Daily Archives: August 11, 2014

cpu fan

Control Your Computer’s Fan Speeds for Better Performance When You Need It, Silence When You Do not

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If your computer’s running a little loud for your tastes, it’s probably because your fans are running at full speed-even if they do not need to be. Here are a few ways to manage your fan’s speed so they’re keeping your computer cool when they’re necessary and silent when they’re not.

 

We’ve talked about how to quiet an especially noisy  Dell Inspiron 1501 CPU Fan  before, but focused on computers running too hot or not clean enough. If you’ve built your own computer, chances are your fan speeds are not being regulated, and they’re just running at full speed all the time. This makes for a very cool computer, but it can be annoyingly loud, especially if you do not need those fans running. There are a lot of ways to regulate those fans, many of which are completely free. Here’s how to set them up.

 

Method One: Install Fan-Controlling Software

 

The most ideal way to control your Dell Inspiron 1501 CPU Fan is with something like previously mentioned SpeedFan (or, if you’re on a Mac, previously mentioned smcFanControl). These will give you the most control over your fans, letting you choose how fast they’re running at any given time. SpeedFan can even monitor your computer’s temperatures and adjust the fans accordingly. And, if you head to SpeedFan’s configuration, you can even tell it your desired temperature and have it adjust your fans automatically based on that. Just be conservative , since your motherboard’s temperature values ​​are not always accurate to the degree.

The one downside with SpeedFan is that it is not compatible with every computer out there. You can check out their Support page to see if it’ll work with your machine, or just try it out yourself. If it does not work, you can skip to the next method and see if there are options in your BIOS instead. SpeedFan also requires that your fans be plugged into the 3- or 4-pin headers on your motherboard, not the large, 4-pin Molex connectors. If you only have Molex connectors available, you’ll need to skip to method three. And lastly, it will not control all the fans in your machine-just the ones for which your motherboard supports fan control. If you want to control all your fans, you’ll need to resort to method three below.

 

Method Two: Tweak Your BIOS Settings

 

Many motherboards have Dell Inspiron 1501 CPU Fan control built-in to the BIOS settings these days, though they do not always give you as much control as something like SpeedFan does. But, if your computer is not supported by SpeedFan, this is a good plan B . Open up your motherboard’s BIOS settings (usually by holding a key like Delete when you boot your computer), and search for the fan settings. They’re called all sorts of different things (for example, Asus has “Q-Fan Control” , while Gigabyte has “Smart Fan Control”), but generally you should be able to find it under one of the BIOS menus. Enable this feature, and tweak any settings it gives you to your liking. Some machines may only let you set it to conservative or liberal mode, while others will let you individually set temperature thresholds like SpeedFan.

 

It’ll also offer you a choice between two regulation methods:. Voltage and PWM The voltage mode adjusts the voltage of the fan, while PWM mode sends calculated voltage pulses to the fan to make it run a bit slower For the most part,. this depends on how your fans are plugged into the motherboard. Fans connected with a 4-pin connector should use PWM, while fans connected with a 3-pin connector should use voltage. Voltage is slightly less efficient, and you can not get speeds quite as low as with PWM, but PWM can be finicky sometimes too. If you find PWM is giving you problems, you can always switch to voltage. And, if you can not connect your fans to the headers on your motherboard (that is , if you’re using the large, 4-pin Molex connectors), you’ll need to use method 3 below. Again, your motherboard will only support this kind of fan control for a few fans, too (usually your CPU fan and a system fan). If you want to control them all, check out method three below.

 

Method Three: Buy an External Fan Controller

 

While the above methods are great for automatic fan control, they are not always available on every motherboard-and they’ll usually only control one or two fans in your rig. If you want control over everything, you can install an inexpensive fan controller like one of these from Newegg. It fits in one of your computer’s drive bays, and gives you a number of knobs that let you manually control the speed of each of your fans. It will not monitor temperatures for you, so you’ll have to keep an eye on them with something like RealTemp or Rainmeter-but it will give you full control over every Dell Inspiron 1501 CPU Fan in your machine.

