TX1 fan noise

[McMagnus]

Hi

I upgraded from a T1XP to a TX1XP last week and the new fan is starting to bother me. I've heard (at Tom's hardware I think) that the new Centrino chipset runs a bit hotter than the old, but I thought the BIOS would be able to keep it slow enough at the lowest performance setting to not bother me.

However, when at the lowest possible performance (CPU Control on "Battery Life" and the "System Idle Process" toggles between 98-99% and the My Computer->Properties says the CPU is running at 299MHz), the fan is still spinning up and down every 6 seconds or so. The old T1XP was dead silent until I at least started compiling or something. And then the fan spun up only after running at 100% CPU for almost a minute.

Also, the fan itself has a noise of its own in the new TX1XP. In the old T1XP, all I heard was the sound of the air flowing out, nothing else.

So, the problem is two-fold.

1. The fan spins up and down constantly. It runs *much* more than the old T1XP.

2. The fan sounds more than necessary. The old T1XP proves that it's possible to make them really silent, why isn't the new as silent? Did I get a bad one? Should I switch?

[Pagemakers]

Sadly, despite 5 requests Sony Tech support can't be arsed to reply to me.

So much for spending £1500 on one of their products

[lantek]

Same here, my week old support ticket on this issue has not received any useful response so far.

[Pagemakers]

Do what I did. Open another ticket asking them to respond the the other ticket!

It worked for me but their reply was very much unhelpful, so I responded again and await their reply.

[kee-lo_]

Why am I not suprised?

[Pagemakers]

Well the good news is support have called me directly and have escillated the problem and are going to call me back with their findings.

I'll keep you guys updated.

[McMagnus]

Thanks! That's good news. I'm still waiting for my dealer to get word from Sony. But I'll probably read it here first.

[Pagemakers]

After all that they respond with:

Than you for contacting us.

We apologise for the delay in getting back to you.

A unit with small form factor such as this VGN-TX1HP/W CEK tends to heat much
than other so in order to prevent overheating fan operations are important.

A 6 degree triggering is normal and you mey hear the fan come on and off repetedly so as to cool the unit down.
This noise and your described behaviour is normal and does not indicate any malfunction.

[lantek]

Thank you for contacting us.

A unit with a small form factor tends to heat much than other so in order to prevent overheating fan operations are important.
60 degrees triggering on this unit is normal and on this model the fan may come on and off regularly.
If the fan stops it means that it reached the target to cool the unit sufficinetly.

The described behaviour of the fan operating like this (i.e coming on and off like this) would be the normal within noise specification and does not indicate any malfunction on the unit.

[lantek]

I have replied back saying this isnt really good enough. Just because it is within their design specs doesnt mean its acceptable.

[tonybeard]

Well it is bloody freezing in Europe so you probably want another heating appliance in the house now. If the noise is unbearable definately press Vaio Link for a repair or grab a separate laptop cooler trays as Seb suggests that runs on its own power source not one of those usb powered ones.