DM4 fan always on BIOS setting, and general noise

Hey everyone. My sister just got a DM4 from Future Shop, and the first thing we noticed was that it was loud under low load conditions. A quick trip to google showed me how to go into its BIOS and disable the "fan always on" setting, but it didn't say why that was enabled by default. Most laptops don't constantly have their fans on, so there shouldn't be any problems with turning it off, right? Do you have yours always on or not?



Also, even with that setting turned to disabled, the hard drive produces quite a bit of noise without the fan. Is that normal? I know its a 7200RPM drive so its bound to be a bit louder than my 5400RPM drive, but is yours as loud when seeking and also at idle? Sounds like a constant woosh at idle, and the normal crunching when seeking, and both are very noticeable. The more laptops I get experiences with, the more I get amazed by how quiet modern Macbook(pro's) are in comparison, heh.


And while I'm asking stuff, which pieces of pre-installed software are bloatware and what is actually useful? The startup time seems slow for a laptop with components this fast, even the laptop in my sig starts up faster despite having a much slower processor and slower hard drive, so I think there's a fair bit of bloatware on the HP.

Thanks

 

I too would like to know why the default is fan on. I just went in and turned it to disable and now it is quieter, however in the summertime perhaps it might be a good idea to have it on all the time.

 

I don't see why, if its getting too hot the fan would turn on anyways. Probably close to every other modern laptop out there (or even ones within the last 5 years) have fans that are off when unneeded. Its a very strange move by HP, increasing the noise for little benefit like that.

 

If you set the option to off, would it damage the internals due to increased heat? My components (i7-640m and ATi) seem to generate the most heat in the dm4 series.

 

No, like I said the fan will always come on when it gets warm. Not sure why anyone would want it blowing so loudly when the computer is idle.

 

OK I'll turn the setting to off and see if there is a heat difference.

 

I know this is an old thread, sorry. I have had the same issues with my HP DV3 since new. Changing the fan setting in the bios makes no difference. Perhaps HP, being the 'honest' company just put that option in there to tease us.

Reality is, the problem is poor design / circulation / ventilation in most of the HP laptops. I'm sure it came about from the HP TX tablet series - well known for the nvidia chipset basically melting itself off of the mainboard and destroying the laptop.

So instead of being more careful with the chipset, they use the same faulty parts, but set the fan to permanent high speed. Sorry HP, the fan is NOISY and throws off so much heat, I don't need to use my furnace in the winter. I suppose I should thank Hewlett Packard for the hydro savings over the past year...

 

Did anyone find a fix to this? I just bought a pavilion g4 amd llano laptop and the fans are always on even when i've reduced the processor speed to a measly 25% and have temps of 36 degrees.

I tried turning Fans Always On to disabled in the bios but the fans decided otherwise, temps was still at 35ish degrees with a nice constant fan going.