Two Problems: (1) Noisy CPU Fan (2) Internet Connection Dropping

I bought a PC from PC Specialist back in May. At first all was well, but recently there have been two problems:

1. The CPU fan gets louder and louder when the machine is in use. I've taken it back to PC Specialist and they spend a lot of time trying to replicate the problem but without success (ie, the fan was acceptably quiet when they were testing it). They tried to install a programme called Speedfan to see if I could use it to modulate the fan speed, but the programme didn't seem to recognise my system's fans.

2. The internet connection keeps dropping (even when in safe mode). I'm using Windows 7. If I go into the 'Network and Sharing Centre' and click on diagnose it fixes the problem and says that the network gateway was unavailable. I've had 3 or 4 phonecalls with PCS about this problem but they've been unable to come up with a solution.

Any suggestions on solving either issue would be much appreciated. I've posted the system spec below.

Thank you.




Case
COOLERMASTER SILENCIO 550 QUIET MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-4670 (3.4GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® Z87M-PLUS: m-ATX, USB3.0, SATA 6.0, XFIRE
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X FURY DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
INTEGRATED GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR (GPU)
1st Hard Disk
250GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Processor Cooling
Super Quiet 22dBA Triple Copper Heatpipe Intel CPU Cooler
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence
DVD Recovery Media
Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) DVD with paper sleeve
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 11 to 13 working days
Quantity
1

Have you checked your router is working properly, do you get any odd connection behaviour on other devices? I used to get a similar problem, but updated the router and the problem has gone. I presume you are using a wired connection? have you tried re installing the drivers for your motherboard, they can be found in the PCS download section or in your welcome pack.

As for the CPU fan getting louder, it kind of does that, but it should be fairly quiet with the cooler you have selected. Do you have a record of the temps when the noise starts to bother you? You could go into the BIOS (instructions in your welcome pack) and select 'silent' for the fan profile.

Also are you sure its the CPU fan, not a case fan or the GPU? Can you describe whats happening when the noise gets louder?

mantadog said:

Have you checked your router is working properly, do you get any odd connection behaviour on other devices? I used to get a similar problem, but updated the router and the problem has gone. I presume you are using a wired connection? have you tried re installing the drivers for your motherboard, they can be found in the PCS download section or in your welcome pack.

As for the CPU fan getting louder, it kind of does that, but it should be fairly quiet with the cooler you have selected. Do you have a record of the temps when the noise starts to bother you? You could go into the BIOS (instructions in your welcome pack) and select 'silent' for the fan profile.

Also are you sure its the CPU fan, not a case fan or the GPU? Can you describe whats happening when the noise gets louder?

Click to expand...

Thanks for the observations.

INTERNET DISCONNECTION
- The router seems to be working fine. You're right, it is a wired one. I stream internet radio from it to my hi-fi without the connection dropping even when my PC has lost its internet connection.

- I've noticed that the PC never disconnects if I'm using iplayer.

- When I spoke to PCS technical support they uninstalled then reinstalled the network card driver, but without it solving the problem. Would it be worth reinstalling all the motherboard drivers?

NOISE
- It's a fairly constant whirring sound which increases when the system is 'busy'.

- It's definitely the cpu fan. I've taken the side off the case, and could make the noise reduce by holding a finger against the centre of the fan to slow it down. It gets louder if left on for a while and when multi-tasking (particularly when browsing the web), even though the processor never seems to be more than 5% in use.

- I did have a look in Bios but selecting the silent option didn't seem to make any difference to the fan revs or the noise. I've noticed that the cpu fan runs just over 2000rpm even when the system isn't really doing anything and the temperature is 31 degrees. I can't see any way in Bios of manually setting it to a lower speed.


I appreciate your insights. It's disappointing to have spent £750 on a supposedly quiet machine that is only to be used for office work and internet browsing only to find that it falls short in those areas and PC Specialist's technical people seem unable to fix it.

Phete said:

I've noticed that the cpu fan runs just over 2000rpm even when the system isn't really doing anything and the temperature is 31 degrees.

Click to expand...

Just for comparison, as I've got the same case as you.
According to HWMonitor my CPU fan is running at around 1880rpm at 43 degrees . FANIN1 & FANIN2 (case fans I presume) are running at 755-795rpm. To me it's seems quiet. I can hear the fans (don't know which ones mind you), but it's far from noisy.

