Acer fan starts and stops constantly!

Model: Acer Aspire 4720-4538

The CPU fan is totally off when the CPU temp is under 55°C (according to Everest). Once it's over 55°C, it goes onto its low setting. Somewhere higher up, it goes to its high setting.

The problem: Even just browsing the web and doing light desktop work (IM, Explorer, Word), the CPU temp creeps up to 55°C pretty easily. Once it does, the fan shoots on, but it only takes about 3 seconds to get to below 55°C, so it shuts off again. Without the fan, the temp goes up past 55°C again, and the cycle restarts.

The result is an on-off-on-off-on-off fan that turns on or stays off for only about 2-5 seconds at a time. REALLY annoying, esspecially in an otherwise quiet library environment. I can see people looking over at me with a "what the f is wrong with your computer" look.

I've updated the BIOS to its latest as of this date (Jan 06 2009) on the Acer site (3810), that didn't help any.

I've read (on this site) that Acer uses something propertiary to control their fan, causing normal fan control software to not work on Acer's.

Does anybody know of any software that will let me control the speed of the fan? I tried the fan control software for the Acer Aspire One, which didn't seem to work.

 

Unfortunatley, there is no software to control the fan, the fans are controlled at bios level and have no options to change them.

There are a couple of things that you could try, one is to give the heatsink area of the laptop a clean, see if there is dust where the fan kicks out the air from the laptop, and on the fins on the fan. You could get a can of compressed air and carefully spray it where the vents are. Or you could open the laptop up, take the heatsink off and give it a real good clean.

Another thing you can do to reduce the temps is the undervault the cpu, which would stop your fan from kicking in as much. The link below is a real good guide on NBR about undervolting:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=235824

Also, you could buy a cooler for the notebook, which again can help in reducing the temps. But the undervolting guide is real good, and best of all, it's free!!!

 

Rather than try to control the fan, you should be trying to find the root cause of why it's hovering around its thermal cycle-on temperature. There are also other things you can look for and do.

Dust is the most obvious - if you haven't blown out your system in a while, give your cooling fans, intake and exhaust a good blowing out.

Other component temps - just because it's the CPU fan coming on doesn't mean there isn't something else in the system that's overheating. It's obvious that the temperature is hovering at the setpoint of the fan's thermal on-switch, meaning that your average internal key component temperatures are probably something a few degrees less. If you don't know what the average internal temps are for your system, you can either ask the vendor, ask around here, or even Google it.

Once you find out the averages, install and run HWMonitor (CPUID.com) and then check your own internal temps to see if anything is off the average and could be raising internal temp enough to kick on your CPU fan at the "irritant" temp level.

You can also either open your Task Manager/Process tab to check for any background processes turning on that correspond with a temperature increase. Only component temperature increase or an increase in system processes will increase CPU temperatures, and if you're not running any RAM intensive programs, then you must have something in the background adding to the problem. Monitor your Process/Services tabs to see what comes on when the temp goes past the limit.

CPU Processing - Something else you can do is to regulate your CPU's Maximum Processor Power state when plugged in and on battery. In fact, it may not be set right, which could also give you a similar problem.

Open your Power Options from the Control Panel, the Change Plan Settings, the Change Advanced, then go to the CPU Processor Power State and modify the upper and lower percentages to see if it has an effect, and to verify if the values are set high / low enough.

 

The system is brand-new, so dust is at a minimum. I blew through the fan with some compressed air anyway. I did give the heatsink and CPU a clean as well, and I applied some fresh Arctic Silver 5. Didn't help.

I'm working with RM-Clock atm, but ... problem. It won't let me select anything under 0.95V, which is what the CPU is running at in the first place (at its lowest).

 

The hard drive is running at a [relatively] chilly 42°C. Now that I'm looking, why should the cores of the CPU be at 51°/53°, but the overall temp of the CPU be 58°?

God this is annoying.

When I pulled off the heatsink the other day to apply AS5, I did note that it was a 5V fan. I guess I *could* rig the fan up to a USB port, but then it would be running full-throttle all the time, and full-throttle is loud.

I'm two-thirds tempted to write a program that looks like:

Code:

if ( TEMP >= 50 && TEMP < 60 )
    // do something CPU-intensive at low priority

Just to keep the CPU fan at at least it's "low" setting all the time.

Or is there something that I'm missing with regard to undervolting? I can't get it to go lower than 0.95V (the default for the lowest P-state), and even locked at the lowest P-state and 0.95V, even just browsing in Firefox trips the CPU above 55C.

 

Yup, I have a similar problem

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4473331#post4473331

As said in that thread Ive emailed customer support to see what they say.

Never would have bought this rig if I'd known of this