Blowing air into fans, fixed or failed? :O

Hello,

Some time ago I noticed that my Alienware m17x r4 would make start to make alot of noise when playing Guild Wars for awhile. That was the time that I installed some CPU and GPU temperature software. I quickly noticed that my CPU temperatures were kind of high! (60+ Idle & 80-90 Gaming, Celsius).

Then I read up on some tips and tricks to get the temperature down, one of them was the 'Blowing compressed air into the fans'. After reading that I thought; why not blow (with my mouth, tryinn to immitate compressed air the best I could) into the back openings of my laptop to see if i could maybe clear out some dust. And well, dust came flying into my face, not alot, but there was defenitly dust in there.

After that I checked my temperatures and weirdly enough, I now have these temperatures:

Idle: 45-50
Gaming: 50-55
100% CPU Stress test: 56-64

First I was so happy! These temperatures are amazing!
But after awhile I started noticing that it would ALWAYS be in between 45-55 no matter what I did (except the stress test). And it would also sometimes (not often!) make more noise, which is weird, because why would the fans go up when the temperature is only around 50? And when I feel the bottom of my laptop, it can feel kind of hot!

So now I'm wondering, because I didnt blow out the dust the right way; Did I mess something up which causes it to misread temperatures or blew all the dust INTO my laptop? Or something else? Or is everything fine?

Thanks in advance!

 

You probably dislodged a large chunk or dirt that was blocking the exhaust. The horror stories I could tell you about people that don't clean out their laptops to the point where the computer shuts down when it hits the thermal barriers. Chances are you blew enough of it out that it was allowing the air to properly vent again. It is completely normal for the laptop to spin up and make more noise as the temps rise because it is trying to keep it in that sweet spot for temperatures which they like to be in. If you sitting at 55 while gaming then I would say you have nothing to worry about. As for the sensors getting dirty it isn't a problem, the sensor is on the CPU itself so no matter how hard you blow your not going to damage that.

It is strongly suggest ( If your comftorable doing so ) to take the bottom panel off and even remove the fans and really clean it out good as that is the best way to get out all the dust and dirt and it can give you access to the back of the exhaust fins where the dirt will collect and block off the exhausting air but only if you are comfortable doing so.

 

55 degrees celius for a max load mobile cpu of the 3rd generation intel. throttling is going on there is no way it is reaching max clocks. HWiNFO will tell you if im right. Download it and check.

 

Thanks for the responses guys! Makes me feel alot less worried And I might actually clean the whole thing out

As for the throttling part, this is what it shows:



I think its fine right? I know i'm not having it on Turbo mode, because of the earlier temperature problems.

 

dont know how theese fans work. BUT it is not always a good thing blowing air through some fans.
If it spins up, it might generate voltage instead, like a generator.
Spins fast enough it can also go way above design voltage damaging electronics and if its fast enough you could be damaging bearings too.
Blowing air through fans while letting the fans move as fast as they want to can easily go WAY faster than when running normally.
Same goes for vacum cleaning fans. In addittion to that the normal vacum cleaner can generate static electrisity (so can an airgun), it will also generate a flowrate a lot higher than normal operation giving very high speeds.

If i use vacuum cleaner towards the computer i normally try to put the breaks on the fan using my finger and also holding on to the metal nossle part to reduce the static. Not sure if that is needed in these setups, but i still do.

 

The temperatures and behavior described seem fine to me, I wouldn't worry much about it. What you did definitely helped.

 

Doesn't look like its going into its turbo speed at all hence the lower temps. Would allow it back to 3ghz+ for gaming performance if you can, my 3630qm runs at around 70°C under load.

I am sure your laptop can cope with it being on turbo again

 

Err, no. I know this thread is a couple of weeks old now but couldn't let that FUD pass by. It simply isn't true. I don't think I've ever seen a computer cooling fan that wasn't electronically comutated for any number of reasons - cost, noise, lifespan, electrical interference, etc. They can't become dynamos when back-driven: the coil(s) toggle between being turned off (nowhere for the current to flow to) and being turned on by their control transistors, which act as diodes in this context and prevent any induced current from flowing. It doesn't matter which mode the coil is in at any one moment, or even if the fan is completely turned off: that induced voltage isn't going anywhere.

 

Of course I could be wrong, and that its not electrically a problem, but they write about it for instance here, and also mentioned here

The fact that it has been written about in several guides Ive read still does not make it scientific fact, I know that. Many other guides also do not mention this.

Ill still be suprised if not all transistors (or diodes) still have reverse breakdown voltage.
Unsure howevver if voltages possibly generated could go high enough still to kill it.

Speed also kills: ball and sleeve bearings will have its limits and airgun or vacumcleaner driven fans can be extreemely fast shorten the life of the fans by a lot.