Fan's Out of Control

[zokudu]

I am currently sitting in my colleges library and have been surfing the internet for a few hours. (~3-3.5) and for some reason the fan on my Dell Inspiron laptop is going crazy. Its extremely loud and it just began randomly. I am used to a little fan noise but this reminds me of when I used to run BOINC 24/7 on this laptop kind of loud.

I installed the sensors-applet to get my CPU temp and its saying 46ᵒ C!. This seems a bit high for just browsing the web. Attached I have pictures of both my resources and processes tabs in System Monitor. You can see the CPU temp in the upper right corner.

This is going in the *nix forum because I can't think of where else to put this and I am running Debian at the moment so I figured you would be most knowledgeable about fixing the issue.

Any suggestions?

 

[eternalone]

Something similar happened to me once with ubuntu 8. something. My cpu was always getting taxed to 100%. I put in a bug report to ubuntu, eventually in later versions it got fixed. Here is a guy with a similar problem that I had, almost exactly the same.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=471460

 

[Fear No Evil]

Clogged fan? I'd take it apart and see if you can clean it out. My Dell's usually get clogged with dust/dog hair/etc after a while and need periodic cleaning.

 

[lxskllr]

46C seems reasonable to me for a laptop. It /may/ be a touch warm, but well within the range I'd expect.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Are you running a compositing window manager? What is the GPU temp?

 

[VinDSL]

Clogged fan? I'd take it apart and see if you can clean it out.[...]

Thank you! You've saved me some typing...

Lappies are like miniature vacuums. Ppl lay them on sofas covered with pet dander, bed sheets packed with dead skin cells and dust mites, dirty counter tops and coffee tables layered with crumbs, et cetera, and they suck up an incredible amount of dust and lint.

To make things worse, the cooling on lappies/netbooks is marginal, at best (due to space limitations inside the case). For instance, my EeePC netbook uses the aluminum underbelly of the keyboard for a CPU heat sink... No kidding! There's no room for anything else...

It doesn't take much crud to overpower the cooling systems in laptops! Then... the fans go crazy, trying to save it -- and, yes, they sound like little buzz saws, when this happens!

I suspect it's a death knell that you're hearing. Better clean it out, ASAP!

 

[Colt45]

46 degrees isn't too ridiculous for a laptop. Dusting the thing out can't hurt, but I wouldn't think it's cause for alarm.

 

[Steltek]

Constantly running fans can also indicate an improper CPU heatsink installation.

The heatsinks used in modern laptops are so dinky (especially those used with higher end CPUs like core duos and i-series) that any tiny installation flaw can cause no end of heat-related problems, the least of which is that the fans have to run constantly to maintain temps.

The difference in my Dell E4310 (which has an i5 stuffed into a 13.3" laptop body) before and after Dell replaced the motherboard is like night and day. Before, among other things, the fan ran constantly (even when the laptop was sitting turned on and just idle). It doesn't do that anymore.

When the tech pulled the motherboard, it was obvious that whoever built that machine had no clue as to what thermal grease was or how to properly apply it. The tech also said that this is something he literally sees weekly (and not just on Dell systems).

 

[zokudu]

Well just as a bit of an update after doing a bit of testing. The fan is off until ~55C at which point it starts up. It is at low RPM until ~65 degrees at which point it goes into the extreme scenario I posted about earlier. What I have noticed however is the fan will not reduce speed after reaching these thresholds. For instance I am idling at ~45C with the fan running because it has hit that 55C and will not shut off even though I am below the required temp.

I'm guessing yesterday I hit that 65C threshold and it just did not decrease fan speed once the CPU cooled off. I don't know if this is a BIOS issue or something within Linux but I guess I figured it out.

Update just as I type this the fan turned off at ~40C so I think the threshold is if it hits 55 it turns on until down to 40. I cant figure out how low the temp has to be to turn off the jet engine at 65C. I guess I hit 65C when booting minecraft on here yesterday.

 

[VinDSL]

Good job, detective! But, I'd still (regularily) blow it out...

Heh! You know the thing I got out of this thread?!?!? The Debian screenies...

I know I've tried Debian in the past, but I'm not sure what version(s).

It *looks* like I could do something interesting with that desktop -- and become a Debian snob, in the process.

What version are you running?

I'm waiting for Ubu NN A1 to come out, so I can get back into testing. In the meantime, I have LL taking up space on my HDD, and I'll never use it again.

I thought I'd give Debian another whirl...

 

[lxskllr]

Debian was just like Ubuntu based on my quick run through with it. I was considering Sid, but I really like(d) the Ubuntu branding and stock setup. With that going through drastic changes, Debian has become much more promising as my distro of choice.