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?

[McMagnus]

It has heatpipes, see mine (and other's) posts ~3 days ago.

[Sonny_Jim]

...I was one of those TX1 owners feeling a little disappointed with the fan's performance characteristics, even under light duty - the cycling on & off (spinning back up within a second of powering down), as much as absolute noise levels. To be fair it's my first laptop in a long time and I haven't much experience of other makes/models, so maybe I'm just assimilating other people's judgements; but, if the TR1 is reported as running near silent...

Consequently, I was interested by (if somewhat envious of!) the upcoming TX2 being widely reported as being fanless - whether it be intended as a 'fix' by Sony for an implicitly acknowledged noisy cooling system, or just an advance in technology/design...

However, having just seen that the TX2 range has now appeared on SonyStyle's UK site (for end-Feb delivery), I then found a link to a recording of a Sony webinar - of three days ago - discussing the range of new machines & hardware technologies. The TX2 got rather briefer treatment than, in particular, the new SZ models; but, this was apparently because the only difference from the TX1 seems to be the upgrade from a 60GB to 80GB HDD incorporating, I think, a new type of disc technology (providing greater data integrity).

No, repeat No, mention was made of the TX2 being passively cooled... then, in response to a question, the chief technical presenter explicitly stated that the TX2 will be conventionally cooled and that the misunderstanding had derived from an incorrect (Sony?) press release, or incorrectly reported press release, made in Germany. The soundtrack was breaking up a little (drowned out by my TX1's fan?), but I'm afraid there was no ambiguity about this...

So, looks like I can cancel that eBay listing, after all!

Regards, Lewis

[McMagnus]

To summarize my thoughts about this:

WTF!

[Pagemakers]

...I was one of those TX1 owners feeling a little disappointed with the fan's performance characteristics, even under light duty - the cycling on & off (spinning back up within a second of powering down), as much as absolute noise levels.  To be fair it's my first laptop in a long time and I haven't much experience of other makes/models, so maybe I'm just assimilating other people's judgements; but, if the TR1 is reported as running near silent... 

Consequently, I was interested by (if somewhat envious of!) the upcoming TX2 being widely reported as being fanless - whether it be intended as a 'fix' by Sony for an implicitly acknowledged noisy cooling system, or just an advance in technology/design...

However, having just seen that the TX2 range has now appeared on SonyStyle's UK site (for end-Feb delivery), I then found a link to a recording of a Sony webinar - of three days ago - discussing the range of new machines & hardware technologies.  The TX2 got rather briefer treatment than, in particular, the new SZ models; but, this was apparently because the only difference from the TX1 seems to be the upgrade from a 60GB to 80GB HDD incorporating, I think, a new type of disc technology (providing greater data integrity).

No, repeat No, mention was made of the TX2 being passively cooled... then, in response to a question, the chief technical presenter explicitly stated that the TX2 will be conventionally cooled and that the misunderstanding had derived from an incorrect (Sony?) press release, or incorrectly reported press release, made in Germany.  The soundtrack was breaking up a little (drowned out by my TX1's fan?), but I'm afraid there was no ambiguity about this...

So, looks like I can cancel that eBay listing, after all! 

Regards, Lewis

Can you post the link for us?

[McMagnus]

http://sonyeurope.webex.com/

The part about the TX2 fan is in the closing 10 minutes or so.

[kee-lo_]

See I knew there had to be a fan to keep the pipes cold

[agoetz]

Have a look at this:

http://www.prestige.sonystyle.co.uk/prestige/en/prestige.html

Start the presentation of the TX2. When the part on saving battery power is coming up, look at the bottom line
"fanless cooling" is mentioned there.
I don't know if it's a bad translation from japanese to english.

We all got to wait and see!

[McMagnus]

I'm very close to ordering one of these and then give Sony hell about advertising about "FAN FREE COOLING" if it turns out it's not.

[kee-lo_]

Well you could go along the lines of Trades Description Act.

[S.E.M.]

After all information I got so far I can only conclude that with the Sonoma technology a small and silent notebook is simply not feasible.
And with all the complaints about noisy TX and BX notebooks, I hope that Sony will put their brains into developing more silent notebooks. Nevertheless, this does not seem to be such an issue for most people. It's no use complaing about noise problems in reviews of about 4 month old models. I am wondering why there are not more questions about this concerning upcoming notebooks. I would have thought that by now people start pestering Sony and other manufacturers with such questions. And that maybe even official reviews more widely would state facts about noise.
But I really had a hard time finding some information concerning fan noise of the upcoming SZ-series. So far I only found something mentioned in one sony-europe.com article.
Please forgive me if you don't agree, but I simply have to point out that in this case I think it's time for a change in consumer behavior.