Possible fix to 8510p's fan issue/high temps

First and foremost thanks to Destiny for reminding me about this.

To help stop the fan from constantly running at med settings or higher and lower the temperatures, you should open up your laptop and clean out the dust. This will be a guide on how to do so. The process itself is very easy and straight forward. You'll need a can of air. Pictures courtesy of Destiny. I just put in the thumbnails, but if you check out Destiny's post, you can get larger pictures.

1. Discount your laptop's power and remove an external devices, such as, your mouse.
2. Remove the battery.
3. Discharge your laptop by pressing down and holding the power button for 30 seconds.
4. Discharge yourself by touching something metal. This is to prevent any static electricity from damaging your laptop.
5. Flip your laptop over and find the screws for the keyboard. These can be found by looking for the little picture of a keyboard next to the right screws.
6. Loosen the screws until they won't come out anymore. Note that you cannot remove the screws.

7. Time to remove the keyboard. Up near the top of the keyboard you should see these little nobs. For example, there's one between the ESC and F1 buttons. Pull all of the nobs toward you.

8. Gently lift up the keyboard from the top edge (the edge with the nobs). Pull out the keyboard slightly once you lift it up. There's little tabs on the lower edge of the keyboard tucked under the palm rests.
9. Flip the keyboard over to expose the system internals.


Although the picture has the keyboard cord removed, you do NOT have to unplug either your keyboard or mouse.
10. On the bottom of the keyboard you'll probably find some dust where the vent on the keyboard is, clean that off. Might want to shake the keyboard a little to remove any junk underneath the keyboard.
11. Now it's the fan's turn. Loosen the screws to the fan. There's two of them. Again you can only loosen them and NOT remove them.

12. Gently lift up the fan and remove it from the internal connection. Pull up on the wires until you can carefully remove the cord from the little plastic connector holder. No I can't think of a better name. Do NOT just pull on the plastic holder because you should NOT remove the plastic holder that's connected to the motherboard.

13. Admire the amount of dust. Especially the likely big piece of dust to the left of the fan (the area on the side of the laptop that spews out air).

14. I removed the film of dust with my fingers. It was a couple millimeters thick so it was easy to remove. You could also use cue tips to remove the excess left over if the film doesn't come off in one go.
15. Use can of air on the fan itself to clean it out.
16. Use can of air and blow some out of the bottom of the laptop.

Before you close up there's something else you can do to lower temps.
If you feel up to it, you can also apply Arctic Silver 5 to further decrease your laptop's temperature. Here is a guide Destiny made to aid you in the process. There are also plenty of pictures.

17. Put everything back together.

Cleaning everything out provided a DRAMATIC change for me. The dust on the side of the fan was literally about 2.5 millimeters thick with one of the sides blackened. Before the fix my fans were always on at least med speed. Now, they're on the lowest setting so they're barely audible or not on at all.

For a temp comparison, using HWMonitor (I'm just going to list them in order from top to bottom, I don't feel like writing out the names at the moment):

Before: 53 - 58 - 58 - 49 - 28 - 60 -65 - 62 - 59 - 59 - 41 - 34
After: 44 - 46 - 46 - 36 - 25 - 47 - 50 - 49 - 47 - 47 - 30 - 34

Temperatures I'm most concerned about:

CPU Core 1 and 2 went from 59 to 47, roughly 20% drop
GPU Core went from 41 to 30, roughly 27% drop

 

Thanks for your tip jin.
there were some strange temperature differences reported here, concerning the Temps of the HD 2600. See the Thread about the HP 8510p new bios, where i posted temps of my CPU / GPU.

For the GPU temps some remarkable differences have shown up, and i thought i can´t believe the temp readings of everest, speedfan, hw monitor.

My temps for the hd 2600 were 23°C at idle and the temps never went above 37°C during load. Some users reported the same temps, and others reported nearly twice the temps that i measured on my 8510p.

Maybe it´s after all a matter of cleaning, and maybe it might be a difference in the thermal compound used. ( or maybe it´s just badly applicated in some cases)

Thanks a lot for sharing your insights in this matter. I think now my temp readings are correct, and don´t have to worry about wrong temperatures anymore - it really gave me the creeps.

btw, noise was never a problem for me. My 8510P is very silent since i flashed the bios, that was released in december.

