Downgrading E6500 for less fan noise...?

Hi Örjan,

Thank you very much. I've just upgraded to the new A10 BIOS. Before when I used the A09 BIOS my fan started when the ACPI THM_ temperature reached 34C. The fan never turned off afterwards, it kept running for hours. But now with the new BIOS the fan actually turns off after a few minutes, but turns on again when the ACPI THM temperature reaches 34C. When the fan is turned on for the 2nd time it will keep running forever though, even if all the components in the E6500 are quite cool.

Right now:
ACPI THM_ : 27C
Core1/2: 23C
Quadro NVS 160M: 51C
HDD: 37C

The fan is on at slow speed (~2800 rpm) and seems like it will never turn off. This is in dock and with two monitors. I've not tested it out of dock yet.

Where can you see what has been updated in the latest BIOS? - you mentioned "Updated thermal table". It would also be a nice feature if it was possible to get an e-mail from DELL when new BIOSes are ready.

 

Hi,

I also stumbled on this thread while googling around if other people have had the same kinds of experiences with the new E-series Latitudes. The machine works & looks great, but I'm really dissatisfied with the noise it generates, even when idle. My old D820 was bearly audible by comparison.

For me, the fans almost always keep running at the same, annoyingly audible level. If I do something that keeps at least one core at 100% for half a minute or so, it spins up even louder, but then falls back quickly when the load drops.

I'm running Ubuntu 8.04, and have the E6500 with 2.8 GHz Core2Duo, 7200 rpm 250 GB drive and the nVidia graphics card. Despite my brief efforts I couldn't get my harware monitor applet to display anything but the GPU & CPU temps, but they seem to settle around 42 both when I'm not doing anything much.

I also just now upgraded my BIOS from A03 to A10, and while booting turned on the "quiet mode" for the HDD's from the BIOS. Didn't do anything. I should probably look for some fan speed control software and see if they could make a difference.

Cheers.

 

1. Is the problem while in a docking station or in standalone use?

2. That 2.8GHz CPU might be sucking a lot of power. It might be worth reading the undervolting guide.

John

 

Hi John,

Thanks for the pointers!

I actually took the time to let my Latitude cool down (completely turned off) for about an hour while doing other stuff. I then removed the back cover, turned it back on, and carefully took a peek at what's going on at the underbelly.

It turns out the CPU fan (red arrow) is completely idle, while the HDD (blue arrow) seems to be the source of the omnipresent humming. I tested this by booting up normally, and then maxing out the CPU playing two 1080p movies simultaneously. I could clearly make a difference now; it's not the hum that gets louder, it's the CPU fans kicking in. And after the CPU is comfortable again its fans barely make a sound.

So was it a bad idea going for the 250 GB 7200 rpm hard drive? Do laptop hard drives even have their own fans? Which manufacturerer is this HDD by (Dell's site won't say)?

 

... holly crap! i just got my e6500 and i thought the same..... "you noisy bugger".. .googled it and looks like im stuck with it!

.....so its the flipping HD fan!

 

HDDs do not include fans! There's a disc or two spinning around at, in your case, 7200rpm and a head assembly wobbling in and out trying to move data on / off the discs. The latter is more likely to be the cause of vibration.

There is probably an option in the BIOS for HDD acoustic management. It is worth trying. See this article. Unfortunately, the Tom's Hardware charts do not include noise.

You can find out the make of the HDD by seeing the model number in Device Manager and then using Google. Dell source their HDDs from several manufacturers and the information stored against your service tag does not specifically indicate the HDD model.

The lack of any rubber mountings for the E series HDDs does make the design more susceptible to HDD noise. Perhaps Dell was hoping we would all now be buying SSDs.

John

 

7200 RPM drives generally generate a lot more noise than 5400 RPM drives. Depending on the laptop construction, the noise dampening differs a lot. E6400/E6500 doesn't seem to have very good noise dampening so a quite drive is essential to get a quite system.
Hard drives don't have built-in fans and I am quite sure there is no extra hard drive fan in E6400/E6500.

I have a 160 GB 7200 RPM drive in my E6400 and it is a bit noisy but still acceptable. It is a Hitachi 7K320 drive.

You can check what drive you have in the Device Manager under "Disk".

Örjan

 

I tried turning the acoustic options from the BIOS to "quiet" already, with no success. Also I'm running Ubuntu so my Device Manager's a bit different from yours, but it's ok, I'll dig out the info.

I could very well consider still switching the HDD to a quieter model (as replacing it doesn't seem to be that big of a hassle judging by Dell's site's instructions on it), but I'd need a confirmation that it's worth it: that it'll quiet this machine down. Obviously none of you will (or can) guarantee this for me so I don't expect you to, but I'd be very grateful for any educated guesses.

Ha, I was just writing that I've already tried to set a very low spindown period for my disk with "hdparm -S2" with no luck, when my HD powered down. It immediately spun back up as there was some disk activity, but I'll report back in after trying some stuff out. Please hold.

 

I couldn't resist to try out the 5400 RPM drive from my media center in E6400 so I just did that!

I am kind of surprised by the result: My 5400 RPM drive had almost the same noise level as the 7200 RPM I got with my E6400. There is one thing that can explain this and it is the number of platters. My 7200 RPM is a one-platter drive and my 5400 RPM drive is a two-platter drive. The general rule is the more platters the more noise the drive generates. The test at least proved one thing: My 7200 RPM isn't very noise for a 7200 RPM drive. For example, the vibration it creates is not very big at all, most of the noise is idle noise (wind noise).

For reference, my 5400 drive is a 320 GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue drive with product number WD3200BEVT.

Örjan

 

I also think that the hard drive insulation of the new Latitude E6500is very poor. I've seen much better HDD housing on a much cheaper laptops ( actually - on ANY other laptop that i have opened so far).I tried two 7200 rpm hard drives - Samsung HM201JJ - 200 Gb and a 200Gb Seagate Momentus 7300.3; both are very fast, but are very noisy and the vibrations with the Seagate are even more noticeable. Tried to insulate it with a electrical tape - no noticeable result. I initially thought that there's something wrong with the Samsung HDD itself.
Probably in this case is better to stick with a 5400 one - preferably with one platter.
here are some results of the two disks from HD Tunes:

HD Tune Pro: SAMSUNG HM201JJ Benchmark

temp - 37%

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 55.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 77.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 67.5 MB/sec
Access Time : 19.5 ms
Burst Rate : 75.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 12.7%


HD Tune Pro: ST9200423ASG Benchmark
temp - 35%
Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 10.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 77.6 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 56.5 MB/sec
Access Time : 17.6 ms
Burst Rate : 46.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 16.8%

I still don't know which one to keep. For now i' leaning towards keeping the Samsung one; I know that it requires a bit more energy, but it is a bit silenter, vibrates less and the performance results are better. The VISTA rate for the Samsung is 5.9 and for the Seagate - 5.7; Plus the Seagate has that clicking sound when accessing. What do you guys think?