Notebook SSDs / Fan Behaviour

[philby]

Hello All

I have swapped out the stock HDDs in both my laptops for SSDs.

On battery, the machines run silently except under load but as soon as I plug them into the mains, the fans kick off and stay on.

I've updated the BIOS on both machines, changed the (minimalist) fan auto/low settings there and tinkered with the Windows power settings (min CPU state, system cooling policy) as per the instructions from elsewhere on the net, but this behaviour persists whatever I do.

I've also checked the heatsink and fan for dirt on both machines.

Is there anything else I can try?

It's just interesting that this is on both machines but only with the SSDs installed - if I swap back the HDDs, the fans are far more passive.

Toshiba Satellite with OCZ Vertex.
Samsung Q330 with Intel X-25.

Also - I now have the 'Consider replacing your battery' problem on the Toshiba (3 years old) and continual mis-reporting of battery time remaining on the Samsung (1 year old).

Thanks

philby

[axial]

Perhaps there might be some troubleshooting steps revealed through the Windows 7 power efficiency report:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/7638/...er-efficiency/

[philby]

Hi axial and thanks for your reply

I've generated an energy report on the Samsung - no errors and I only get the warning about the wireless adaptor's power policy being set to max.

Hmm...!

Could it be that some power-related settings somewhere in the hardware of these laptops are optimised for mechanical drives and are inappropriate in some way for SSDs?

philby

[axial]

If I were having this problem I'd comb through the forums on SilentPCReview, as those folks are great at understanding how to keep stuff quiet and yet achieve good performance:
http://www.silentpcreview.com

I wonder whether your laptops need updated drivers and chipset information to deal with an SSD, I can well imagine that some power-related settings would be influenced by whether the drivers and/or O/S actually recognize that an SSD is installed, and if they don't recognize it they might set the fan speeds to max just as a default.

aha -- I knew I'd seen a similar issue, it's probably this issue:
http://superuser.com/questions/30107...-speed-control

[philby]

Good of you to dig that up!

I've been checking for Intel firmware releases frequently for the X-25 on the Samsung, and I'm current, with revision 2CV102M3.

As far as I know, all other drivers are up to date, if Device Manager / Samsung website are to be believed...

Not sure how I can find out what is driving the fans in order to lower some setting or other - there's absolutely nothing in the BIOS I can tinker with on this machine...

I've been sitting here for 2 hours and fan is constant - pulling the mains gives me about a ten minute reprieve of absolute silence (maintaining only TBird and IE open) before the fan is constant again.

philby