Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: wiskyfog on October 10, 2012, 07:52:35 AM
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when i first boot up my pc, it is quiet but as soon as I play AH or look at videos the cooling fan kicks in and it is annoying. the only way it will stop is if i put it to sleep or shutdown.
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have you tried blowing out your case with air, or is it a laptop? even with a laptop you need to clean out the cooling fins now and again. if its a tower, open it up and blow it out. DO NOT USE A VACUUM to suck it out. it creates static electricity and can fry your machine. that might help keep it cooler. also if the cooling fan is on, that means the processor is hot. i wouldn't just shut it off while its hot, I'd stop playing and just let it sit idle til it cools down.
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Which fan is it? CPU, video card, or power supply?
If it is the video card fan, there may not be much you can do about it, other than cleaning the heat sinks up and that may not do it. Some video cards are designed to kick the fan into high speed once they go into 3D mode. Video cards do run quite a bit hotter, when in 3D mode.
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have you tried blowing out your case with air, or is it a laptop? even with a laptop you need to clean out the cooling fins now and again. if its a tower, open it up and blow it out. DO NOT USE A VACUUM to suck it out. it creates static electricity and can fry your machine. that might help keep it cooler. also if the cooling fan is on, that means the processor is hot. i wouldn't just shut it off while its hot, I'd stop playing and just let it sit idle til it cools down.
I'd say that especially laptops need to be regularly cleaned as they gunk up fast - especially if they're used as their name suggests. A screaming fan can be an indication of other problems too, such as badly applied or missing thermal paste in the CPU - or badly aligned heatsink/fan.
Wiskyfog: Did you install the CPU cooler yourself or has the computer undergone any maintenance lately which involved removing the heatsink? Did you perhaps adjust bios settings for overclock? The added heat can be too much for your stock cooler.
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Maybe its a fan going bad. It may have run all the time before, but now the bearings are going and it starts making noise after it runs for a bit.
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Maybe its a fan going bad. It may have run all the time before, but now the bearings are going and it starts making noise after it runs for a bit.
IMHO worn out bearings are loud at startup and when they warm up the lubricant starts working again. The OP said his puter is quiet at start but starts screaming when stressed.
I'd say that especially laptops need to be regularly cleaned as they gunk up fast
^That! Unfortunately many laptops are designed so that removing the fan to manually clean the cooler grill is extremely toilsome.
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^That! Unfortunately many laptops are designed so that removing the fan to manually clean the cooler grill is extremely toilsome.
True but it's worth the effort. I once removed a ball of lint the size of my thumb from my wifes laptop. She keeps it on top of a wool cloth because it gets hot from the bottom - and all that lint gets sucked in the vents. Now I bought her a laptop stand with an integrated usb cooling fan. I recently blew a huge amount of dust from my macbook pro - 8 bars of compressed air goodness through the back gets rid of stuff too :)
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Remember that when using either a vacuum cleaner with a small nozzle or pressurized air to blow the dust off from cooler do NOT let the cooler run on high RPM. It will destroy the bearings quite fast or shorten their life significantly. Put something between the blades to prevent it from rotating and then clean the cooler -also rememeber to remove the obstacle after you have finished.
-C+
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Going back to Skuzzy's question: It helps to pinpoint WHICH fan. Many times in the past I've had a loud fan that started failing. I could zero in on which fan by opening the case and listening. If I wasn't sure, I could ever so slightly tap the hub of a fan I suspected and see if the buzzing changed pitch for a moment. If so, I had found the fan.
Some fans are easily replaced if that's the problem.
On the other hand you may have no problem. Your system may simply be idle, thus quiet. Running a demanding game will put your fans on high (sometimes MAX depending on hardware/drivers) to cool it down when under heavy load.
My old video card did that. Sounded like a freaking tornado whenever I ran games. There was software that allowed me to manually specify fan RPM vs GPU temps on a curve, and that helped a lot. On another card I removed the loud fan and put on an aftermarket one (more of an advanced move, don't undertake it too lightly) and that greatly reduced noise even at full load.
So it's best to see if it's a failing fan, or just a fan that's working normally but really fast. The first is fixable. The second is doing it for a reason.
EDIT: Yes I realize I'm somewhat repeating what skuzzy typed. Woops. My intent wasn't to marginalize, but to elaborate.
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IMHO worn out bearings are loud at startup and when they warm up the lubricant starts working again.
My current NZXT case has a fan RPM control bank on top. One of my secondary cooling fans has a slight wobble or is starting just barely to wear out the bearings, but it doesn't always start out making the noise. I've found that sometimes moving the RPM slider to min for a moment, then to max for a moment, will often get it back to normal sound levels. Not sure why it works, but it seems to knock it out of the rhythm that it was falling into. Just a tip in case anybody else has similar problem.
