E8020 and noise

According to this review E8020 should be VERY silent notebook. This is not the case with my E8020 because it's fan is running constantly and the machine is everything but silent. My specs are PentiumM 2 GHz, X600 and SXGA+ (in the review 1.6 GHz, X600 and XGA). I've tried undervolting the CPU and underclocking video card with Centrino Hardware Control without any noticeable effect. And why it isn't possible to enable Powerplay for X600??? I would have expected a bit more from a notebook of this class and price range :noisyfan: .

 

what kind of HD you using? a pentium 2 and a HD that's at 7200rpm would cause more heat, thus the fan. As in the review, I never had any noise problems from the notebook.

 

Hi Sph1nx,

I have the same laptop. I posted about a fan problem with mine a while ago ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=31592). Is your fan constantly running from the moment you start your laptop or only after a while? The fan is not very quiet, that is true, but without it running the laptop is considerably less noisy. And the fan definitely shouldn't be running all the time. That is not normal for such a laptop.

There are other possible sources of noise:
a) since you have the E8020 version with a dedicated graphics card, there is a separate graphics card fan for the ATI X600 (as a side note: the integrated shared memory graphics version doesn't have one and produces less heat)
b) the harddisk drive

First, I would check whether it is really the CPU fan causing the biggest noise. You can easily remove the harddrive temporarily and start up the laptop and go into the BIOS for example. Then listen to see whether it is a lot more quiet. It would also be interesting to know what harddrive model you have, which you can easily find out by looking on the HD sticker or by using any hardware analysis software (e.g. free Everst Home Edition). If the harddrive is the biggest noise maker, then it could be exchanged by a silent model.

The graphics card fan is located at a different place than the CPU fan, so you can distinguish those two. The CPU fan is located near the upper right corner of the latop and this is where the CPU fan blows out its air. The graphics card fan on the hand is located more on the left side of the laptop and the air from that fan comes out on this side.

As far as your question is concerned why Powerplay cannot be enabled for the X600 in the E8020: This is because Fujitsu uses a special OEM bios for the X600 in this laptop. They say they disabled Powerplay because of some incompatibilities (?) with this specific laptop.

When you did these checks and the problem is actually the CPU fan I would contact Fujitsu's technical support.

 

Hi, and thanks for answers. My HD is Samsung's 5400 rpm 80 GB drive so the problem shouldn't be there (AFAIK, Samsung drives run cool and silent). The noise source is definitely on the top left side so I guess it's the graphics card fan then. It starts blowing immediately after startup. The air coming out of notebook doesn't even feel warm but the fan is still running. So is this graphics card fan running all the time a feature or a flaw? I guess at least in Goren's E8020 the fan is not running all the time because he hasn't had any noise problems, or what do you think?

It feels strange why Powerplay isn't supported. On the other hand that would explain why the running time with batteries is rather poor. It's a shame that you can't monitor any temperatures inside and that Fujitsu doesn't offer any monitoring tool for that. I like this notebook sure but this noise issue (and the flex of keyboard) is somewhat disturbing.

By the way, I emailed to Fujitsu's support yesterday and they recommended to change bios version to the newest 1.12 . In that version there should be some changes in temperature control. Yeah well nice, but that version is for notebooks with integrated Intel video card, not for Ati... My bios is the latest 1.14 (date 31.8.2005) for Ati notebooks.

 

You are right that Samsung HDs are usually silent, so that shouldn't be the problem. I just asked this because they use all kinds of HDs in this laptop model: I've seen Seagate Momentus 5400 rpm models, Fujitsu 4200/5400 rpm models and - like in yours - Samsung 5400 rpm models.

In your case, it really sounds like the graphics card fan is the problem. I checked Goren's review again and the model he tested was one with an ATI X600 as well, not the integrated Intel shared memory version. So, no difference there. But as I said the dedicated graphics card ATI X600 produces more heat than the integrated Intel video card but even without Powerplay enabled it definitely shouldn't be running all the time. Nonetheless, it is really annoying that they disabled Powerplay because this also reduces the battery running time as you noticed. Powerplay is disabled for the ATI X600 and other ATI X?00 models in several Fujitsu laptops and many people are angry about this and are trying to find a solution (I read about this in other forums). As far as this Powerplay issue is concerned Fujitsu's support stated that Powerplay will (probably) not be enabled by any future BIOS versions. One solution people are trying is to obtain a normal (non-OEM) BIOS for the ATI X600 and flash it over the OEM version. However, it seems to be difficult to get a hold of such a BIOS (you have to ask around for someone willing to save his graphics card BIOS into a file and give it to you), and besides it is a bit risky because if anything goes wrong this won't be covered by the warranty.

