Fan ramps to 100% at idle after steam Install on Acer Aspire 5 A515-56-32DK

Jjma369

Hi everyone,
I recently bought an Acer Aspire 5 A515-56-32DK(windows 11), and overall it’s been a solid laptop—everything has been working smoothly with no issues.

A few days ago, my son installed Steam to play a game, and ever since then, the laptop’s fans have been acting up. They ramp up to full speed—even when the system is idle—and then drop back down, going back and forth between low and max speed constantly.

I’ve already uninstalled Steam, cleaned the fan, and replaced the thermal paste (though it looked fine to begin with). I also tweaked some power management settings. Right now, CPU usage is sitting around 1%, and temps are between 35–40°C, so thermals don’t seem to be the issue.

Still, the fans keep fluctuating from about 20% to 100% speed with no clear reason.

I found that you can change the fan mode using fn + f, it changed and icon appear on the screen but the fan is doing what it wants to XD

Has anyone else experienced this? Any advice on how to get the fan behavior back to normal or track down what’s causing it?

Thanks in advance

Puraw

Hi @Jjma369 , welcome to the forum!

Your Aspire 5 A515-56-32DK is a solid machine, but the fan behavior you're seeing—ramping to 100% at idle—is likely tied to a few factors:

🧠 What’s Going On?

• Your model was originally released in 2020, but Acer has kept BIOS updates coming.
• You're likely running BIOS v1.36 (dated 2024/04/18), which is optimized for Windows 11.
• However, if the battery is original (5 years old), it may be degrading. Aging cells can cause EC (Embedded Controller) confusion, leading to erratic fan behavior.
• Steam may have triggered background services or telemetry that lingered even after uninstalling.

✅ What You Can Try

1. Check Battery Health
   • Run powercfg /batteryreport in Command Prompt
   • Or use HWInfo to check wear level and voltage stability
   • If wear is above 30%, consider replacing the battery (look for AP19B5L or AP18C4K)
2. Reset EC Behavior
   • Shut down the laptop
   • Hold power button for 30 seconds (drains residual EC charge)
   • Boot and check fan behavior again
3. Check for Background CPU Spikes
   • Open Task Manager > Details tab
   • Sort by CPU usage and look for anything unusual (e.g., telemetry, update services)
4. Update/Reinstall Intel Chipset & Serial I/O Drivers
   • From Acer’s official support page
   • These help EC and fan controllers communicate properly

Let us know your BIOS version and battery wear level—those two will help narrow things down. If needed, we can walk you through a clean EC reset or battery replacement.