Fan comes on a lot

I just got my dv6t quad and I noticed my fan comes on A LOT. I keep it stable on a desk and it comes on quite abit. And it's pretty loud actually.

The laptop has the core i7 2.2ghz and the 7470m (basically 6490m) radeon HD.
I was playing bejeweled that comes with it (not a very intense game) and it came on. I left bejeweled and walked away and came back, the fan is still on. I'm not sure what program to get to test the temp etc. but the computer has never felt hot to the touch really "slightly" warm at times and that's even after playing graphically intense video games for a little while. What gives? In the bios there is an option for the fan that says "always on" and it's set to true. Now it's not ALWAYS on there are moments of respite but I'd say MOST of the time it's running pretty loud and MOST of the time I'm online or using a word processor etc. I mean I JUST got it in recently.

Is this normal for this laptop?
Is this potentially damaging to the fan to be running so much?

 

I have an older Pavilion with integrated graphics and any time I do anything remotely graphical the fan comes on. Historically, HP doesn't seem to have invested much in quiet cooling and I think laptops generally have a hard time with heat. So I wouldn't be surprised if the fans came on for a dedicated card, as in your case. You might try HWMonitor to look at temperatures and see if you can change the BIOS fan settings without overheating.

Running so much is probably less damaging to the fan than it would be to the chips if the fan wasn't doing its job. My fan hasn't died yet. At least you'll have an easy way of knowing if it's still running.