Another option would be to switch to the E8020 version with the integrated Intel graphics video card if you do not really need the performance of the X600. The integrated Intel graphics video card in this laptop is good enough for most purposes except for current games and high-end graphics applications.

I also like this laptop a lot, it has many great features but too much noise can be extremely disturbing. Mine is currently is in for repair at Fujitsu because of the fan problem I mentioned before. However, it seems like my problem is a bit different from yours.

I agree it is really a shame that you can't monitor any temperatures inside and that Fujitsu doesn't offer any monitoring tool for that. I tried many tools but so far I couldn't find any that allows reading the CPU (and/or motherboard) temperature in this laptop model. The only temperature that can be read is the HD temperature. There is a tool called Hardware Sensors Monitor ( http://www.hmonitor.com/) whose author is willing to expand the temperature readout support for models currently not supported ( http://www.hmonitor.net/notebooks.html). In order to do that you will have to send him some information file about your BIOS. I can't do that right now because my laptop is not available at the moment. But I am probably going to do that later.

 

One important thing: I would describe your fan problem in great detail to the Fujitsu support. Do not put up with a solution that doesn't work. Contact them again. Too many people just do not contact technical support at all, the result of which is that support says they haven't heard of that problem before, and many just give up too easily when they are told something is normal. And fan problems are special problems since they are not malfunctions in the sense of the laptop not working at all. Therefore, many manufacturers tend to ignore such complaints unless more and more people start complaining about it.

I read about other Fujitsu laptop models that also had fan problems and they finally got solved by a BIOS update. But it took quite a lot of complaints until this happened.

 

Ticktack, what other Fujitsu laptop models also have fan problems? Or are those problems no longer existant?

 

****, now I feel like a real n00b. The main noise source was the HD after all . I put a little piece of soft and thick fabric between HD bay and notebook's body to prevent vibration and noise levels dropped quite noticeably. Especially the spinning noise which I thought was the graphics card fan is now minimal compared to previous. Funny how the sound circulates because I could have swored that the noise came out from the left ventilation hole before I put my ears near to an inch from the notebook...

BTW, would it be somehow possible to bind HOME and END buttons to those application launch buttons on top of the notebook? I'm a programmer and I need HOME and END quite a lot and it's inconvenient to always press the Fn button. I wonder why they haven't used all the space available to add these extra buttons to the keyboard, sigh.

 

@Sph1nx: Good to hear that you could solve your noise problem. I also noticed that the HD is quite a noisemaker in my laptop. And as you said it is mainly due to the vibration transferred from the HD to the whole laptop case. I have not experimented yet with fabric around the HD bay in order to reduce that vibration but I noticed that the noise level varied considerably depending on the surface the laptop was placed on. What kind of fabric did you use? I mean where did you get it from?

@Momo26: I don't remember the names of the other Fujitsu laptop models that also had fan problems. But I'll google a bit to see whether I can find some of the info again. I didn't keep track of which problems got solved either.

 

Alright thanks. Ya, because I hadn't heard of any real defects on the Fujitsu machines so I am curious to see what problems may exist.

 

@Momo26:
On the Amilo forum ( http://www.amilo-forum.de) several people complain about problems with the following laptops: Amilo A1667g, Amilo M3438, Amilo M1420. The forum is in German, so I don't know if you can read it. In this forum here, cof wrote about the Fujitsu LifeBook S7020 "There is a small fan that is on constantly which becomes noticeable if you're in a quiet room." ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=33727). You even posted in that thread. Also on this forum, slunce complained about a noisy fan in the Amilo A1667g ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=32863) and dutty replied that this problem was solved by a BIOS update.

 

@Sph1nx: Where did you put the fabric? On the sides of the HD bay? Below? I tried pieces of paper tissue on the sides but that didn't work well. Actually, I found there is not much space left to put any padding in without preventing the bay from being put back into place.

