Could you do me a favor? Open your case and listen to each fan. Is one louder than the others? You might have a defective fan. If they are all the same volumn you probably don't have an issue. If there is one specific fan that is louder, how much louder and which one? Is it 50%, 5 times as loud, etc.
So 3 questions
1, if there is ONE fan, which one is it?
2. How much louder is it, than the rest?
3. Can your tap on it and the noise goes away? Fan might be out of balance, still needs to be replaced.
Its definitely the cpu pump or the fan attached to the radiator, I stopped every other fan in the system manually and the noise persisted (minus PSU fan, but I don't think thats the culprit). What it sounds like is a rythmic whirring that grows and diminishes in strength, maybe on ~5 second cycles. Its not _super_ loud, its more subtle but super annoying when being in a fairly quiet room. When the computer is doing nearly nothing it should continue to sound the same. If we were given a way to manage the speeds of the System fan and pump (if the pump can actually operate at multiple levels) I could probably diagnose this better...
I'm also really surprised that at 0% the PCI fan (80mm) is still spinning at 1500 RPM, surely it should be able to go lower than that..
Are you over clocking the cpu? That would drive the system. I have the Area-51 and it is actually louder than I expected. The whirring is not normal I believe. Call Dell support and explain the trouble shooting. Walk them through what you did and the noise. If you have a good connection, you might be able to hold the phone to the fan and let them hear the noise.
Its a i7 930 stock oc'd from 2.8 -> 3.36ghz. I looked closer at the system fan RPM monitoring in Linux (much faster than Windows), and it seems to be revving up and down by 30-40rpm at the interval I mentioned. I'm concerned that the problem is really just the temperature:rpm points that are stored in the fan controller managing its speed.. if I could alter this I could fix it. Chris is there any way to do this? Is this fan's speed controlled by the bios or the daughtercard? And is there any expert-mode that allows its speed to be tweaked? I'm quite surprised this isn't exposed by now, nearly every other motherboard worth its salt on the market allows users to control the fan speed at user specified temp points.
DELL-Chris M
Community Manager
•
56.9K Posts
0
May 25th, 2010 07:00
The Alienware fan noise levels are on par with other gaming PCs. At least what I have heard in our lab and then at Fryes.
markshaheen
2 Intern
•
372 Posts
0
May 25th, 2010 08:00
Could you do me a favor? Open your case and listen to each fan. Is one louder than the others? You might have a defective fan. If they are all the same volumn you probably don't have an issue. If there is one specific fan that is louder, how much louder and which one? Is it 50%, 5 times as loud, etc.
So 3 questions
1, if there is ONE fan, which one is it?
2. How much louder is it, than the rest?
3. Can your tap on it and the noise goes away? Fan might be out of balance, still needs to be replaced.
derickso
5 Posts
0
May 25th, 2010 13:00
Its definitely the cpu pump or the fan attached to the radiator, I stopped every other fan in the system manually and the noise persisted (minus PSU fan, but I don't think thats the culprit). What it sounds like is a rythmic whirring that grows and diminishes in strength, maybe on ~5 second cycles. Its not _super_ loud, its more subtle but super annoying when being in a fairly quiet room. When the computer is doing nearly nothing it should continue to sound the same. If we were given a way to manage the speeds of the System fan and pump (if the pump can actually operate at multiple levels) I could probably diagnose this better...
I'm also really surprised that at 0% the PCI fan (80mm) is still spinning at 1500 RPM, surely it should be able to go lower than that..
markshaheen
2 Intern
•
372 Posts
0
May 25th, 2010 14:00
Are you over clocking the cpu? That would drive the system. I have the Area-51 and it is actually louder than I expected. The whirring is not normal I believe. Call Dell support and explain the trouble shooting. Walk them through what you did and the noise. If you have a good connection, you might be able to hold the phone to the fan and let them hear the noise.
derickso
5 Posts
0
May 25th, 2010 14:00
Its a i7 930 stock oc'd from 2.8 -> 3.36ghz. I looked closer at the system fan RPM monitoring in Linux (much faster than Windows), and it seems to be revving up and down by 30-40rpm at the interval I mentioned. I'm concerned that the problem is really just the temperature:rpm points that are stored in the fan controller managing its speed.. if I could alter this I could fix it. Chris is there any way to do this? Is this fan's speed controlled by the bios or the daughtercard? And is there any expert-mode that allows its speed to be tweaked? I'm quite surprised this isn't exposed by now, nearly every other motherboard worth its salt on the market allows users to control the fan speed at user specified temp points.