Should I leave the CPU fan runs at full speed all the time?

[aoxue]

Hi guys,

I have had my system for about one month now.

I set the fan speed on "Auto" in bios at the beginning. Things were ok. When I turned on the system, the CPU is at 42C, the system temp is 41C. In 2 hours, the CPU temp will reach 50-51C idle, and 56C loaded.

I thought it was ok, since I don't overclock. But yesterday, when I got home, I found that both of the CPU cores were at 70-71C!! And the CPU fan was not spinning at all!!

I opened the case and forced the CPU fan to spin using my finger and then it started spinning. After a while, the core temp went down to 47C

I don't trust the auto control for the fan speed now, so I disabled that function. Now my CPU fan runs at 1700RPM all the time and the core temp is always between 31-40C.

Question: Is it ok for me to leave the CPU fan spinning at its full speed all the time? Will that reduce the life of the fan drastically? How long will the fan last like that? two years enough?

Thanks a lot guys.

 

[sailer]

On most of my computers, the fans have run full speed constantly without any problem, except for some extra noise. The few times that I have used automatic fan speed controllers have resulted in trouble. My present gaming computer has a manual controller so I can speed it up or slow it down as desired, but I usually forget about it and leave it at full speed.

I'd rather have the extra noise than not have the fan work.

 

[13thmonkey]

you are the second person I have heard about with this problem.

The Gigabyte is meant to stop the fan at low temps, but restart it when it gets too warm, obvioulsy it isn;t doing this, have you let gigabyte know? Perhaps they can update the bios to check sppeed after a restart command or something?

 

[chunkymonster]

Intersting problem, I'd let the mobo maker know that is happening. Generally speaking, I'm not a fan (no pun intended) of auto fan controllers, I'd rather just buy quiet high cfm fans and let them run.

Question: Is it ok for me to leave the CPU fan spinning at its full speed all the time? Will that reduce the life of the fan drastically? How long will the fan last like that? two years enough?

Fans were made to spin. I've had the same heatsink and fan on my home theater pc, that machine runs 24/7/365, and has been running for about 1-1/2 years. When fans start to go bad they usually start making a buzzing or loud whizzing noises, very rarely do they just quit outright, they mostly give some indication that they're getting ready to die. You should be fine.

 

[13thmonkey]

what temps are you getting when the fan is spinning properly? The temps you indicated seemed a bit on the warm side, about +10 from what I expected.

 

[jaguarskx]

I have my Scythe Ninja's Fan run at full speed. Since the fan is pretty quiet I don't really hear it above the background noise.

I'm guessing in your situation the voltage to the fan was set so low that the fan couldn't startup again. If you can control the voltage in the BIOS (unlikely), then have it go no lower than 0.6v. Some mobos allows you adjust the RPMs so set it no lower than 50%.

Or simply have your fan run at full speed.

 

[nukemaster]

you are best running @ full speed(maybe i should not say that as a q-fan user.......but well in most cases 100% is good )....

As your board appears to be able to set the voltage lower than 5 volts(the min for mose fans)....My K8V SE does this as well...my CNPS7000alcu stops @ 2.6 volts....but when the temp gets above 50 it starts back up again....

In this case....the start again does not seem to be happening...

If it is not too loud at full speed leave it....if it is too loud....maybe you can get a fan controller. then you have control...to be safe get one that does not allow you to go under 5 volts(some small fans[40mm-60mm] will not start @ 5 volts....and need to get 12....then back to 5 to keep it spinning). This will stop you from shutting fans right off. Just remember if you forget to fire it back up....it will get hot....but if you only got to 70c(was it coretemp?) with no fan, you may not even need full speed.

I hope this helps

 

[Tobywoby]

I have the same problem. I was one of the first keeners to build a core 2 system in August. I'm using an E6300 on a GA-965P-DS3. When I put the fan speed control/method to auto in the BIOS, the mobo will sporadically fail to restart the fan properly after it has completely stopped (which happens at low temps.) The cores then heat to about 70 degrees and I get very scared I seriously freaked out the first time.

This started happening almost the next day after building the machine, so that's been a few months. In that time I'd say it's happened about a dozen times, all of which I have (thankfully) been around to manually restart the machine and get the fan going. It would seem that as long as my computer room was warm or the cpu was loaded then it would never get cool enough to trigger this nonsense...

I e-mailed Gigabyte today (Nov. 28 ) about this problem, so we'll see if anything gets done or what they have to say... but until then I'm leaving the fan control on DISABLE. It runs the fan full tilt at around 1700 rpm, and is a little loud for my tastes (especially after a few months of quiet operation,) but is preferable over me getting WOKEN UP FROM SLEEP by the sounds of my pc's screaming thermal alarm!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I am unaware of any settings in the BIOS release I am using (F2) that allow one to control the voltages for the fan control, in case that is the issue.