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Starflight

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4 Posts

38478

July 15th, 2020 00:00

Incredibly loud fan noise randomly occurs.

So I've been encountering a jet-engine sounding fan level coming out of my laptop that's loud enough for every student in the lecture hall to hear. It's unbelievably annoying and I've tried everything to fix it. You think it, you got it: Dell support diagnostics, reducing process power management to 65%, turning it to power saving on battery, Troubleshooting fans and other settings, CLEANING the fans frequently, updating to the newest BIOS. It occurs when I'm not even gaming. I really don't understand what's going on and I have only had this laptop for 1 year. Please, please, please... someone help me. I need this for my university work and I won't ever be able to open my laptop on campus grounds if this issue keeps happening when I did nothing wrong to my own laptop.

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AdrianG001

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4K Posts

July 16th, 2020 08:00

If it sounds like the fans are running at a higher speed most of the time then there are two common causes.

  1. A process is running in the background that is causing the computer to run hotter. Find out how to access the CPU monitor for your operating system. They all have one built in. It should be fairly low when you aren’t using the computer. If it isn’t then the next step would be to find out why – perhaps a separate question on Quora about that.
  2. It could be dirty. Especially if someone smokes around the computer or if you live in a dusty house. I have to tear my computers apart and clean them out every couple of years. I always have dogs and they tend to make for a lot of dust. The dust clogs the vents and prevents proper air flow so they computers heat up. If you don’t know how to do this then I would recommend paying someone to do it for you.

If it sounds unusual – like a grinding noise, or some other noise that’s deeper than the usual fan noise – then the bearings in the fan are probably going bad. Depending on the computer, fans can be cheap. They can also cost more than you would expect for a fan if they have heat sensors built in or are part of some intricate design. That’s more common in laptops.

Thermal maintenance is not something to take lightly. This is something you should figure out. We’ll help you as much as we can but if you don’t know much about computers then it would be a good idea to take it to a professional to get it checked out.

Of course, backup your data if you can.

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