[S10/S10e Fan Problems Collecting Info for Lenovo] S10 fan runs too fast, too often, too loud

[PeZzy]

The s10 goes into suspend mode with Bios 56 and Windows 7 when you close the screen. The problem I have noticed is that the on-off fan behavior has increased since upgrading from Bios 38 and the fan seems to have only one speed now and that's high. I guess I'll have to go back to 38.

[thitiv]

All,

I would like to thank Slash so much for his messages #103 and #108 on this thread: http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=IdeaPad_Netbook&message.id=1183#M1183

Today I decided to walk into a Lenovo Service Center inside a computer mall in downtown Bangkok because I cannot tolerate the constant grinding noise from my S10 anymore. I bought my S10 in late November 2008 and I started to hear some grinding noise in late December 2008.

I have been using the S10 as my primary computer both for work and for home. At work, this noise has embarrassed me many, many times. At home, I left the S10 with Vista in High Performance mode on overnight so that it can complete the maintenance tasks, e.g., HDD Defrag and Indexing, but the fan noise from high CPU temperature woke me up at 4:45 in the morning!

I learned from Slash's picture http://i41.tinypic.com/25alq3d.jpg that Lenovo chose to use cheap, thick silicone "heat conductor" between the CPU & Chipset to the aluminum (not copper) heat sink. As also suggested by Slash in #108, thick silicone material does more harm than good. It functions as an "insulator" or "heat collector" rather than a "heat conductor."

I also learned from many discussion threads online that many other netbooks, e.g., ASUS EeePC & MSI Wind, also suffer from the "Fan Grinding" noise as well; and that the most promising solution is to disassemble the fan and apply some sewing machine oil at its core, c.f. http://delicious.com/thitiv/ideapad_s10%20fan%20annoyance

I was fortunate enough that the Service Center wasn't crowded when I arrived and that I had a chance to talk to the technician. He seemed to know about the "sewing machine oil" trick so I was happy. I also bought the Arctic MX-2 high performance thermal grease at the computer mall (for approx US$11) and asked the technician to use it to replace the cheap silicone at the heat sink. The reason was that he had to remove the heat sink to access the fan anyway and some heat conductor must be applied back.

After two hours waiting for him to work on my S10, I had a chance to test. The grinding noise was 99% eliminated. I still hear very, very minor grinding noise at times when the fan worked at full speed but it was a lot better. The Arctic MX-2 does the trick! When there is a significant increase in CPU activity and the CPU temperature increase--from say 44C to 47C--the fan runs for only less than 15 seconds to bring the CPU temperature back from 47C to 44C. Heat transfer inside my S10 is significantly better and the fan runs less often now.

My S10 is super silent now and I am very, very happy!

In summary, here're what had been done to my S10:

1. Heat Sink and Fan Removed
2. Sewing Machine Oil applied to the core of the Fan (to fix the grinding noise and improve fan efficiency)
3. Cheap & Thick Silicone "Thermal Conductor" replaced by High Performance Thermal Grease (to improve efficiency of heat conduction)

FYI, I am also using the BIOS Version 56 posted by Mark the other day.

[thitiv]

By the way, let me try for a few days if this fix permanent.

Update: I'm finishing one full work day and the fan has been very silent. This Fan Lubrication plus Thermal Compound Upgrade seems to work.

Message Edited by thitiv on 03-02-2009 02:09 AM

[Ray-Ven]

Im running Ubuntu Jaunty Alpha 5 on my S10e - since it switched from Alpha 4 to 5 the fan spinns up less often.

But - the fan really could be more quiet, or could be run constantly at less rpm.... Would be an easy Bios-Update, Mark!
Please do not forget that Jaunty is still experimental and should not be used for productive use.


.Ray-Ven

[madscience]

The backlight no longer turns off when lid is closed!

there, now that I've got that off my chest....

the fan still kicks in randomly and often w/ the new BIOS.  Is there any chance lenovo can release a new firmware to resolve this in a timely fashion?  Also, please fix the new backlight issue.

