Work Laptop Fan
The fan on my work laptop (an HP Elitebook 840 G5) is an absolute nightmare. It randomly begins revving for no reason. I installed NoteBook FanControl to see if I could tame it and it sometimes works, but often just seems to make it worse.
I’ve found that shutting down, disconnecting the power, holding down the power button for 30s and resetting the BIOS can sometimes fix it, but this week none of those things have been helping.
Today, out of sheer frustration I sat a bag of ice on it to see if I could shut the damn thing up, but no, it just kept going. After looking at it for a while I wondered whether I could put the ice near the intake, which must have been on the bottom. I pushed the laptop back to have a look at the vent on the bottom and…
It immediately started running the fan at 70%. I’ve never seen this before, when it’s playing up it always just flips between off and 100%.
Now I’m beginning to wonder if sitting the laptop flat on the desk is causing some sort of problem with the vent for the fan, or if there’s some other temperature sensor that can control the fan which was more affected by the vent having reduced airflow.
Whatever it is, I got a couple of blocks and have lifted the back of the laptop about 1cm off the desk and so far it’s been happy. I’ll just have to leave it and see if it keeps behaving.
Update:
It’s 6 days later and the problem is back. 😠