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My hd6970 sounds loud and my pc does, I wear headphones so only notice it when I log.
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when i first boot up my pc, it is quiet but as soon as I play AH or look at videos the cooling fan kicks in and it is annoying. the only way it will stop is if i put it to sleep or shutdown.
Back to the issue: is it a desktop or a laptop? There's not much advice for a laptop after all the good advice above.
But if it's a desktop, the possible solutions add on. If the fan is intact but is only running at max speed to keep things cool enough, adding a large exhaust fan to the case can significantly reduce the noise. Not to mention the importance of keeping all cooling fins clean.
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Back to the issue: is it a desktop or a laptop? There's not much advice for a laptop after all the good advice above.
But if it's a desktop, the possible solutions add on. If the fan is intact but is only running at max speed to keep things cool enough, adding a large exhaust fan to the case can significantly reduce the noise. Not to mention the importance of keeping all cooling fins clean.
Also the question is did the fan always behave like this or did it start only recently. If it has always done this the cooler may be too small or installed wrong. I once had a laptop that came back from certified service having the cpu cooler installed improperly. The fan would start screaming right from the bootup. I discarded the laptop, then a couple years later my grandfather needed a laptop so I thought I could try to see if I could find the problem. The heatsink was pinned against some other component so that it made virtually no contact to the CPU. After removing it, cleaning and applying arctic silver the laptop worked like new again.
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My hd6970 sounds loud and my pc does, I wear headphones so only notice it when I log.
The one I put aftermarket cooling on was a 6970 also. The issue is you have to have a space below the card. If you have another card in the slot immediately beneath it, aftermarket coolers may take up more room than you have clearance for.
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My parents keep their computer in a cabinet to keep it out of sight of the guests. The problem is that if you run any program that is CPU intensive, the temp inside the cabinet quickly skyrockets and the fans can be hear roaring away furiously trying to cool it.
Here is an extremely ghetto but likely effective way to remove any hot air from the computer if it is in a cabinet:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1642510 (http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1642510)
Most likely though the computer needs to be cleaned. I try to clean mine every month since it runs so much. Here is a video that simplifies how to go about this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFNI0q7YeOo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFNI0q7YeOo)
Something not mentioned in the video is that if you hold the can away from the fan a bit more, you don't need to worry about blocking the fan since the air won't be powerful enough to rotate it anyway.
Also, instead of a can of freon, you can use a standard air compressor. If you already own one, it is much cheaper and safer.
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Something not mentioned in the video is that if you hold the can away from the fan a bit more, you don't need to worry about blocking the fan since the air won't be powerful enough to rotate it anyway.
There only problem being there is that if you don't blow hard enough for the fan to rotate you're not removing any dust either :)
It needs to be blown HARD. Otherwise the fan would have blown everything away already anyway. It's easy to hold the fan still with your thumb while blowing. Or do as I do and don't care, the fan makes a funny sound when pushed to extreme revs :rofl
Charge may be right about the bearing - but I never seem to use my hardware long enough to make them fail anyway. At least I never had a failed fan so far (that I cleaned before failing that is).
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Fans are generators, when they are allowed to rotate by forced air. A DC motor, rotated by the shaft generates power. They have the potential of wrecking your temp/fan sensor on your motherboard and power supply.
I use a leaf blower to clean out my computers. A simple piece of tape on the blades of the exposed fans and a toothpick through the power supply grill taped down stops the fans from sending current back through the circuits of the motherboard and power supply.
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Fans are generators, when they are allowed to rotate by forced air. A DC motor, rotated by the shaft generates power. They have the potential of wrecking your temp/fan sensor on your motherboard and power supply.
I use a leaf blower to clean out my computers. A simple piece of tape on the blades of the exposed fans and a toothpick through the power supply grill taped down stops the fans from sending current back through the circuits of the motherboard and power supply.
As I clean my components using an industrial compressor they're always unplugged. And in my gaming rig CPU is watercooled. For some reason I've noticed that the CPU is rarely the one clogged up, it's the GPU that collects most of the dust usually.
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There only problem being there is that if you don't blow hard enough for the fan to rotate you're not removing any dust either :)
I try not to let my computer get that dirty before cleaning time. Compared to some computers, it's got the good life. It only runs for 4 to 5 hours a day about 3 or 4 days a week. The computer that I'm using right now on the other hand, is junk and I really don't care how dirty it gets. I cleaned it once when I got it and that was it. If it can't run AH then it's not worth the effort.
It needs to be blown HARD.
... That's what she said :bolt:
Elaborating on what Skuzzy said:
Yes all motors can act as generators, some better than others. The brushless motors typically used in computers have the magnets moving in parallel to the magnetic field generated by the copper coils. A standard DC motor will move perpendicular to the coils. Basically meaning that while the high RPM can generate electricity, and while this can damage your computer, I think the fan would take the most damage from over stressed bearings.
