P150HM. Fans randomly turn on and off (even after Bios-Update)

Hi everyone,

finally decided to buy a P150HM after literally reading every post in this forum.

I was just curious if its normal that the fans seeminly get louder randomly every couple seconds and then becoming quiet again (in office mode).

Before I flashed the Bios and EC the fans were unbearable. After the Bios-Update its much better now, but the fans still randomly turn on and off it seems.


Thanks in advance for any advises.

 

Yes, its "normal" theres nothing you can do about it. The fans are just loud.

 

Thanks for the reply, but I don't mind loud fans, as long as the fan activity is steady. Problem is that the fans are constantly jumping between quiet and audible in office mode every couple seconds for seemingly no reason at all.

Is that normal?

So hard to concentrate and so annoying

 

yeah, the fan table is weird on P150HM. Unfortunately we have no access to modify it.

 

This is actually the reason I sold my XPS 15. I'm shocked to see this laptop has the same problem considering it has independent HSF's. Looks like I might skip it and wait for Ivy Bridge after all...

Unless you're saying the fans ramp up and down with you doing literally nothing! Then it could be there's some monitoring program in the background causing the issue. If that's not it, you can go into power options and throttle the CPU so it generates less heat and the fans stay off or quiet.

 

This is partially the reason why the fans bump up and down. They're set to a specific threshold at which the CPU/GPU temps will cause them to ramp up. Keep the machine cool or downclock the CPU/GPU and they'll never have the fans ramp up.

The "pulsing" is another issue entirely. It's related to the way the EC "polls" to see if it should continue running at the current speed. At idle, it will be fairly noticeable. At higher loads, you will almost never notice because the fans will already be running at full speed or close to it.

 

My Eurocom Racer CPU fan rarely even comes on. The GPU fans only come on [other than slow idle] when running 3D intense apps. Raising the back of the machine made a huge difference in overall cooling.

 

Thanks for the replys everyone.

Yeah, the fans basically go up and down without me doing anything (just surfing or reading stuff). As I said, I dont mind audible fans, as long as the fan activity stays on the same level. Super annoying when the Notebook goes from quiet to audible and then back to quiet again every 5 seconds or so.

Btw: What monitoring program in the background do you speak of? I have no bloatware, did a fresh install, only the usual stuff (antivirus, drivers, etc.).

I checked the temperature with HWmonitor in office mode: CPU is 40°C - 50°C. GPU stays around 40°C. Harddrive is around 40°C too. My room temperature is like 10°C - 15°C (winter in Germany ). Seems fairly normal to me.

Probably gonna buy a notebook cooling pad, maybe it gets better. Can anyone recommend one?

 

Is your graphics card undervolted?


I would like to know the model # of fans everyone has. It seems European resellers have access to different fan models. I want to know more about this especially if they are quieter...


This looks totally different from the fans on my w870cu.

I remember a review with a picture of a fan removed, and the brand was also different...

 

Could you post the specs of your rig? With such low ambient temperatures that seems a bit high. Especially the HDD. As many have stated, undervolting is a great option for keeping temps down. It also allows you to control clock speeds at all voltages. For instance; I keep my 6990's at .750v with 100/150 clocks for all office use. Even video playback is good at these clocks. I never see the temps rise above 36c.

For the CPU you can limit the amount of active cores. Run msconfig and set the cores to 4. That should put you in dual core mode with 2 extra threads. However you will have to change it back to 8 if you want those cores back and it requires a reset each time.

I use a Cooler Master CF-19 cooler. I bought it for my P150HM (previous laptop) and it worked like a charm. It lowered temps on average 5c. I hear the Notepal's also work wonders.

 

My specs:

i7 2670QM 2,2-3,1 GHz
GTX 580M
8 Gigabyte Ram
500 HDD

My original question is just whether this kind of fan behaviour is considered normal for the P150HM. I prefer not to undervolt or play around with my laptop since I am not exactly tech-savy and don't want to loose my warranty. Really don't wanna return the notebook because of these fans since everything else is awesome

 

Answer to your question, the behavior you are experiencing will be considered normal in terms of warranty support. If you send it in for any reason nothing will be done to change this behavior.

 

Here is the info from my cpu-fan:

Clevo part number: 6-31-w860s-200 APOWER
Fan info: A-POWER BS6005MS-U79