Is there a download link for the 38 BIOS file?  It's no longer available from lenovo's site. 

[slash]

Mark,

Thank you for taking the time to look into this. It is really nice of you to give us information updates every now and then. I greately appreciate your efforts. I am sure all of us do. I look forward to future updates. Thank you.

thitiv,

Glad I could help. BTW, how high does the core temperature go during full load? It would be wonderful if you would run some stress tests for us. Prime95 or OTHROS should take about 15 to 20 min for the temperature to stabilize.Thank you.

As I have written in #103 and #108 messages on this thread, in my case, the surface mount device (SMD) inductor interferes with the heatsink. Therefore, I cannot simply remove the rubber pads, otherwise there would be a gap between the CPU and the heatsink. Lenovo should have designed the heatsink with more clearance for the SMDs or should have used shorter SMD inductors. I do not know if this is the case for all S10's, however, I do know that the problem exists in both S10 and S10e.

Let aside the defective heatsink and rubber pads, the overall hardware design of the S10 is pretty good as an active cooling solution. The high temperature chips are all packed together and placed near the air vent which is best practice for pumping out heat from building in side the chases. As for the heatsink not being copper, it is ok as long at it provides sufficient cooling. The grill could have been removed from the air vent to reduce air friction, but I presume it is there to keep the dust and bugs (yes, bugs) out.

[ruva]

 Still irritating fan on my Lenovo S10E (type 4068 4UG).  I have all the latest drivers and BIOS is also brand new.   Fan is going on and off at exactly 40 C(using core temp:http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp) to check temperature.   I would like to have a manual control (0 - 25% - 50% - 75% - 100%) fan throttle or make it possible to increase the degrees before the fan should start.  

[thitiv]

Slash and all,

I just ran Prime95 v25.8 Build 5 for 30 minutes, using In-Place Large FFTs mode.

Max CPU temp was 50C, measured with Lavalys Everest v5.00.1650 hardware monitoring software which recognizes Atom CPUs. The Fan was constrantly on at max speed during Stress Test; and it did "shout" after 15-20 minutes -- despite the fact that its core was just lubricated 24 hours ago.

It took less than 20 more seconds after I stopped the test for the CPU temp to drop to 44C. After another 3-5 minutes (at the time I started writing this), the CPU temp drops to its regular values between 38-41C and the fan is now almost silent. The ambient temperature at present is approx 25C, air conditioned.

Hope this information is useful.

Thiti

Update 1: I ran Prime95 again in a different ambient environment and the max CPU temp was 52C. The CPU temp dropped to 43C in less than 10 seconds after I stopped the test.

Update 2:

Last night I took the hard drive out and applied the Arctic MX-2 around the perimeter of the contact surface between the label side of the hard drive and the plastic compartment "wall" of the machine body (where the label side of the hard drive faces). This might be a wasteful test and might not be as effective as applying the MX-2 to the CPU and chipset cores but I just wanted to try.

I am right now doing a full, compressed backup of my 500GB hard drive image with 200GB+ of data to an external USB hard drive. This is so far the most stressful test of the system -- with the internal hard drive being constantly read and written and the CPU continuously working on data compression. Two hour has passed, the CPU temperature is now at 53C and the hard drive temperature is at 46C. The fan is still silent. The palm rest is a bit warm. The room temperature is 26C, air conditioned. By the way, the CPU temp rose to 56C during the first hour when the room temperature was at 28C.

Message Edited by thitiv on 03-02-2009 07:16 AM

[madscience]

Does anyone have a link to, or could send me, the ver 38 BIOS flasher?  I deleted the backup after I installed the ver 56 BIOS and the fan problem seems actually worse now, and the backlight doesn't turn off when the lid is closed anymore.

[navynmr]

The Artic MX-2 should really bring the core temp by roughly 4-5 degrees. And lubing the fan should help but it would not fix any other issues