 

Right!
I had some spare time today so I thought I will clean my out

Im posting some pics adding to the description from jin07
Please follow Jin07's steps and use this post as a more 'visual' guide

[Jin07's STEP 6]
Start with undoing 2 screwes on the bottom of the laptop - ones next to a little keyboard icons. They dont come out! When You hear a click, that is the furthest way they go.




[Jin07's STEP 7]
Turn the laptop over, open the lid.
On top of the keyboard there are 4 slide locking tabs.
Locked




UNLOCKED - just use a small flat screwdriver to push them towards yourself.



[Jin07's STEP 8]
Lift the keyboard up from its top side, and push it away so you can see cables from the touchpad and keyboard attached to the motherboard.




They both have a smal locking device that you need to pull up and you should be able to take them out.



[Jin07's STEP 11 & 12]
Now you can take and put the keyboard on the side. Lets have a look on the fan. There are two screws holding it with the motherboard, and a power supply for it. Undo the screws, gently pull the power supply connector up.




That is it


Look on the amount of dust I had That was last cleaned out aroud 2-3 months ago.
Clean this out and you can assemble the notebook together following all steps but in the reverse order



Have fun and from now on your temps should be around 5-6C lower

 

Not really. Heat and noise is the price for buying a top of the line powerful laptop. That is why Apple took the clever route of dressing the powerbook in aluminum to better dispatch heat.

 

Except that if it's on your lap, that heat goes strait to your body. Not fun.

Either way, I remember the previous nc8430/nw8440 having similar fan issues, and one way to address them was to use NHC (Notebook hardware Control). I'm not sure if it'll work on the 8510 series, though.

 

I dont complain on heat really. The only thing I find annoying is that the fan works on CPU usage instead on temp. But cleaning out the dust really help in lowering temps and noise. My laptop is much much quieter now. I would say silent compared to previously being able to hear it during the night while downloading things.

 

hmm, well.... i never experienced that my laptop was too loud. what i was talking of was that after latest bios update the fan got less noisy. don´t get that wrong. at least my 8510p is not loud at all.

and heat was never a problem for me. even after hours of rendering or gaming the laptop was not hot. it blew warm air though it´s vents to the outside. and like 10 secs after i finished a rendering that was running for hours the fan got silent.

even if this is a top of the line laptop, it´s not having problems with heat, not at all.

and btw. the early macbooks were really hot, and at least from my point of view the thickness of the macbook was probably the reason they did not have a good venting.
and hmm, aluminium was most likely the choice of weight.

 

Schoko, how would you describe silent? Maybe we should compare noise with some recordings?? What do you think??

 

hmm, how about the sound when the laptop starts up.

it is designed to run the fan at full speed, cause after a system crash the cpu nad gpu could be very hot, and by this feature HP can prevent some damage.

that sound is what i would call loud. and thats what i am experiencing when i am rendering. but when i´m working with photoshop, illustrator, maya , rhino..... the laptop is actually very silent. sometimes the fan goes up to the medium fanspeed, when i´m having huge 3d models displayed in shaded mode, with hardware mapping.
but even that is not noticable when you move more than 1 meter away from the laptop.

 

Thanks for putting up the pics Destiny. I was kind of lazy since it didn't look like people needed the thread. Also, you don't have to remove the keyboard and trackpad connection. I folded it over onto the palm rests.

 

Thanks for putting up the pictures.

I'll try this sometime this week since I'll have a lot more free time (almost done exams!). My computer sounds like a vacuum cleaner. Hopefully this helps eliminate (or slightly alleviate) the problem.

 

It would be nice to see how much dust did you collect on your vacuum cleaner

 

Didn't even need a vacuum myself. The dust clumped up and got burned on one end so it stayed together. If you need any help, feel free. Hopefully this guide helps you.

 

I guess I put the words wrong hehe

 

jin07, you might add this to the first post as an extra step.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3339276

 

i suggest that after cleaning your fan put an air filter at the air intake of your notebook to keep your fan and cooling fins clean. I'm using the air filter on my new 8510p notebook and works pretty well in keeping my notebook innards clean.

 

Doesn't an air filter keep your innards clean, at the cost of a slightly less effective heat dissipation through a decline in efficient airflow?
Still, replacing a filter takes a whole less of effort than opening up and cleaning the bowels of your machine.

