FAN Always On

Hi Guys, recently i bought this HP Compaq CQ61. inside BIOS there's a setting "Fan always on" and currently it sets at "On" as it keeps the fan constantly running. my question is, is it ok if i set it to "disable" hoping it will come at different temp? is it a good idea? just want to confirm. as long as i dont want to hear annoying fan noises, but the same time doesnt want to screw my motherboard? Thanks!

 

That's how mine has been set for 10 months and with the ALWAYS ON disabled the fans spin up and down based on heat.

When you do a BIOS update, you need to go back in and disable it again - the updates sometimes (always?) reset it to default.

 

I used to set mine like that too (ie. fan off). Then recently I decided to stop doing that and keep the fan always on when on AC.

The reason?...
I'd rather replace a fan than a system board or GPU.

You see, with the fan off, you get constant heat cycling... The temp goes up 10deg, the fan starts, the temp goes down 10deg, the fan stops, this cycle repeats every few minutes. If you have an always-on laptop (like my HTPC) this means a lot of heat cycles for the laptop components.

With the fan always on, the temps don't cycle, and they just slowly follow ambient temps.

Also, you always have airflow over all of the components in the laptop, and there are a lot of them, capacitors, power regulators, etc, etc, etc. Anyone who has worked with power electronics will know even a tiny amount of airflow makes a huge difference to heat dissipation capacity.

 

what if i keep the laptop in a cooling pad? will it make any difference in heating cycles?

 

Lol, thanks Stumo. Well said.

 

I guess it depends on what sort of airflow the cooling pad gets into the laptop. I've never used them myself, I don't see the point, unless you are doing a heavy gaming session on a poorly designed/overclocked laptop.

The point is, the main reason you would NOT have the fan always on is for noise. If you then go and set it on a noisy cooling pad (that wasn't designed specifically for that laptop) there is no point.

I'd still rather run the internal fan always on, at least then the airflow has been designed to be most effective for that laptop.

 

I think this is how my convertible tablet from Gateway died. I was wondering why the latest bios made the fans stay on all the time. 1 month after warranty, video goes caput on me. Thing powered on, but never showed any video, and I think it halted at the initialization because the gpu chip was fried from the heat cycling. So thankful I used AMEX, got their extended warranty thing, and got the entire thing refunded! Got me a dv5t now, and I'm happy the fans are silent and always on for the most part.