - 45 degrees during the entire time.

Is this because of that ambient sensor? Can you read it out in Windows?

I have not yet factore in HDD en GPU temperature but I was typing e-mails so I doubt those would have been high.

Hi Jeroen1000,

Yes that behaviour sounds very similar to everything I've seen:

• When the machine is cold the fan only comes on for a short time based on CPU temperature
• When the machine is warm (after a few hours) the fan runs for long periods even if the CPU and other components are only 20-40C.

SpeedFan has access to other temperature sensors but it doesn't say what they are and I don't know if one is this ambient sensor.

Sometimes it appears the GPU temperature must drop to 32C before the fan will stop.  If I had time I would remove the heatsink to check they applied thermal paste to the GPU.  It takes a very long time for it to drop from 34C to 32C.

Dell has accepted that thermal modes don't work on this and other machines but they don't care about fixing it!

Not good for the long-reliability of these machines if the fans start failing due to wear and being filled with dust.

Another thing that I found online is that you can "reset" the fan using FN+Z (FN+W on azerty keyboards). Then it stops for a while. On my E5540 the speedfan readings look ok except that the CPU temp. is much higher than the temp. of the individual cores. Hmm.

I was going to buy a new XPS 15, however, not before I know how its fan management (mis)behaves. Never though that something like that would make ever make the requirements list:-).

Look how ridiculously cool the CPU + GPU are and the fan is _still_ going at it!:

I did more monitoring today and I think it's true, the GPU must drop to 32C for the fan to cancel.

You can see it takes a 10 minutes for it to drop from 33C to 32C, this was exactly when the fan stopped:

I don't know what more evidence Dell want that the fan thresholds are inappropriate.  The fan should not run for 20+ minutes to reduce the GPU part of a Core i5 by just 2C.

Clearly nobody at Dell actually cares about the user experience of their products.

Lawrence