Hi,

I've the same issue with my new W530 (i7 3820).

The fan noise is extremly high.

In times where every CPU  generation saves more energy I cannot believe, that it's not possible to build notebooks with a quiet

fan noise. I hope that the lenovo development department will do a good job and provide a fix for the fan controls.

Best regards

Stefan

My W530 has the same problem.  Fan is never below ~2700RPM and my idle temps are 38C.  Same behavior on battery when the "System Cooling Policy" is set to passive in power manager.  Most of my usage is on the iGPU so that probably isn't the issue.

I'm not inclined to use TPFanControl as this is a company laptop and they make a big fuss about small things.

W530 Specs: 3820QM, K2000 graphics.

It looks like my current T500 is the last really quite Lenovo laptop with good fan control. But this machine is now  over 3 yeard old and should be replaced by a W or T530. But this fan problems are stopping me from buying a new machine. SO I will stay with my T500 until this problem gets addressed.

I am having the same problem with my W530 2441-2GU too! The fan never stops even when I am just typing with MS WORD.The lowest speed is around 2700 RPM and the noise is quite noticeable!  I normally work at late night and this noise is **bleep** annoying.  I have a W520 too but it is very very very quiet with a lowest fan speed of about 1700 RPM. I almost gave up this W530 and stick to my W520 but I am now seeing this thread and it sounds to me that Lenovo is working on it... Good.

I searched around the internet on my own Language(Chinese) and a lot more people are reporting this issue with W530.

This got to be fixed or else Thinkpad is no longer a Thinkpad!

Looking forward to the bios fix ! I am currently using TPFC to work around...

The Spec for my W530:

2441-2GU

3720QM, K1000M, SSD...

Best regards!

The fan speeds on both of my W520 units is around 1700 at idle. The fan noise can only be heard if I put my ear up to the vents. I'm not sure what design change was made for the W530, but my CPU temps at idle hover around 42 C. I have an Hitachi 750GB HDD in the UltraBay and I can certainly hear that when it is spinning. There is an SSD in both units and if the HDD is not spinning, the units are almost silent. Hopefully engineering will come up with a change to allow the fan speeds to be lower. Alternatively, one of the things that had be done on ThinkPads in the past was to change the shape of the fan blades so that any noise was cancelled out.

Until an effective BIOS fix or underclocking is found, the w530 remains a NOGO upgrade at my lab (500+ researchers). Near total silence during light loads (50-90% of the time) is ESSENTIAL for all those who take their machines home, or have quiet offices - that's virtually all of us.

Net: Noise level under 32dB remains a make or break deal for the 'workhorse' TPs whose purchase i influence - not my main job, yet done nonetheless. 

Background: The w520 had promising thermal (if not stellar) mgnt. right of the box, since on AC it was idling under light loads at .8GHz, taking <8W, fan 1700rpm. Not as good as the w70xx of before, but reasonably quiet. Passive is better, yet not easy to sustain, particularly when docked - traditionally a poor thermal design point for Lenovo.

However, knowing of the improved thermal designs from Intel, we delayed a major new rollout hoping that Lenovo would do thermally even better w/ the w530. That is only half true, arguably done where it doesn't matter so much anymore - at the top of P0-P1 max power states: While w520 took 150W, the w530 went down to 132W, while increasing performance. Great!

BUT: The price for this improvement is unfortunately paid by a 50% increase for the bottom end (low energy states): The w530 under light load went up from 8 to 12W, clock .8->1.2GHz and fan 1700->2700rpm (current BIOS).

This is not acceptable, as it affects most of the working day, and also adds >50% extra energy consumption to a company using 10s to 100s of thousands of such machines (not difficult to guess).

After having already delayed a major upgrade for 15 months, naturally I'm dissapointed to confront the options of deploying obsolete w520's, or tweak all the w530's to correct their lower-end power and noise. Any effective underclocking solution known? Thanks folks, and sorry for venting here my frustration. Mitch

My sound measurements for my W520 yield 52db 1 inch from the vents, 41db 6 inches from the vents with the HDD spun down. There is an SSD in  both systems. Thermal readings are 42 degrees C.

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wrote:

My sound measurements for my W520 yield 52db 1 inch from the vents, 41db 6 inches from the vents with the HDD spun down. There is an SSD in  both systems. Thermal readings are 42 degrees C.

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Cool! 

What tool did you use to measure the dB?