Downgrading E6500 for less fan noise...?

Ok, back with the results. After a cold boot and with no disk activity, when the HD spins down I could only barely make out if the darn thing was on or not. It's absolutely quiet.

Obviously under normal use there is more load on the CPU and constant disk activity, but after maxing out the CPU for a while and then shutting down the drive again I was still pleased: even though the CPU/main fan remains audible, it is probably under a third of the noise I've been listening to constantly since I got this laptop. Plus if I tone some of the compiz eye candy etc down who knows how often even the main fans will have to fire up...

Guys, I'm giving some serious thought to an SSD. Though I suspect that'll pass the moment I check the prices on those...

 

The hard drive is certainly the quite noisy on my E6500, it's not the head noise (that's a fairly quiet "tinking") it's the constant noise from the drive spinning that I hear the most, the CPU/GPU fan is barely ever running, no difference with the acoustic managment on performance or quiet.

I have 200MB 7200rpm Seagate ST9200423ASG, Can't help thinking a extra mm or two of rubber mounting would have helped.

 

How did you get there to be no disk activity? I can't seem to calm mine down to the point where the hard disk light will wait more than 2 seconds between flashes, let alone think about spinning down ...

 

I suggest you also put the results in the HD Tune thread. I would keep the Samsung for the same reasons as you: Good performance and less noise. 2C temperature difference isn't much of a power difference.

I agree that Dell didn't give this sound transmission enough attention. They probably failed to take the prototypes into a really quiet room. As previously noted, I put some electrical tape on the edges of my HDD where it sits in the bay which is a small step in the right direction. However, I had no real noise problems with either the original HDD (Samsung HM160HI) or my current WD5000BEVT.

John

 

I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. After the boot I logged in normally, but didn't fire up any of the crapload of apps I'm usually running, issued the hdparm command and sat back.

There seems to be some random reads/writes about every minute or so, during which the disk spins back up. I suppose most of those would be gone as well if I didn't boot into X at all, but there's enought quiet time in between to get a feeling what the machine sounds like without the HDD. As a matter of fact, it even helps to appreciate the difference when the drive starts its roaring every once in a while and then quiets down again.

If you can somehow control the same settings from Windows (which I'm assuming you're running, for some reason), you could probably do a reboot and then leave the system hanging in a boot loader or the BIOS setup. The spindown settings don't seem to get reset when the drive doesn't lose power during a boot, and I was able to enjoy limitless quiet doing this (as there's absolutely no disk activity, ever, when grub's waiting for the OS selection).

Btw, also checked out the prices on the Dell SSD's. The "low performance" versions have almost half-decent prices nowadays, but the 64 GB "high performance" version was something like 650 USD. I didn't take the time to look up any real figures comparing the performance of the options, though.

 

The hard drive noise could be an effect of better airflow in the hard drive bay or better thermal coupling to the chassis. The hard drive temperature is quite low in E6400 and it might be a design choice from Dell's side to keep the temperature down at the expense of more noise. I am not saying this is the case, just that it can be an explanation.

Örjan

 

I'll give it a try, I thought I'd seen someone saying they'd tried it to very little effect ...

 

I took the bottom of the machine off while it was running and noticed that if I gently pushed the hard drive away from the drive cage (which is part of the cast magalloy frame of the machine) it made the noice much less "hollow" sounding.

I've folded a piece of A5 paper into quarters and fitted it on the screw-side of the HDD, quite a difference, can still hear the noise of the motor, but much less resonant, I think I'll keep my eye out for a thin piece of rubber after all ...

 

Hi,

You have no solution for the noisy fan? I think all Latitude E- Series have the same fan noise problem.

I'm searching for a solution.

In my opinion dell has to make better BIOS. There is no reason for that Bios fan control. Please write to Dell support and ask for a better Bios.

I hope, that onetime Dell will give us a good BIOS.

thanks

 

Mine will be arriving next week. Dell usually ship them with all the updated driver (so i have noticed anyway) so we will see if the fan noise is gone.
mine will also be in the E port plus with 2 24" monitors attached.
My specs are
4 gigs of ram 320 gig hd, P9600, nVidia NVS 160m, WXGA+, etc.

My last Dell an E6400 did not have problem with fan noise.