Sudden Cooling Fan noise

[Torgan]

Hello folks,

Quick query to see if anybody has any thoughts on a little issue that has arisen with my Vortex II laptop.

I have had the following laptop for a couple of months and have added a 120GB Intel 520 SSD as my primary and this houses my OS, with the 500GB moved to the secondary, housing docs/games etc.

The laptop has been running almost silently since purchase, however in the last couple of days, whenever i start a game, a fan kicks in and makes a constant racket, loud enough to be very noticeable where it wasn't say a week ago playing the same games. I have looked at the performance tab and it is showing only 17-20% Cpu useage with the games running.

I have not made any changes to my system, nor installed any new software.

Any ideas why this should all of a sudden start happening?

All thoughts greatfully received.

Regards,

Torgan

Chassis & Display Vortex II: 17.3" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2760QM (2.40GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM) 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card 2.0GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M - DirectX® 11 (17.3" Vortex II)
2nd Graphics Card NONE
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 500GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
2nd Hard Disk NONE
RAID NONE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
Network Facilities GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1103 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11N NETWORK CARD
USB Options 2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Battery Vortex Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor 1 x UK Power Lead & 220W AC Adaptor
Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Laptop Cooling Stands Zalman ZM-NC3000S Ultimate Cooler, 220mm fan, upto 17.3inch (£35)
Laptop Security NONE
Carry Case NONE
Monitor NONE
Keyboard & Mouse INTEGRATED UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Mouse INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Speakers NONE
Webcam INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Headsets (VOIP) NONE
Surge Protection NONE
Printer NONE
External Hard Drive NONE
Warranty 3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Home Installation NONE
Dead Pixel Guarantee NONE
Insurance NONE
Data Recovery NONE

 

[Vortex2]

Maybe the same problem I had (until the helpful guys in support pointed me in the right direction).

I had a lot of dust stuck on the inside of the exit grills right next to the fan, I opened the case up removed both fans (cleaned them) and then cleared all the dust out of the exit grills (I just took a deep breath and blew a few times). Put it all back together and fan noise was back to normal.

 

[Torgan]

Geforce GTX 680.

Thanks for that mate, i followed your advice and did clear quite a bit of rubbish (decided not to smoke so much whilst gaming in the future

I have since messed about with the video settings of the games (mostly WOW) and have tracked down the problem to being the V-Sync feature. When i disabled this, the frame rate skyrocketed up to nearly 240 fps and the fans kicked in, however when i limited the frame rate using V-Sync to the refresh rate of my monitor (60fps) the fans didn't kick in, so it was obviously my GPU that was ramping up the cooling.

Have since read numerous articles on the new NVidia GTX 680 GPU which has an automatic V-Sync control feature. I have also read that the GTX 680M version should be available by the summer, so what do other readers think of this?
I understand there is a 30% increase in performance over the GTX 580M, but not sure whether the card would make my laptop sound like a steam locomotive all the time.......

 

[Finn]

Are you talking about adaptive vsync? as thats an (optional) feature of 3xx drivers rather than anything specific to the 680

 

[Torgan]

I wasn't aware of that. The couple of reviews i read used the adaptive vsync feature, alongside the performance per watt level as being it's major selling point.

 

[Finn]

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/04/16/nvidia_adaptive_vsync_technology_review

The first thing we need to do is tell you is what Adaptive VSync is, and how it works. The goal of this technology is simply to make gaming framerates smoother and improve playability without showing onscreen "tearing." Importantly you will want to know that Adaptive VSync is not tethered solely to the GeForce GTX 680. In fact, Adaptive VSync is part of the Release 300 drivers and is compatible with GTX 680 and prior generation GeForce GPUs. Since it was introduced with the GTX 680 we will use a GTX 680 to test the technology.

 

[Torgan]

Thankyou for that link Finn. All has been fully explained and understood.

Every day is a school day......