I'm also having examns coming up, but i will definitely perform this and the thermal paste tweak to silence my notebook.

A little anecdote:

The noise and heat generated differs strongly on 8510p models.
My brother has a 8510p with an identical (bios, drivers, most applications) software and hardware configuration as mine, but not from the same manufacturing batch (his is a few months younger).
Mine has always been close to a vacuum cleaner, while his remains nearly inaudible under the same conditions (e.g. Viewing/Rendering same scene, Gaming same game, encoding video material)

It seems a probable explanation, like with all hardware, that some versions have better installed cooling elements/paste. Or just a better baked CPU die.
So i assume that when your 8510p is loud like hell, the margin for improvement isn't that big.

Still, hoping those tweaks will prove me wrong.

 

Maybe he was using his in a less dusted enviroment? Not using it in bed etc. You would be suprised how much dust those little fans can suck out of the air...

 

what filter , and where to get said filter ?

 

Unjustified: I'm guessing your laptop has more dust in it like Destiny alluded to. I have an 8510p from the very first batch (ordered it right when they started offering them) and it is not loud at all. However, it was loud before I cleaned out the fan and vents.


I'm not a huge fan of putting in an air filter. For one, you'd probably have to replace it more often than you would clean out your laptop. Cleaning out the fan takes about 4 mins, if that. Plus, by the time you get to the filter, you'd be in a prime position to grab the dust off the side vent. In my experience, it's the side vent that really gets caked with dust. The fan module itself didn't pick up much.

 

you can use the one that is used for the airconditoner ( 3M brand, product name is "filtrete") can buy easily off the shelves. just cut a portion that can cover the air intake grill then you can use scotch tape to fix it. normally i change my fitler every week. prevention is better than cure. and i don't have to remove any screws ,keeping my notebook casing integrity intact.

 

Any sort of air filter will restrict intake, meaning your notebook will run a little hotter and the fans will need to work harder

though it wont be a pain cleaning out the fans in the long run

 

right on target flipfire, my fan runs a little harder than usual to keep my notebook temp same as without an air filter. I can afford to replace a damaged fan than a damaged MoBo.

 

I have an 8510p that is 6 months old and the fan was getting louder and after reading this thread on the dust i opened up the case and found quite a bit of dust buildup on the fins. I removed the dust and at the same time cleaned off the old thermal paste and used Arctic Silver 5 and the fan is only noticeable when working hard.

I just updated the processor today from a T7300 2.0Ghz merom to a T9300 2.5Ghz penryn bought on ebay and the new processor is much cooler, about 5 to 7 degrees C cooler. I am using vmware workstation as well as running an antivirus scan right now and my temps are much cooler than before and I barely hear the fan. The older processor would have had the fans spinning up to be very noticeable by now. I did the cpu replacement in about 15 minutes. I have 4Gb ram but am running Vista Business 32 bit for now. I had to do 2 bios updates to be ready to put in the new processor.

So for me the processor upgrade gives me better muscle, much quieter and hopefully better battery life as well.

Gary Bonde

 

what bios version are you using?

 

I am using the newest 8510p bios F11

 

The amount of dust in your 8510p is likely to be only the effect of the problem (the ever running fan), not its cause.

I fortunately have a 4-years-on-site-next-business-day-HP-care-pack, and I will use it until my 8510p gets quiet. I think this is the only effective way to notify HP about the fan issue.

The first visit of a HP authorized service company at my home was last week. The repairperson did replace the whole fan/heatpipe unit of my 8510p (including the dust).

Because there was a lot of dust in the radiator, the repairperson thought that he had catched the cause. He switched on the notebook, the fan did not run instantly and so the first service visit was over.

Five minutes after the repairperson was gone, the fan started running constantly again. Maybe not as loud as before, but still without break.

Tomorrow, I will call the HP service pack line again. And I will repeat this procedure until my 8510p gets quiet.

I am NOT willing to do experimental things like patching a DSDT table, playing with the settings of some ATI control center or using third party tools like 'Notebook Hardware Control' or 'RMClock' to lower the symptoms of the problem (by slowing down my notebook).

I paid for a HP business notebook with an expensive care pack, and it has to be quiet when idle. This is my humble opinion. And I think HP has to learn this.

