Why is my fan running at high speed?
Hi, everyone.
Leo Notenboom here for Askleo.com, where I've been answering questions since 2003.
Questions like Why is my fan running at high speed?
A fan running at high speed means pretty much one thing heat.
The question is, where is that heat coming
from and is it a problem or just a side effect of what's going on?
Let's take a look at the three most common reasons.
Reason number one, blocked air vents.
I mean, specifically the holes or
the vents or the slots in your computer or laptop that are meant to allow
for the free flow of air aren't. There's something in the way. Around here
we end up with accumulations of dust
and corgi fur. Your mileage, of course, will vary.
One of the things that is actually kind of surprising that a lot of people don't
realize is that most laptops don't work very well on your lap.
Some models actually have vent holes
in the bottom that simply by putting them on your lap get blocked sometimes
depending on what else is on your lap, like maybe a comfy blanket these days then
the air holes on the side may also get blocked.
So that's something to be aware of.
Make sure that your computer's vents are unobstructed and claim reason number two.
Well, your computer is just working hard.
One of the things about CPU's, the actual chip inside your machine,
is that the harder it works, the more heat it generates.
It's actually one of the things that factors in very much to CPU design.
How much heat will it generate for the processing power that it's giving you?
So one of the things that often happens like around here is when I'm producing
these videos, when I'm actually making the final video.
Well, that encoding that video encoding
work is actually very computationally heavy.
It really does exercise the CPU at a very high level.
The net result is the CPU usage is often
maxed out for durations of time and it generates a lot of heat.
Now, the fans in your computer typically
are also connected to a temperature sensor.
So they really only come on when they're
needed, but they'll come on at higher and higher speeds.
The warmer and warmer things are inside
your computer in an attempt to keep it cool.
So that's something else that could be going on.
You could simply be doing something that requires a lot of CPU,
that generates a lot of heat, that needs to be cooled off.
The third reason is kind of a variation of the second in that there's something
on your computer that's using the CPU heavily.
The difference is it's not you, it's something else, most notably malware.
Now, a lot of malware really does a good
job of trying to stay undetected and really try and make sure that they're
not sending up these red flags, that they're doing something.
But the problem is that not all malware is any good, but some malware by nature
of what it's trying to do also uses the CPU heavily.
The most recent example would be malware
that is designed to perform Bitcoin mining.
As we've talked about before, Bitcoin mining is itself intentionally
a very computationally expensive piece of work.
The net result is when a computer is
mining Bitcoin, it's using the CPU to its maximum and it's generating a lot of heat.
The thing to do if you're not running
something that, you know is CPU intensive and the air vents are all clear,
the next thing to do, of course, is to look for malware.
Those are the top three things that can happen.
Of course, there's lots of different reasons.
But the thing to remember,
whenever you hear the fan running heavily, is that the computer or at least
the temperature sensor for that fan thinks the computer is too warm for updates.
For related links and more, visit askleo.com/6613.
I'm Leo Notenboom.
This is Askleo.com.Thanks for watching.