Very annoying fan noise on I6000D.

Hi, every one on this forum

I just purchased the Inspiron 6000D two months ago (with a 2GHz Pentium M, an ATI Radeon X300 video card with 128 MB option, 1GB of RAM and 80 GB 54000 HD) and noticed something peculiar about the heat management system.
I would like to know if any other Inspiron 6000 owners out there also see the same behavior, and if you think that this is a normal behavior for the Inspiron 6000D.
I found that the CPU fan on the left side of the keyboard would turn on and go into higher speed (i.e. gets very loud) a few minutes after I power-on the notebook and would stay on high speed continuously blowing out COLD air. This happens despite that the left side of the keyboard (where the CPU is located) feels very cool even before the fan switches to high speed. The right side of the notebook (where the HDD, the memory are located) are however uncomfortably warm, but the fan speed don't seems to have any impact on cooling the right side of the keyboard. The fan won't usually slow itself down again
The noise is louder than most of the other notebooks I have used before (HP Pavilion zv5000z with an Athlon 64, etc.) and is moderately distracting, and leaves me wondering if something is wrong.
I checked the service manual for the notebook, and found some other "hot spots" as well, but perhaps more interesting is the area around the power on button (where the video card is located) gets also very warm. I also found out from the service manual that the video card heat sink is sharing the same fan as the CPU via a heat pipe.
In other words, the fan control seems to be designed to manage the heat dissipation from both the CPU and the video card's GPU.

All I'd like to know is if any of you guys, owners of an I6000D have experienced this same problem and how have you addressed it?
I've read on DELL forums about pressing Fn-->Z to slow the fan down but it hasn't worked for me.

Thank you so much in advance for your replies.

Carlos

 

the 6000 fan should be always-on. only the speeds change. my fan is very very quiet when on low. it's barely audible. when it goes to high (spyware search, virusscan, etc.), i can hear it. but it's only on high when the system is being taxed.

fn+z works if you're running quickset.

 

Yeah I have the very same problem. But I haven't really looked it up though. This is my first 15.4" notebook with a GPU (earlier had a dell inspiron700) so I thought may be the fan sound and the unusually hot areas (especially near the power button) are normal.
But now that you've raised the question I can't help but feel that something's not right.

Looking forward to other's replies. Thanks.

 

Thank you so much, guys for your prompt response.

I'm still trying to figure out the real reason of why the notebook fan doesn't slow down when the processor isn't under a heavy load. I have a HP notebook, model zv5200 with an Athlon 64 3400+ (Desktop version of the processor, running at 2.2GHz), 1.25MB RAM, a 60GB HD (4200RPM), and the nVidia GForce4 Go 64MB, running Win XP Pro and I have the Chessmaster 9000 installed on this notebook. When I play this game on the HP notebook, it takes 99% to 100% of the CPU cycles and the processor heats up. I can hear and feel the fans blowing very hot air while I'm stressing the processor because it is running at its highest speed. However, as soon as I quit playing that game, the fans slow down and I can HARDLY hear them. I could say that I don't hear them at all.
This is not the case with the Inspiron 6000. I also have the same game installed on that notebook and when I play it on it, the Dell Inspiron 6000 fan kicks on at very high speed and remains at that speed even when I quit playing the game. I've also noticed that the processor(Pentium M760) is still at 2.0GHz (its maximum speed) even when System Idle Process shows 99% of the processor cycles. I check that through System Properties (right clicking My Computer).

So, it's very weird that the point of having the SpeedStep on the Pentium M is that the processor can reduce its speed when it's not in use by a CPU intensive application like for example Norton AV or SpySweeper to name a few. Could this be the cause of why the notebook fan doesn't slow its speed down?? The ONLY way I can get the fan to run at LOW speed is by rebooting the notebook.
I've been searching all forums related to Dell notebooks to pin point the cause of why this happens but I haven't had any luck yet. May be this won't affect the notebook integrity but it's really annoying specially when you're only working on an Excel table or just browsing the web.
I've read on Dell forums (not this obe of course but the Dell.com ones) that it might be caused by a BIOS bug. Dell released a BIOS update for this notebook last October (A09) but it did not address this problem.

As soon as I got the I6000D notebook this January, I reformatted the HD, deleted all the partitions and installed Win XP Pro SP2. I reloaded all the drivers from Dell's web site and I installed all my software like Norton AV, SpySweeper, Spybot, Norton firewall, Office, etc. So, my machine is not like it was when I got it from Dell (with all Dell's bloatware). I don't know for sure if by having reformatted the notebook I missed installing something that might control the fan speed.

Carlos

 

Same here I only hear the fan when it is on high

 

Have you tried I8kfanGUI. By using that software, you can control your Inspiron's fan. Even it can be shut down.

 

Hey....the Fn+Z key seems to work. I pressed it when the fan was running and it slowed down. Thanks.