 

but Amilo isn't Fujitsu. Amilo is just rebranded Uniwill models. In the US, the Amilo does not exist and Uniwill is sold by other brands and names. Thus problems associated with Amilo are problems that should be associated with Uniwill, the manufacturer.

 

Never even heard of 'Uniwill'...

 

I got the fabric from my wife's handicraft supplies I think it's some kind of felt (not sure if that's a correct translation). I put the fabric below the HD and you're right there's not too much space there. If you put too thick piece of fabric there, the mouse buttons under touchpad won't work anymore because of too much pressure from HD.

Yup, Uniwill is one of these Chinese/Korean/whatever notebook factories and it makes only barebone notebooks for different known brands such as Fujitsu. These brands equip the notebooks then how they will like adding different kind of CPU's, graphics cards, HD's, software bundles etc. So, you can't buy a notebook branded 'Uniwill' from store. Aopen is another this kind of barebooks making factory. Asus has also "barebook history" but it makes nowadays notebooks under Asus trademark too. What else... yeah Chinese Lenovo made Thinkpads already before IBM sold the whole thing to them.

I don't know who makes and where E8020 and other Fujitsu's Lifebook business line laptops. I hope it's not Uniwill because I don't think their quality is too high.

 

@Sph1nx: Thanks for your tip with the felt! I'll try that. I hope it doesn't affect heat transfer too much because as you may have seen yourself there is something like a copper plate in a part of the area below the HD bay.

 

@Sph1nx: Could you check one last thing for me, please? How does your CPU fan behave? Mine goes on after about an hour of using the latop (with no CPU intensive applications running) and does not go off anymore by itself. On the contrast, after starting the laptop everything is fine. No running fan and the fan even responds to the CPU being stressed or not, that is it goes on and off again. But later the fan runs permanently, no matter what I do with the laptop. It runs slowly and you can hardly feel the air coming out from the upper right corner but to me that fan is clearly audible in a quiet room.

Does your Lifebook E8020 show the same behavior?
By the way, in order to be able to hear what the CPU fan sounds like in case it is not running, you can start calculating the faculty (n!) of 99999 (or any high number) in the Windows calculator (available in its scientific view mode). The Windows calculator will ask you from time to time if you want to stop the calculation because it will take very long, so you can always stop it.

 

Sure Tick, I'll get back to this after after holidays. I got the notebook just a couple of weeks ago and I haven't had much time to use it yet. I try to play with it as much as my wife lets me during holidays

 

I think most of Alienware's Intel based laptops are Uniwill. And of course Fujitsu-Siemen's Amilo line (rebranded by Siemen, not Fujitsu themselves). I really would like to know who Fujitsu's Lifebook line ODM is.. I'm guessing it's Quanta.

 

Hmmm. Well the Amilo Pro v2010 is pretty bad - fan goes on a 48C and off at 40C. So it's on/off/on/off etc... Noisy. I'll mod it or sell it. Um. I'd guess moding it would be hard !!!

 

Maybe some program out there that will regulate fan usage to your liking...

 

@carveone: At least your laptop allows temperature monitoring. The complete Lifebook E-series does not, so I can't check the temperature settings for the fan.
But those settings that you have are a real nuisance. I guess mine are probably similar. I don't understand why Fujitsu uses such settings. They are far too low. The CPUs used in current laptops can endure considerably more than that without taking damage or even without reducing their lifetime. Modern laptop CPUs can easily operate at temperatures of around 60 °C. Temporarily, they can actually get as hot as 90 to 100 °C without taking permanent damage and this is when the emergency shutoff switches the laptop off. So, I really can't understand the point of setting the fan off temperature to only 40 °C. No wonder the fan runs very often or does not go off anymore when the latop is used in a room that is just a lit bit warmer.

I already tried several programs out there that allow undervolting laptops but they didn't help. No real effect. The E8020D already has Intel's Enhanced SpeedStep technology that clocks down and lowers the voltage when the CPU is idle. Those programs (like NHC or RMClock) allow to set the voltages a little bit lower than the standard values, but as I said it does not make much of a difference as far as the running of the CPU fan is concerned.