Intermittent Laptop Fan

Curt-eye
Curt-eye Member Posts: 5 New User
in 2016 Archives

Has anyone ever experienced their laptop fan turning on just long enough to boot up and then turn off, intermittently?  It's like 3 seconds to speed up then once sped up it slows back down for 2 seconds till it's off.

 

As far as I know the performance of my laptop is fine, but this fan turning off and on every 30 seconds or so can be pretty obnoxious, and it could happen without me doing anything memory intensive.

 

I tried Acer chat support and they didn't even have a suggestion on what was wrong and skipped directly to recommending I send it in for repairs.  I'm still under warranty but I'd feel more comfortable knowing what's wrong first before committing to parting ways with my laptop for a while, paying shipping costs, and possibly getting it returned at factory settings - not to mention being open to the possibility that maybe this is normal for this model and it could all be a waste of time and money.

 

If it's at all relevant, I have an ACER Aspire E5-722G-86B3.  If it would help to know any more specs, please let me know.

 

Any insight from anyone would be greatly appreciated!

Answers

  • brummyfan2
    brummyfan2 ACE Posts: 28,469 Trailblazer

    It's quite normal for the fan to start and stop, when the temps go higher it will start and stops when cooler, you can monitor the temps with HWmonitor or similar utility, even when you do nothing there may be some background process running and causes the rise in temps, HTH.

    Acer Predator PT516-51s Performance Results - UserBenchmark

  • Curt-eye
    Curt-eye Member Posts: 5 New User

    Thanks brummyfan2

     

    Would you also agree that the fan should go from really low to really high speed then back to really low over a total span of only few seconds?

     

    Also I could have nothing open and the fan will stay quiet (assuming no background tasks) and then I could open chrome or some other low memory application and the fan will start doing its thing.

     

    Any laptops I've used in the past (e.g. my work laptop or friends' laptops) I've never experienced this.  Although I can understand the pattern you're describing, I wonder if the change in fan speed in that scenario should be less extreme than minimum to maximum to minimum.  Hope that makes sense.

     

    Appreciate your insight, further thoughts welcome.

  • brummyfan2
    brummyfan2 ACE Posts: 28,469 Trailblazer

    Does the fan noise bother you, I mean, is it very loud? You can check the temps and while running temp monitoring utility observe the noise from the fan, your laptop quite new, so there's very little chance of dust build up but you can only decide whether there may be some dust in your laptop, if you suspect,  get a can of duster and spray lightly at the fan and see whether it makes any difference, as a last resort you can get help from a tech person for hardware failure.

    Acer Predator PT516-51s Performance Results - UserBenchmark

  • Curt-eye
    Curt-eye Member Posts: 5 New User

    It does bother me - it's pretty obnoxious to listen to it rev up loudly every 30 seconds or so.  I'll keep you posted on if your suggestions work out

    Thanks

  • Curt-eye
    Curt-eye Member Posts: 5 New User

    So I used HWmonitor to see that the fan turns on whenever one of the two "Z" temps reaches 40 degrees celcius.  Sometimes it just reaches that level briefly and then comes back down before the fan has a chance to make a difference, so I figure that's the reason it usually comes on only so briefly.  And that being said, the smallest tasks could push it to that temperature, such as opening a new tab in chrome or opening certain websites.  Speedfan isn't compatible with my laptop to run the features that allow fan control, otherwise I'd feel safe in changing it so fans dont activate until, say 45 degrees instead of 40.

     

    I agree that dust is unlikely - I used the air dust cleaner anyway through all the vents but didn't attempt to take the laptop apart to go any futher than that.  Of course no such luck on that front.

     

    At this rate I feel like I may have to bite the bullet and send out for repair under warranty, and hope it's something actually fixable.

  • brummyfan2
    brummyfan2 ACE Posts: 28,469 Trailblazer

    You said that you used the HWmonitor to check the temps, how high they are going? 40 degrees is quite normal and you shouldn't worry about it but if the fan noise is too much to bear, it could be a faulty hardware, I can not be sure, you could check and compare with a similar laptop of your friends or family member, it's also a wise move to send for a repair under warranty.

    Acer Predator PT516-51s Performance Results - UserBenchmark

  • Curt-eye
    Curt-eye Member Posts: 5 New User

    So here's how it played out.  Contacted tech support through acer chat, they had no suggested troubleshooting steps so jumped straight to suggesting sending it in for warranty repair.  When I received it back, it included notes that main board was replaced, bios updated, and tested to be okay.  However the issue remained plus my wifi and bluetooth adapters were missing.  I called them and they suggested a factory reset to see if it resolves any of my problems (new or old).  This resulted in the system stalling when reinstalling windows, even if i reboot, so machine was unusable.  At that point Acer paid for my shipping to send it back in, this time sent back with notes that main board, CPU fan and wifi card replaced - and this everything was indeed fixed.  Plus it has Windows 10 Pro edition now, originally came with Home I'm sure.

     

    So, it all ended well - I just wanted to share the story with you on how it all panned out Smiley Happy  And also thanks for offering your suggestions before all this occurred.

Categories