XPS M1210 -- fan runs constantly, very loud.

Hey guys,

I've had an XPS M1210 for about a year now, and only in the past few months have I been noticing the laptop's fan run constantly and usually, very loudly.

I thought it was the migration to Vista/power settings/anti-virus programs, but after reformatting, checking power settings and whatnot, the machine's fan is still constantly doing a lot of work even when I'm not running any programs. Manytimes, after a game (where I expect the fan to run hot), it never stops running even after a few hours.

A quick check into my system processes reveals nothing that is taking up the CPU, or a lot of memory. And even going into Vista's performance monitor and sorting by CPU cycles used/read & writes done by the HDD and memory usage there does not show anything odd. 'msconfig' is all good there, nothing disproportionately large is loading on startup that may be being a resource hog.

In short, I am stumped. Those with M1210's, have you guys run into similar situations, and if so, what's the deal here? I'd appreciate any and all suggestions. Thanks!

 

Hi , I've not had that kind of a problem with it yet.
But I'd hook into Dell support. They would be able to walk you through it
or if still under warrenty help you get replacement parts.

 

Is the fan blowing hot air or cold air? What is the CPU temperature under different load conditions (use RMClock to give this info). When the notebook is on idle you should have CPU utilisation of less than about 5% (as shown by Task Manager).

Possible causes of high fan activity are (i) high CPU utilisation (fan will blow hot air) and (ii) poor thermal connection between CPU and cooling system (fan will blow cold air).

John

 

It's hot air, very hot air. I'll post those CPU temperatures when I can as well tomorrow.

 

Using RMClock, when idle, my CPU Usage (as shown by Task Manager) wavers from 3-5%, but the CPU Core Temp. (for my 2.00 Ghz Core 2 Duo) is around 58-60 degrees Celsius.

Fan, is of course, running very hard without interruption.

 

Can anyone help?

 

58 to 60 is slightly higher than normal for idle temperatures, but it depends on your room temperature as well. Make sure not to cover any of the air vents (underneath or on sides) when using the notebook, always try to keep it on a flat hard surface (don’t keep it on a sofa or a bed). A notebook cooling pad may also help, but make sure you buy one that blows air out (in to the notebook), and not one that sucks air (out of the notebook). Because the fans underneath M1210 takes air in and blows out from the side.

If you have been using it for a while, then there is also a chance that a lot of dust has gathered inside covering the heat sink blocking air circulation. Cleaning it should improve things, but getting to the heat sink of M1210 is little difficult, (read the service manual to see how). Before disassembling, use a compressed air canister to clean it from outside, see if that helps.

 

OP, grab a can of air. Its likely that there might be dust in that tiny little fan and could be blocking air from escaping. Also PM and I can help you under volt your cpu which will knock off about 10-15C on load and 5-10C on idle temps.

 

wow that sucks, power and heat distributions for sure. The fan's are to old probably.