There has been a lot of good discussion in this thread about the M11x fans and desired operation, and I've taken this information back to my engineering teams in Austin. They've looked at a capture (from klas) and determined that the fan was operating as expected per the fan tables in the BIOS.  

Keep in mind that we're dealing with a lot of computing power packed into a very small space. This translates to the fan being on much more (and sometimes all the time, even at windows idle) than on larger systems. We also only have one fan in this system, so it has to run at higher speeds than on systems with multiple fans or larger thermal solutions.  

There may be some options to change the performance of the fans, but it isn't likely that we can meet our thermal specifications and shut the fans off most of the time (as many would wish). We are looking at possible options to tweak the fan algorithms, but I’m curious about what people think about the warmer palmrest area that would almost certainly result if we were to do this? Are you more concerned about skin temperatures or about fan noise? We’ve tried to balance these concerns as best we could on the M11x as it exists today, so any comments or discussion would be much appreciated in helping to determine how we should move forward.   

Keep in mind that we may not be able to adjust the fan settings and still meet engineering’s thermal requirements, but we are actively looking into this.

Brian
Alienware Quality