Is there any way to quiet the fan on the Z?

I did a good bit of tweaking to running programs.
Also, when it's on Silent mode, the CPU is throttled quite a bit.

I got it down to 35-40 degrees idling/typing on battery.
But the fan is still on and pretty audible in a quiet classroom.

Any advice?

 

When you set it in Silent mode, also set the windows profile on energy saving or max battery life. You can set it in the ssytem tray.

Put it in Stamina. Disable Aero. Disable flash in your browser. Do a clean install so that you have minimum amount of processes running.

Also you can try undervolting.

 

Silent mode throttles the CPU to the minimum voltage setting that RM Clock allowed, so there's really no point unless I want it cooler when the CPU is very active. Right?

Is there any way I can have Aero automatically disabled when I put it on battery power? And enabled when plugged in?

 

Does anyone know?

 

Yes there is a program called Vista Battery Saver
http://www.codeplex.com/vistabattery

also, you should check out the Vista Tweaks Thread in the Windows Forum, those tweaks can help make windows run faster and more energy efficient, which makes the laptop run cooler and maybe quieter

 

I think you're right. How many processes do you have running? Do you run a virus scanner? which one?

I think it would be possible, have you tried looking in the Windows energy settings?

 

I have just under 60 processes running. Yeah, I have AVG, but it's set to only scan when I tell it to.

 

Getting down from 60 to 50 processes could make a difference in how often the fan comes on.

I'm a bit of an extremist when it comes to keeping my system clean. I do not install AV that runs in memory. And i remove all processes that it adds.

So you did set the Windows profile to energy saving/max battery and you went through those settings?

My Z was really quiet when I had all settings right. The fan still came on like 50% of the time, but it was not very audible.

 

I don't get it. Mine coming from P1 optimized and running with 84 processes all the time.

 

Wow, that's even more than my semi-clean Vista Home Premium install. I got like 61 or 62 with AVG running. What programs have you added?

 

Wow, that's pretty cool... only 50

Yeah, I've gone through all the Windows and Vaio power settings, and through a few tweak sites to optimize Vista performance / power use.

I don't suppose you could point me to a site that tells me which services are ok to disable?
I've looked around, and some of the sites have services listed under "tweaked" that have made my laptop spit out errors before.

AV that doesn't run in memory? Could you tell me more about that? (sorry, kinda clueless here)

 

I meant AV that doesn't install processes to run resident in memory. But all AV scanners do. Installing Avast for example will add about 8 processes.

So I install Avira, I monitor what processes in installs and manually remove them. I disable some settings in Avira. Then I have a Virusscanner at hand to scan suspicious files, but there are no processes running in memory.

By the way I did not mean that I run Vista. I run XP.

I heard this is a good guide for tweaking Vista:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

Indexing would be a good service to disable as it can cause CPU load.

 

i don't think i can get vista down to 50-ish processes on vista...

 

It gets hotter / noisier than I'd like it to be sometimes... Not sure what to do about it...

The only thing I haven't done yet is undervolting (because silent mode puts it on 6 x 9.2v I think, which is pretty low, as low as RM Clock would go).

Is there anything else I can try?

By the way, where's the air intake? Is it the vents in the middle of the bottom of the laptop?

 

If you did everything on the list there isn't much else.

- use 'silent' CPU/cooling performance mode
- use a battery saving power profile, and customize it to your minimum requirements
- use a 'no flash/no script' plugin for Firefox
- do a clean install and tweak Vista to run with as little processes and services as possible. The fewer processes you have running, the better battery life.
- disable Aero interface.
- work with applications with small footprint. For example Opera instead of IE, Kompozer instead of Dreamweaver.
- Uninstall AV protection. If you know what you're doing AV isn't all that necessary.

Hardware modifications:
-Applying better thermal paste on the CPU.
-Changing the fan for a quieter one.
-Replacing the CPU with a cooler one.

The air intake might be on the bottom. Maybe lifting it will help.

 

I did everything but the hardware stuff (don't wanna open it up).

It's weird, the notebook gets much hotter when it's on Silent.
I know the fan is on a lower speed, but I figured the cpu wouldn't get too hot...