laptop fan always on

I have a gateway MT3707. I love it, and the only gripe I have is that the laptop fan is always on and running. Not excessively loud, just thats its constantly running. My brother had a gateway, and it did the same thing. He recently bought a new computer and its dead silent.

Are constantly running laptop fans an issue that gateways have?

 

I have a similar issue on my CX210X. Sometimes the fan is running constantly, others not. Very strange, BIOS update didn't do anything to it...I wish I could fix it >_<.

 

if you use vista and put it in performance mode, the fan will constantly stay on because its sucking power and heating it up

 

Now let me translate....If you use Vista Performance mode the CPU clock and voltage will be locked at it highest setting causing the CPU to run hotter than it would if it were using speedstep in Balanced mode. LINK

 

The performance mode does not necessarily lock the CPU at the highest multiplier as it still can underclock in that mode (though this can differ with different software controlling the speedstep) - However, something that can cause this behavior is dust getting inside the laptop, blocking the airway and forcing the fan to be on for more than it does in a normal situation, if this might be the case, take a look at the cooling guide.
Another thing that can have effect on the heat dissipation of the computer is changing the operating system, Vista (bless it) is well known to be a heavier burden on the computer compared to Windows XP. Also, if you are running linux but don't have the proper drivers, this might be the case (though I don't have much experience with Linux)

 

mine is always on. AMD turion, keeps the whole thing cool and nice. btw my fan is dead quiet. t-1616

 

That's not the issue. I'm can very well tell the difference when the CPU fan is on due to heat. Duh, hot air comes out. But I'm using my laptop right now, I just booted it up (was off all night) and the fan has stayed on since then. And I'm not doing anything CPU / GPU intensive.

Some sort of bug in most gateways apparently...

 

Um, I wouldnt exactly say "cool" both me and you know well the Turion x2 in the T-1616 laptop runs quite warm at 55-60 c at idle and reaches a surprizing 80c underload. My t-6815 core2duo 1.5ghz version of that exact laptop never reaches ~55c at full load.

With identical cooling solutions in both c2d and Turionx2 T-series the AMD runs at shockingly higher temp becuase it can not turn off its L2 cache like c2d can and since thats 60% of the CPU you can see why it runs at such high temps.

While those temps are normal for the t-1616 one just has to say "wow thats hot" when they grab the bottom left side of the unit even when its idle. Others that own the t-1616 are very concerned about what they believe to be "heat issue" with AMD based gateway t-series. Again, while those temps are normal using "cool" is a complete misrepresentation of how that laptop runs. On the other hand my c2d has the fan completely off while idle as the unit simply does no produce any heat.

Its really quite shocking the different between the two.

 

yeah ive heard it before dude ^^ but i dont GRAB on the underside of my laptop every now and then and cry god its soo hot!, its at the top side. the left palmrest, where i use to type and stuff and it just gets warm, how warm? lukewarm. the fan is always on and i leave space for it to breathe.

some t-1616 owners of the AMD series are just too sensitive. ive felt dells and toshibas and even asus and acer run much hotter than people complain this one to be.

at least this laptop doesnt need propping up so air can get under, it all comes out on the left side.

so imho its pretty cool for a user like me. 60-80 temps hardly noticable unless u keep grabbing the bottom complaining how hot it is.

 

I have check the AMD site for the T-1616 Turion. And Temps should be 35-43 C, with a max temp of 95 C. Now with 55-60 even 63-64 sometimes while idle i think that is hot, others may think that for this CPU that is normal, but is not. I have compare the temp on my with the one they have on BB for display and there is a big diff. when in comes to temp. and that one is on all day long. Bottom line is that the T-1616 runs hot even when is idle. I had other laptops and even under full load they never when past 52-53 C under hours of usage.

 

I’ve been searching the web for hours how to change the settings that under Vista the laptop fan would not be always running while on AC power. I've tried multitudes of power configurations. When I run on AC the fan is constantly on, although it’s not excessively loud. If running on batteries, the notebook is silent. Under Windows XP the fan turned on only when the temperature rose above a certain level, regardless whether it was running on battery or plugged in. I thought it had to do something with the absence of nVidia PowerMizer settings under Vista. I tried SpeedFan, Notebook Hardware Control (NHC), RivaTuner – some of them don’t work on x64, some don’t have signed drivers etc. I read that one guy even soldered a resistor to reduce the fan speed.

Well, the solution to silence my HP nw9440 mobile workstation notebook was really simple:

In BIOS under System Configuration | Device Configurations there is a setting called “Fan Always on while on AC Power” and it was “Enabled”. Vista’s ACPI was actually conforming to this BIOS setting and XP’s ACPI was ignoring this setting. I just disabled it and the laptop is much more pleasant to use – even without earplugs I nevertheless put a CD box under the touchpad to improve cooling – so that the fan doesn’t need to turn on that often.

I hope this helps someone. The same should work on other more recent HP laptops running Vista (nx9420, nx8420, 8510p, 8510w, 8710p, 8710w), and presumably also on Dell, Gateway, Asus...