M17x: GTX280 GPU fans at max for no discernable reason

I'm sure I stumbled upon a thread related to this a while back, but I can't find it now.

I have the Dell recommended 280 drivers installed right now because when I tried the latest Nvidia drivers, they caused my GPU fans to go to max about an hour after booting my system, and they'd stay that way indefinitely until I either shut down or put the Nvidia graphics into "Save Power" mode. And they weren't blowing out cold air--the wall behind my desk got pretty warm.

I went back to the Dell supported 8.15.8640 280 drivers about two weeks ago and everything seemed to be working as before. But I noticed the GPU fans running high before I left the house this morning, and when I came back this evening they were still running high and the wall behind my desk was warm as ever. All I had running were some non-graphics intensive apps, like Thunderbird, Firefox, and Word 2007.

Thought I'd check in here and see if anyone else has encountered this particular matter, and maybe find out what has been done to resolve it. If I don't leave the house with my computer, it stays plugged in and turned on. I don't put it to sleep or hibernate it.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

 

Vista or W7?
It looks like you have W7 and your drivers lock the cards at their max clocks (try checking it with GPU-Z/Everest ultimate). It might help installing the 195.81 drivers. But as far as I know all drivers for W7 up-clock the GPUs with simple web-browsing. I'm sure the issue is gonna be fixed with the next driver update.

 

reflash your bios, same thing happens to me with my last m17x

 

Hi Aikimox,

Sorry, I should have provided that information. I'm running Vista 64. When were the 195.81 drivers released? I see that the 195.62 drivers are available from Nvidia, but I don't see 195.81.

The GUP-Z utility is pretty nice. Thanks for pointing it out to me. Here are screenshots for GPUs 1 and 2. I took the screen shot in the sensor tab and waited for the bars to fill up. GPU remained maxed out the entire time, but GPU 2 calmed down a bit after no activity.

 

Hi witcher,

I can use the Bios that's available from Dell's Support site for the M17x even though it's the same version of the BIOS I have already? You've done this before and it solved a similar GPU fan problem with your system?

 

Aikimox,

By the way. The drivers I had installed before when my fans were going full speed all the time without respite were the 195.62 drivers. I wasn't able to find 195.81 drivers on Nvidia's site. Is this a beta release?

 

I'm using beta since I had the same issue with 195.62 (one GPU would stay max while the other one would calm down. Installing 195.81 fixed this).
However, for Vista I'd recommend 186.82.

 

186.82 is exactly what I have installed. The left GPU fan doesn't max out as frequently as it did with 195.62, but it's still happening after the computer has been up and running for 48 to 72 hours. It also seems to happen after watching some video, the left GPU fan will max out at some point during the viewing and then never come back down again until I go into Save Power mode and back into Boost Performance mode.

I might try this beta driver and see what happens. There's also another matter I'm hoping might be resolved with the beta driver as well.

I'll report back on this matter when I've learned more, probably in a few days. If this doesn't work, I'll fall back to the 186.82 driver and try re-flashing the BIOS as witcher has suggested.

 

Hmmm, Witcher is probably right, but that find does not contribute to the stability of M17X at all...

 

Whats wrong with your fans running at max? Would you rahter have a silent dead laptop cuz of overheating? Jeez...you buy a ferarri and you complain it doesn't sound like a bike.

 

What's wrong with it is that it means the GPUs are being overclocked when there's nothing taxing them. This means faster and unnecessary wear and tear.

 

Ah, ye when your gpu is constantly working at its max you definitly got a problem.

Edit: I thought at first that the the complaint was just about the fan (many don't like the loud fans, eventhough they don't understand its because they just got the best performing, but also hottest hardware), so just ignore my previous post.

 

The 195.81 drivers wouldn't install because it claimed I had no compatible drivers. An unusual sort of error message. Usually it will complain that it can't detect the hardware it's designed to work with. Chances are that when Nvidia releases 195.81 from Beta it will install without any problems.

So I reflashed the BIOS and here I am. I'll report back in a few days or less letting you all know how things turned out as a result.

Thanks both of you.

 

Please, topic-creator, teach me how you got the fans to run on full-blast. (Kidding.)

Although in all seriousness, I would like to know how to fire up all fans to maximum speed without any changes or variation.

 

yes you can flash your bios with the same version i did that before when i have 280's and the fans kick on for no reason i think is a bios bug not a driver problem

 

Well so far so good. I have yet to tax the video cards since I've been focused on work, but I'll watch some clips later, maybe a Netflix or Hulu something, which will cause the fans to spin up. Then we'll see if they spin back down again once I'm done and the GPUs have had a little time to cool off. I don't have any games installed right now since I removed them in order to get work done (I have no self-discipline) and I don't want to reinstall them until I have a week or two break from work (months from now).