If I'm gaming, I turn the GPU fan speed up and that gets noisy, but that's a different story.

Does your cpu fan change speed, or is it a constant 2000rpm? Considering your temperature is quite a bit lower than mine, I don't see why the fan is running faster. Having said that, I've no idea if you can compare cpu fan speeds relative to temperature between different models/brands of cpu. Someone else might be able to shed some light on that.

Good luck.

PokerFace said:

Just for comparison, as I've got the same case as you.
According to HWMonitor my CPU fan is running at around 1880rpm at 43 degrees . FANIN1 & FANIN2 (case fans I presume) are running at 755-795rpm. To me it's seems quiet. I can hear the fans (don't know which ones mind you), but it's far from noisy.

If I'm gaming, I turn the GPU fan speed up and that gets noisy, but that's a different story.

Does your cpu fan change speed, or is it a constant 2000rpm? Considering your temperature is quite a bit lower than mine, I don't see why the fan is running faster. Having said that, I've no idea if you can compare cpu fan speeds relative to temperature between different models/brands of cpu. Someone else might be able to shed some light on that.

Good luck.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the suggestions. The fan fluctuates around 2100 rpm pretty much all the time. It's quiet at 1800rpm but having explored every option in Bios I can't see any way of altering it so that it runs at a lower speed.

Well one little bit of good news, you have an ASUS motherboard. That means you have access to FAN XPERT 2, it should be on the CD for your motherboard in your welcome pack. Here is a video on how to work it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcUz0SjBKGY

So you can go into it and set it at minimum speed until it reaches 60 degres or whatever you are happy with, see if that helps.

Now on the internet connection side of things, how long does the connection drop for? Things like iplayer or radio streaming might mask it by just playing through the buffer. If the net comes back in that time then you would notice nothing wrong. I would try the latest available chipset drivers for your motherboard just to rule those out more than anything. (did the tech download the latest LAN drivers?) if not upgrade those while you are at it.

If you are still experiencing problems after that I would try a factory reset of the router, do you have anything else that connects to the internet in the house? Phones, tablets, laptops, anything? If you do not g4et the drops on anything other than this machine then at least we can narrow it down to the machine.

mantadog said:

Well one little bit of good news, you have an ASUS motherboard. That means you have access to FAN XPERT 2, it should be on the CD for your motherboard in your welcome pack. Here is a video on how to work it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcUz0SjBKGY

So you can go into it and set it at minimum speed until it reaches 60 degres or whatever you are happy with, see if that helps.

Now on the internet connection side of things, how long does the connection drop for? Things like iplayer or radio streaming might mask it by just playing through the buffer. If the net comes back in that time then you would notice nothing wrong. I would try the latest available chipset drivers for your motherboard just to rule those out more than anything. (did the tech download the latest LAN drivers?) if not upgrade those while you are at it.

If you are still experiencing problems after that I would try a factory reset of the router, do you have anything else that connects to the internet in the house? Phones, tablets, laptops, anything? If you do not g4et the drops on anything other than this machine then at least we can narrow it down to the machine.

Click to expand...

Thanks very much for this. I appreciate your continued input!

I *think* I've identified the cause of the fan noise: it's some kind of resonance which alters when I gently flex the fan case. But I will install and play around with FAN XPERT.

What's a comfortable safe temperature for my processor to be operating at?

Regarding the internet connection, once it drops it stays dropped. How do I go about accessing the latest lan and motherboard drivers?

I'm pretty sure it's just this machine that drops out, but I'll try my laptop through the router later today.

Thanks again.

Phete said:

Regarding the internet connection, once it drops it stays dropped. How do I go about accessing the latest lan and motherboard drivers?

Click to expand...

Download drivers from here,
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87MPLUS/HelpDesk_Download/

Well that made a huge difference (installing Fan Xpert2 from the CD). I ran the auto-tune function and it's reduced the fan speed to 1300 rpm, with the CPU temperature still around 29 degrees. The whirring noise is gone and I now have a quiet computer.

Thanks so much for pointing me towards Fan Xpert.

Now all I need to do is sort out the internet drop-out

Well, knock me over with a feather... I am useful after all.

