Precision T3500 CPU Fan always on full speed

Syed Farhan_1

Commendable
Dec 17, 2016
2
0
1,510
Hi,
I have a Precision T3500 which, when turned on the CPU fan spins at full speed constantly creating a lot of noise. This has only happened recently, despite no changes to software, hardware or environment.
Does anyone have an idea what the problem could be?

Thanx Farhan
 
Solution
Likely temps are telling the front case fans to speed up.

My T3500 has the copper pipe sink and was running very hot. The thermal paste was obviously very old. Probably from 5.5 years ago when it was assembled.

Applying some Arctic Silver Ceramique dropped temps significantly. Now the fans hardly throttle at all. You can also mount a 80mm fan directly to the sink to drop temps even more.

Rodney_21

Commendable
Oct 15, 2016
19
0
1,510
I got a T3500 with the same loud and high fan speeds. Many refurbished Dell workstations are not coming with the correct rated heatsink, especially Xeon CPU..

First get a hardware monitor ( small software app )so you can keep an eye on your CPU temps and other variables.

Pull the side off and if you have an aluminum only heatsink with no copper heat pipes you very much need to change ( it's under the hard drive swing arm ) to the Dell U016F model heatsink. It has copper heat pipes, sits closer to the fan, and is much more effective.

This was a nightmare for me because I had very little money and on top of paying too much for my T3500 it had problems that took me over a month to solve.
I get frequent fan failure messages, even though it has a set of new fans.

You should update the BIOS and other chipset drivers from the Dell website.
 

Susquehannock

Honorable
Likely temps are telling the front case fans to speed up.

My T3500 has the copper pipe sink and was running very hot. The thermal paste was obviously very old. Probably from 5.5 years ago when it was assembled.

Applying some Arctic Silver Ceramique dropped temps significantly. Now the fans hardly throttle at all. You can also mount a 80mm fan directly to the sink to drop temps even more.
 
Solution