 

None of these solutions is absolutely perfect, but hopefully with a bit of tinkering you can get more control over how fast (and loud) your fans run. Got any of your own tips for fan control in your machine? Let us know in the comments .

CPU Fan for Dell Inspiron 1501

cpu fan

Repair your noisy CPU and system fans

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This is a fix that will last for a long  time.

Buy some graphite powder and some oil at an auto or hardware store. They come in different packages. For oil, the best is the pen-type as they are easy to handle and only give a small amount at a time. Just about any oil in a pen format will work fine. The graphite powder comes in small plastic tubes. But make sure you get graphite powder, not graphite oil, its too thin for this job! So you need graphite powder in a small tube and oil in a round “pen” that can be squeezed out and placed just where you need it. Also, when the oil is used up in the “pen” you can open it and add your own oil.

First, clean the Dell Inspiron 1545 Series CPU Fan blades off real well. If you have a heatsink with the fan then clean the heatsink off as well. You can even use a bit of your oil and some q-tips for cleaning if needed. Then, take the small circle, it usually has a name on it, but its in the middle of the fan. Peel one edge up carefully and put a very small amount of oil in where you lifted the label up. Now add some graphite powder in the same place where you put the oil, add as much or a bit more of the graphite powder than the oil. Clean off excess oil and graphite and push the label back where it was. You may need a very small amount of duct tape to hold the label in position and to prevent leakage. This is important if the fan is going to “sit up” as opposed to lying flat.

Now put the Dell Inspiron 1545 Series CPU Fan  back where you want it and when it starts spinning it may be noisy for a few seconds until the graphite \ oil works its way in. Then it will stop and it will stay stopped for many years and you may very well not need to buy a new fan after all!

I experimented a lot with this and this is the very best way to quiet all those fans and have them work well. I have always been a big fan of those removable ide hard drive trays that you can buy. But the fans are the pits, they get noisy real fast. So I had to find a way to fix them as they are very expensive and hard to replace. Now I dont have to. Combo of oil and graphite is the very best, by far. One caution, graphite stains worse than oil, so be careful! Im talking about staining your clothes and hands.

You can use this system with all Dell Inspiron 1545 Series CPU Fan , video card fans, system fans, and even fans inside power supplies. But one word of caution, its easy to open a power supply and take out the fan, but do be careful as there are voltages there can can hurt you badly. If you dont know what you are doing then wear rubber gloves to get the fan out and to put the fan back in after the repair!

Trust me, this will work. If the fan spins my method will work for years and I have even fixed fans that were stuck and wouldnt spin! This is better done with the fan on the table but in those cases where you cant or dont want to take the fan out of the system, thats where the “pen” with the needle comes in again, but I still find a way to get some graphite in as well, graphite is what makes the oil last a long time! And graphite is also an oil, but you need both together for maximum effectiveness. Oil by itself will only last a few weeks or so and then evaporate, and the fan will get noisy again. Its the graphite powder that does the long term job. The oil really only helps to spread the graphite powder around really well so the graphite can do the job!

As for creating a situation where you have an “arcing” or a “short”, it just wont happen. People can and will argue this point but I have never, in the approx ten years or more I have been repairing  Dell Inspiron 1545 Series CPU Fan, caused a short. For one thing, most or all of the connections on fans have a transparent shield on them that prevents shorts. You can buy this stuff at electronics stores but you dont need to buy it to use when greasing and oiling fans as per my tutorial . Trust me, its not an issue, no matter any naysayers. If and when I ever cause a short I will honestly report it. Hasnt happened yet. Also, more than one person has given a better explanation of this than I can come up with.

Hope you do as well as I have with this info!

Thanks

CPU Fan for Dell Inspiron 1545 Series