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EVGA Precision X has a program where you can set auto/thermostat controlled fan triggering. :old:
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Sometimes the computer will have a debug feature built into it saying what the processor temp is. I've got it enabled on mine though I can't remember how I enabled it. :headscratch: It says the CPU in mine averages about 135*F
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Sometimes the computer will have a debug feature built into it saying what the processor temp is. I've got it enabled on mine though I can't remember how I enabled it. :headscratch: It says the CPU in mine averages about 135*F
Ouch! when mine's hot it's only 39'C-102.2F.... :rofl
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It is in a poorly ventilated cabinet, despite my protests. It is also worked half to death.
For an integrated circuit, 135 is nothing major. I just grabbed a handful of components (don't litteraly do that by the way, it hurts like hell) and looked at their data sheet. The lowest max operating temp I could find was on a battery charger IC for 150*F. Most of the others were caped at 185*F, and some of the voltage regulators went up to 220*F.
I'm not saying that they should be pushed to those limits, but that's what the manufacturer says is the limit before they start taking damage.
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It is in a poorly ventilated cabinet, despite my protests. It is also worked half to death.
For an integrated circuit, 135 is nothing major. I just grabbed a handful of components (don't litteraly do that by the way, it hurts like hell) and looked at their data sheet. The lowest max operating temp I could find was on a battery charger IC for 150*F. Most of the others were caped at 185*F, and some of the voltage regulators went up to 220*F.
I'm not saying that they should be pushed to those limits, but that's what the manufacturer says is the limit before they start taking damage.
The specs mean they won't fail immediately untill those temps - but always the higher the operating temperature is the shorter the life of the component usually is. A cpu may last for several years run moderately hot though - long enough to be completely obsolete.
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Having a proper cooling is important. A 10°C higher temperature will halve the expected lifetime of capacitors. And almost every component has them.
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It is in a poorly ventilated cabinet, despite my protests. It is also worked half to death.
For an integrated circuit, 135 is nothing major. I just grabbed a handful of components (don't litteraly do that by the way, it hurts like hell) and looked at their data sheet. The lowest max operating temp I could find was on a battery charger IC for 150*F. Most of the others were caped at 185*F, and some of the voltage regulators went up to 220*F.
I'm not saying that they should be pushed to those limits, but that's what the manufacturer says is the limit before they start taking damage.
You do know you are specifically mentioning parts which are designed to dissipate large amounts of power? The more power any part dissipates is going to cause it to operate hotter.
Parts like RAM are not designed to dissipate large amounts of power. Allow them to operate at high temps and they will fail earlier than they should.
There is also the concern for the parts adjacent to those hot running IC's. Those fragile analog parts such as capacitors and resistors whose electrical characteristics change with thermal loads can induce many problems in a computer and can facilitate the expiration of IC's they are attached to if left to operate at higher than normal temps for extended periods of time.
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Let me start by saying, this is the most engaging conversation I've had with anyone for 3 months. I love it! :D
Second, Skuzzy is right. The parts that I mentioned were specialty parts intended for power supplies or power amplifiers. The properties of components, be it resistors or CPUs, changes with heat. This all comes back to the original issue of make sure your computer is clean (and also don't lock it in a box with no ventilation). The majority of the components in the computer are considerably sensitive to temperature swings. The only exception, other than the components in the power supply, would be the CPU.
A friend of mine works for a company called FARO. They make high precision laser measurement equipment (among other forms of measuring equipment). I say high precision as in they can cut the wavelength of a red laser into quarters and get an accurate reading from it (it's freaking cool!). Anyway, he was telling me the other day that they are starting to use components made of ceramic instead of plastic. They are a bit more expensive but they have more stability over their temp range, and they are better at dissipating heat. I don't think it will be too long before we see something like that showing up in high end gaming computer components.
For MrRiplEy[H], my cabinet dwelling computer is 7 years old, has had an OS reinstall and a hard drive replacement. While it's life may be shortened, it doesn't seem like it's going to quit any time soon.
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my cabinet dwelling computer is 7 years old, has had an OS reinstall and a hard drive replacement. While it's life may be shortened, it doesn't seem like it's going to quit any time soon.
I take a wild guess that it has an Intel processor, which already then slowed down to prevent overheating as this old Tom's Hardwarevideo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_Vrh3WoATzw) shows. You wouldn't expect wonders from a 7 year old rig, so noticing the slowing down would be difficult.
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I take a wild guess that it has an Intel processor, which already then slowed down to prevent overheating as this old Tom's Hardwarevideo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_Vrh3WoATzw) shows. You wouldn't expect wonders from a 7 year old rig, so noticing the slowing down would be difficult.
I completely forgot about the clock slowdown. Now that you bring that point to light, I do notice that it will run fine for about a half hour and then it just starts to turn to crap.