 

Yeah, the problem begins due to the limits set on the fan by HP. After that, the fan gradually causes the main vent to become blocked with dust. As a consequence, the fan then needs to be on a higher setting to keep the notebook cool. Then more dust is trapped by the vent. Classic example of a positive feedback loop. Good job HP.

 

LordSchweinebacke, I am really curious to see what they will actually do about it...
Keep us posted.

BTW. What country are you servicing yours??

 

as what i see the main problem is the accumulation of dust on the heat sink and fan. If you will inspect the air intake vent the grills have a very big spacing and there's no grill net installed ( a metal cover with small holes place near each other ). so definitely big piece of dirt will be sucked inside then got entangled in the fan and the heatsink. My old and reliable asus m2c have this grill net on it's air intake ( placed on the left side, exhaust vent at the back ). So i just clean the entagled dust on top of the net. no need for me to open the fan cover very often.
That's the reason why i come out of this idea to install an air filter at the air intake of my hp 8510p. so far works great for me i don't need to worry that my fan and heat sink will get caked with dust.

 

i'm also using the same bios. but sadly i need to wait until my warranty expire before i can do the upgrade. anyway thanks for the info
cheers

 

will the 8510p run any quieter with XP compared to Vista?

 

I wouldnt think so... It should run the same or a bit louder. At least that is what I experienced.

 

When I cleaned out my laptop for the first time I didn't notice any dust build up on the heat sink.

 

I completely agree. I find it ridiculous that everyone is trying to explain the fan problems with "Did you remember to turn off the fan always on option in BIOS" and "It's just accumulated dust".

Accumulated dust in a brand new unpackaged 8510p? Not likely. Accumulated dust in a brand new unpackaged 8510p which was opened and checked for dust? Even more unlikely.
Accumulated dust in a brand new 8710W wich had its mobo and cooling system exchanged because of the problem and verified by an Onsite person to be hardware design problem that varies between hw versions?

Come on people, these problems have been verified by HP, i have heard it from the service personel themselves.

My wife's 8510p was loud when it was opened from the package, my 8710W has oddly high temps even idle after changing the cooling system (the service personel said that one possible reason after changing cooling is faulty GPU memory, because there have been several cases of that too).

If your 8510p/8710w stays quiet after cleaning the dust, then good for you but FYI there are people who don't even have dust and still suffer from vacuum cleaner jet engine sound or high temps.

I completely agree: of course both of these laptops *SHOULD* make noise when they are stressed under load, but when they're idle they should be quiet by design, i've witnessed it. And when they aren't - it's HP's fault, not mine. I'm going to reclamate third time for 8710w and first time for 8510p. We'll see what they do for the problem.

8710w fan noise thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3477170#post3477170

 

Update us with the outcome!

 

Not to direct this thread away from the original topic, but does this problem also apply to the 8510w as well? I'm interested in getting an 8510p, but the advice to pop open the case and do some cleaning doesn't add up to previous HP business class standards. I have an nc8430 which has a "hot" graphics card that doesn't make the suggested noise output coming from all 8510p's.

 

If anything, the nc8430 is far louder and hotter than the 8510p/w. I've had both and the nc8430 is definitely loud and hot compared to the current notebooks, which I don't even think has a serious issue with noise or heat.

 

That's good news.

In my opinion, which of course is just an opinion, if the nc8430 happens to be louder than the 8510p/w then it appears people are overreacting a bit. When my laptop is playing games, the fan kicks in, but it's not bad enough for me to have even considered doing something about it until I caught up to this thread - but that's just me. If the 8510p/w happens to be even quieter than this laptop, I'd have no hesitation pulling the trigger on buying either.

 

You can also reduce fan speed by patching the ACPI DSDT table - I assume if you keep the fan off or lower speed for longer, less dust will be accumulated over time. See this guide - tried it myself and it works a treat for reducing fan noise if for no other reason.

http://eddietse.blogspot.com/2008/03/patching-dsdt-table-for-8510p-to-reduce.html

[ed] Of course it's essential to run a temperature monitor while experimenting with fan levels so you don't accidentally overhead your unit, and test it under stress to make sure temps remain stable with your new settings.

I recommend only altering the lowest 2 levels of fan speed and leave the higher levels as is. That reduces fan speed for most of the time, while not affecting operation under load which isn't that often anyway.