CPU fan goes up and down constantly

Hi, I have a 3-year old m17x r2 with i7-820QM. Aside from requiring a restart every now and then when I wake it from sleep mode, it hasn't had major problems.

For the last couple of months, however, the CPU fan has started going up and down in RPM constantly. This makes the CPU fan noise very noticable and irritating. It stays on a medium noise level, and then peaks up for a few seconds every 20 second or so before settling down to the same level. When I run HWiNFO64 I see the clocks of all 4 cores constantly flickering up and down: they'll have a base clock at ~1190 mhz but then constantly flicker up to 2000-2800 mhz and then back down. They will not follow a specific rythm as such, but just flicker back and forth every other second or so all the time. This may be what then pushes the CPU fan RPM up and down as well, but there's no apparent pattern. There is no weird program running in the background, nothing hogs CPU power, and the behaviour is the same in WIndows 7's safe mode. Has anyone out there had the same problem? And is it normal that the CPU cores flicker up and down in mhz all the time, and - most importantly - any tips on how I get rid of the annoying CPU fan RPM variation? I can control the fans manually via HWiNFO64 but that's obviously not sustainable since I'll not want to accidently cook my CPU.

Searching this forum and googling etc has not produced any leads.

 

I would try 2 solutions:

1. Remove the battery and hold the power button for few minutes. You could also remove the coin battery (though that will change the date and time in your system) and leave it for few minutes (10-15 minutes). That's called a power drain;

2. See if you install a new operating system from scratch can help in anyway possible (you could use a different hard drive without messing around with the current setting and programs installed).

Another thing that could cause some of those issues is dust in the radiators / heatsinks. See if those are cleared of any dirt.

Best of luck and I hope you have your machine fixed, up and running well...

 

I am bout 345% Sure your radiators are filled with fluff/Dust....

Watch this bro

Alienware M17x R1 & R2 Full System Disassembly (Part 1) - YouTube

Then buy something that will help you with cleaning, like this



then clean this from the radiators



Then use this paste on CPU and GPU



Enjoy !


God i am good, ...owww Yeaaa

 

Both solutions might work well. I would also recommend repasting. Let us know how it goes.

 

Many thanks for your help you guys. I discovered a carpet of dust on my radiator that I cleaned out as recommended, and now my CPU fan RPM is stable at ~1976 rpm. Seems problem solved then, but now that I have your attention could you help me with following questions:

1) Is a stable and minimum CPU fan RPM of 1976 ok? It doesn't drop below, which means the CPU fan is (faintly) audible all the time. Maybe I am becoming hyper sensitive because of the fan peaking issue (now solved), but I seem to remember in the past that the laptop used to become virtually quiet at low-intensity use (web browsing etc). CPU core temperatures are stable in the 50s (celcius). If you tell me that it ought to be able to keep temperatures in check at, say, ~1000 rpm, then I'll go and re-paste my CPU but I'd really rather avoid such intrusive procedure if I can.

*** EDIT: I have just tried running the CPU fan manually at 1000 RPM and it manages to keep the CPU just fine in the (high) 50s. Any reason my laptop doesn't set this RPM level itself..?

2) Is the CPU clock flickering that I described in my original post normal? I have attached a screenshot of HWIINFO's graph on this:
3) Oh, and can you give me a reason to go and buy a brand new M17x..? I want to but I can't seem to identify a need...

 

So I went and repasted the CPU as you recommended, and temperatures have dropped to mid-40ies now. Surprisingly, the CPU fan still stays at ~2000 RPM. Should it not keep a lower rev given the low temperatures? Is it possible my laptop's fan control is somehow broken?