As far as the internet goes, I struggle when im not pushing the buttons myself but try the motherboard drivers as linked to by vanthus. if that fails I'm not sure where to go after that but let us know if it doesn't work and we can perhaps look for more solutions for you.

Phete said:

2. The internet connection keeps dropping (even when in safe mode). I'm using Windows 7. If I go into the 'Network and Sharing Centre' and click on diagnose it fixes the problem and says that the network gateway was unavailable. I've had 3 or 4 phonecalls with PCS about this problem but they've been unable to come up with a solution.

Click to expand...

Assuming you are using ADSL, you might want to check that everything else plugged into the phone sockets in your house has an ADSL filter attached to it. A while back I had a problem where the internet connection would drop every 6 minutes or so. Finally traced it down to a sky box which was plugged in without an ADSL filter, and every 6 minutes the sky box would check the connection and knock down the internet when it did it.

Thanks for all the advice and suggestions.

Concerning FanExpert - it's done a great job of quietening down my CPU fan, but it doesn't seem to have any effect on the front case fan. It seems to recognise that there is a fan there, but it doesn't appear to be able to alter the fan speed (and it says that the fan is at 0rpm when it is clearly whirring away).

Am I missing something in Fan Expert which would enable me to adjust this case fan?

It should be adjustable, try unplugging the fan from the header on the motherboard and re inserting it.

mantadog said:

It should be adjustable, try unplugging the fan from the header on the motherboard and re inserting it.

Click to expand...

As far as I can tell, the wires coming out from the fan only go into the thick black box (which I take to be the power supply). On close inspection is looks like FanExpert is only picking up the CPU fan. What do need to do to connect this front fan to the motherboard?

Thanks

You just need to disconnect the molex from your PSU (assuming that's where its plugged in - it is where the plug is coming out of right?) and plug the fan connection into the fan header on your motherboard. It will probably be a 2 pin connection on your motherboard.

steaky360 said:

You just need to disconnect the molex from your PSU (assuming that's where its plugged in - it is where the plug is coming out of right?) and plug the fan connection into the fan header on your motherboard. It will probably be a 2 pin connection on your motherboard.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. At the risk of sounding obtuse (I know very little about computers), I don't know how to identify the molex, the fan connection and the fan header on the motherboard. All I can see is a cable coming out of the fan with a little black connector at the other end that plugs into the PSU. Is this black connector the molex? What is the fan connection? There's a bundle of connectors sticking out of the cable halfway along its length. How will I know which bit of the motherboard to stick the connection into?

Thanks

fan expert cannot control the fan because its being powered directly from the PSU.

You need to do as steaky points out above.

Here are some of the connectors you will be seeing.



You may however have no more fan headers on your motherboard. How many case fans do you have, your motherboard can support up to 2. the are located (1) do down from the cpu until you find the 'asus logo' the go towards the backplat and your will see cha_fan1 then (2) is located above the cpu on the top edge and is labelled cpu_fan2

You can see them in this pc.

Thanks very much for taking the time to clarify things. I've located the cha_fan1 point on the motherboard, and unplugged the rear fan from it (the rear fan never seems to be used). And I've unplugged the noisy front fan from the psu. However, the plug from the front fan that was inserted into the PSU won't fit the cha_fan1 socket. There are various other plugs attached to the front fan wiring (see pic). Is it simply a matter of unravelling the wiring and seeing if one of them will fit the cha_fan1 socket?

Alternatively, could I just leave the front fan unplugged, and keep an eye on temperature & fan speed via Fanexpert? The temperature never seems to go above 35 degrees - I just use my pc for MS Office and Internet browsing.

Thanks again.

Leave the rear fan plugged in and connect the 2nd fan to cha_fan2. ( directly above your CPU socket on the top edge as described above.

What you need to do its use the red plug that's going into the white one in your picture. (bottom right corner) Plug that into cha_fan2 and it should become visible to the BIOS and therefor fanxpert.

mantadog said:

Leave the rear fan plugged in and connect the 2nd fan to cha_fan2. ( directly above your CPU socket on the top edge as described above.

What you need to do its use the red plug that's going into the white one in your picture. (bottom right corner) Plug that into cha_fan2 and it should become visible to the BIOS and therefor fanxpert.

Click to expand...

Thank you. Unfortunately the lead from the fan to the red plug is too short - it only just reaches the motherboard. Is it possible to buy an extension with the right adaptors on it?