My computer fan runs, not all the time, but quite a bit, for seemingly no reason. Even when the computer is idle, it will sometimes run. More commonly, if I bring up, say, a youtube video or windows media player, it will start running like crazy. This shouldn’t happen, right? FYI, I’ve tried blowing compressed air on the fan from the outside, my room temperature is a comfortable 75 degrees, and there is no heating vent near the computer. Thanks for any help.
Ah, a perfect example. I just started watching an episode of “The Office” online, and sure even, it sounds like a jet airplane getting ready for takeoff.
It’s running because your computer is heating up. When you say that you’ve blown compressed air on the fan from the outside, do you mean that you’re blowing it through the vent outside the case? That’s not going to be enough. You need to actually open up your case and blow out the dust that’s accumulated on all of the surfaces. It’s going to be a surprising amount, especially if the computer sits on the floor.
And if you have cats, prepare to be shocked.
Download a free copy of SpeedFan, it will tell you if you are running hot.
If you’ve added memory or a second hard drive, you may be generating more heat than the fan was designed to handle…TRM
When this started happening to me, it wasn’t dust in the fans. It was dust caked in the fins of the CPU heatsink (and another smaller heatsink elsewhere on the motherboard). So it wasn’t that the computer was working harder, it was that the heatsinks weren’t dissipating heat as efficiently.
If you go the compressed-air route, let the computer cool down a bit before you spray cold compressed air on it. Learned that one the hard way…
If video is causing fan activity, it may also be the cooling fan on your graphics card. Don’t forget to dust the graphics card as well as everything else.
Top tip: when dust-busting, have a large fan blowing gently across the open case so all the dust that gets blown up by the compressed air gets carried away.
And don’t forget to clean the PSU. Don’t open the PSU, just blow compressed air through it.
First off, open your case carefully, and isolate which fan its coming from. Chances are its the CPU, GPU, or PSU fan, but figure out which one it is. Then turn off your computer and clean out that part (as well as the other ones for safe measure). Then if it still occurs, you know which part is being taxed and then we can figure out what to do about it.
You can also buy quieter fans for your computer. If there are any case openings that do not have a fan, it would be a good idea to put fans in the hole; the job is essentially screw the extra or new fan, and plug the wire into a three prong plug on the motherboard that is usually labeled something like case fan 1.
You might think that adding more fans would increase fan noise, but because each fan has to operate at a lower RPM to move the same, or even a larger volume of air, the noise is less.
To make speedfan work, you may need to download Motherboard Monitor. I don’t remember if I had to download it for speedfan, or for something else.
If you do use canned ‘air’, try not to let it spin the fans. Hold them still with your finger if you can reach, or use the can nozzle (or a pencil, or rolled paper) to keep them from spinning.
Your desktop computer has several fans and most likely they are running when you think they are not, but at low RPMs. At low speeds they qare uiet if not silent. If you have a laptop, it could be the case that the laptop uses passive cooling for as long as it can until it gets too hot and turns on a fan as need be.
Watching a video is one of the most CPU intensive activities you can do. Decoding modern codecs is hard on a computer. That means more heat. You laptop’s CPU produces more heat than the passive cooling can handle so the BIOS turns on the fan. This is a feature, not a bug.
Short of cleaning out your computer with dust, there’s nothing you can do. The hardware engineers made the machine turn on its fans when its hot. Some people buy laptop cooler pads, but theyre of questionable utility.
Thanks for all the advice. One fan (or more accurately, one heatsink) inside the computer was especially caked with dust. I cleaned them all out and so far videos that once caused the problem no longer do.