Dell Studio 1745 - bad fan control

Hi PainElemental,

I bought a new Dell studio 1745 one month ago and I have exactly the same FAN issue as yours:

The FAN is completely stopped (0 rpm) and kicks on like an hair-dryer or a vacuum cleaner for about 10s every 2-3 minutes under no load at all (proc. < 5%). When working a little bit (proc. +/- 20%), Fan kicks on and off 2 times per minute. I've never seen that before. It's very intrusive and disturbing and actually prevent you from working efficiently.

Usually, the fan should spin quitly and accelerate according to the processor load, like I see on other Latitude E6500 I have.

Dell support quickly changed the motherboard as well as the fan, but it did not solve the problem. I guess it is due to a buggy bios (bad thermal tables parameters). Unfortunatly, I do not have access to the 2nd level support nor to any escalation process. Hence, I don't know how to report the problem to Dell technical designers team. Therefore, I told the support that I will wait for the next A03 bios update and will call them back according to the Bios A03 behaviour.

Many other users already reported this problem on German, French and English forums.

I hope Dell will fix this issue as soon as possible because I just delayed further laptops I planned to buy until this problem is solved. Assuming this problem is fixed, this studio 1745 would be a great laptop.

Should you have any information, just let me know.

Specs:

Studio 1745, Intel P8700, GM45 chipset, RAM 4Go 1066 Mhz, GC ATI 4570, HD 500 Go 7200 rpm, Win 7 Pro x64, Bios A02.

Every last Dell driver installed / Windows updates ok / Firewall ok / no viruses.

Welcome to the forums both of you :emotion-21:

You're right to be upset about the problem, but you might want to try I8kfan GUI to see if it works on your Studio laptops as well, and helps with the fan problems?

I8kfanGUI is a graphical Windows application to show the internal temperatures and to control the fan operation [on the Dell Inspiron/Latitude/Precision notebook series].

Hey there

Really annoying problem this fan noise. Tryied to install I8kfan GUI on my Dell 1745 Windows 7 laptop without success. After 4-5 phone calls Dell tryied to change fans without getting this problem solved.

Helped a bit changing the settings in power suppy, like "Bernd" did-  LINK http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=450268 

Really hope Dell comes up with a solution really fast, this noise is driving me crazy :s

Morten

Dell has posted a new BIOS A03 for the Studio 1745. I upgraded but it don't seem to address the fan cycling on and off even if the computer is idling. Dell needs to to do a better job.

Hi Elpidio,

The same for me. I upgraded to A03 yesterday. It had no effect on the Fan control.

As this problem is also reported by many users on other studio 17 models (1749, 1747...)  and according to all the posts I read, I finally think that unfortunatly, this stupid fan management is due to a Dell Design choice rather than being a bug.

I buy Dell computers for my company, as well as for personal use since years but this time, I decided to stop buying this new line of product.

Keep an eye on the new Vostro or HP Probook...

Thanks for the info. Been buying Dell's from the Inspiron 7500 and besides the XPS M1330's nVidia video burning up, no issues so far but this Studio 1745 fan cycling on and off for no reason is very annoying. I even have a Zalman NC 2000 laptop cooler at full speed and no help there. I also buy mines via our company account to get some discount but won't be buying anymore Dell for now till a better product shows up.

On/off cycle even shorter for Inspiron 1564

(Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-330M Processor (3M Cache, 2.13 GHz, 2 cores, 4 threads) with 2,936MB memory).

About 30 seconds off, 60 seconds on.

yes my 1564 is exactly the same on every 2 minutes, but i have noticed one thing, and that is, it doesnt happen if im running on battery, on when its plugged in why is this

Same problem with Studio 1558. I've had mine for a week now. I don't think I can get used to it. I doubt Dell is going to fix this anytime soon either, so I'm probably going to return this laptop.

Got the same fan problem with my new Studio 17. It isn't possible to work with it in a normal way. This noise is driving me crazy. Without solution from Dell, I'm afraid this is my last Dell

I have the sam annoying issue with my 1737 studio laptop but only after one of the last bios-updates (don't remember if it was from A06 to A08 or something else) the fan began to behave like that. So I wonder if I should try out an older version of the bios but I'm not sure if that would bring up other compatibility issues.

Dell really should adress this problem! Thousands of users all over the net are complaining about this issue and Dell changes fans and motherboards. This is a software/Bios-issue.

This appears to be a problem with ALL Dell laptops: the fan spins up for no reason every 2-3 minutes even if there's no load.

I know there are workarounds for this (like I8kfanGUI, which only works for older laptops, and not for 64-bit Windows); or you can keep running all the time a program that stresses the CPU (e.g. Folding@Home or BitCoin). But this is not the right thing to do.

Here are some examples of reports of this problem. There are many more if you search the forums for "fan problem" or "fan control".

Latitude 6410 - I own one, has the same problem with the latest BIOs (A06)

Inspiron 15R - I bought one and had to return it because of this fan problem

Inspiron 1564 - user brinan reports here

Studio 1558 - report here

Studio 17  - report here ("it's driving me crazy")

Studio 1737 - report here

Studio 1745 - report here

Dell, please look into this issue and FIX IT. It's driving many of your customers nuts and will drive many of them away if you don't address it.

Hi Everyone. I just wanted to update you all. I have the same fan issue on my 1558 (i3, integrated graphics). Even at idle, the fan cycles to high for 30 seconds, then stays at low for 1 minute, then cycles to high for 30 seconds. Super annoying! I went through the same runaround with the dell service techs as well. They came out and replaced my entire motherboard, fan, and heatsink. No change. The fan still cycles. Since they replaced essentially all the internal components related to heat generation, I think this is unfortunately just ill-thought out cooling design. E.g. it's probably as the engineers intended the laptop to run. Of course, they probably weren't thinking about how grating this noise would end up being. Unless there is a bios update which addresses this, I doubt getting a replacement laptop of the same model will help. I also highly doubt my replacement fan and motherboard were faulty. I think this is just how the cooling system is designed. Anyone else been able to eliminate this cycling issue?

Anyone else been able to eliminate this cycling issue?

The only way I managed to do this was by putting load on the CPU, e.g. by running Folding@Home or BitCoin.

But that's besides the point. DELL NEEDS TO FIX THIS.

Unfortunately they no longer listen to suggestions sent to customer_advocate@dell.com, and IdeaStorm seems mostly useless.

There is a new bios update for the Studio 1745.  1745A0464. I updated the bios from  A03 to A04. I'll stress the GPU and CPU and see what happens. If it craps out, I have it covered under NBD Warranty for a year and half more.