PC fans turn on after a few minutes while asleep!

mechacontext · 23 Sep 2018

Hi all!

I've been having a strange issue with my wife's computer for almost a year now. When the computer is put into sleep mode, after a few minutes (ranging from 10-30 minutes) the fans will turn on, keeping power usage high. The display is still blank, and all accessories are put into their respective low-power modes, until I press a key or mouse-click, upon which the computer resumes its normal wakeup protocol (which in my case involves going to the lockscreen and entering a PIN.)

Is there a setting that might be turned on that is causing this to happen? It's super annoying, especially since the fans are all Molex-connected, either on-or-off situations. So they are all running at full power, loud as an airplane.

Win10Pro · 24 Sep 2018

mechacontext said:

Is there a setting that might be turned on that is causing this to happen?

Hi,
have you tried to check those UEFI settings which relate to fans?

mechacontext · 24 Sep 2018

I have scanned the BIOS for anything that would be out of place but haven't found anything too obvious. Is there anything I should look for in particular?

Win10Pro · 25 Sep 2018

mechacontext said:

I have scanned the BIOS for anything that would be out of place but haven't found anything too obvious. Is there anything I should look for in particular?

Sorry, I'm not that knowledgeable about BIOS, I hope someone else will give you a hint (provided that BIOS is a right place to dive into to search for a solution to your problem, which I think it might be).

essenbe · 25 Sep 2018

Is the system in your system specs the computer in question? Almost all fan profiles are controlled by the CPU temperature. Have you monitored your CPU temps to be sure they are within normal limits. That is what normally makes the fans turn up. You should have a section in your bios (if it is a retail board) that will show monitoring information as well as a section for fan profiles. On some boards, like mine, they are the same section. In setting the best curve you will get to play the never ending game of temperature vs noise.

Barman58 · 25 Sep 2018

Cannot give specifics on the Bios, there are too many variations, (even those with supposedly the same BIOS can have additional Customisation).

With all cooling, by the use of fans, the system will tend to have a short period after switch off where the temperature actually rises as the air stream is not there.

It may be in your setup that there is a routine in the BIOS to combat this, by restarting the Fans (you see this often in modern Cars where after a run the engine is switched off and shortly afterwards the fan starts up).

There are a number of different Sleep modes in use and some BIOS code allows this to be changed by the user, (some do not

) Take a look in the Power options and see if there is a selection option for the S mode [Advanced Configuration and Power Interface - Wikipedia ] . You may find that your Bios has an option to adjust the functions available is the specific S mode, (usually S3 in sleep), but this information may be treated as a state secret, as are a lot of BIOS functions thse days

.

If you cannot change the hardware settings all is not lost ...

What you could consider is using a different mode to Sleep, Hibernation mode usually shuts down everything except the Ethernet port, (used for Wake on Lan).

Hibernation mode also allows you to actually switch off all power to the device and still have a fast startup, (not as fast as resume from sleep but far better than a clean start). You can even hibernate a system, package and ship anywhere in the world and when started you will see the cursor in a word document in exactly the same place as it was when last used.

As the fan coming on is probably "good" for the hardware I would likely look at using hybrid sleep, set this to trigger Hibernate after a short while (5-10 Minutes), which would allow your to put the system into "Sleep" as you do now and have 5-10 minutes to "change your mind" with minimal overhead, before the system hibernates and should shut down the fans, (would need confirmation by trying it )

Win10Pro · 25 Sep 2018

mechacontext said:

I've been having a strange issue with my wife's computer for almost a year now.

Does it mean that before that your wife's computer had been running smoothly or did the problem start since day one, when you installed the system and ran it for the first time?

It seems to me like a hardware, rather than a system problem, like with a specific (non common) component on your PC or an external device connected to it.

It could also be a broken PSU or board, but it's highly improbable because after a year of usage you would certainly have 100 other problems.

mechacontext · 25 Sep 2018

essenbe said:

Is the system in your system specs the computer in question? Almost all fan profiles are controlled by the CPU temperature. Have you monitored your CPU temps to be sure they are within normal limits. That is what normally makes the fans turn up. You should have a section in your bios (if it is a retail board) that will show monitoring information as well as a section for fan profiles. On some boards, like mine, they are the same section. In setting the best curve you will get to play the never ending game of temperature vs noise.

Funny enough, it is. I've updated my own build but my wife's computer has the same specs as those in my profile.

I have not considered looking at CPU temps yet. That sounds like a good idea. There are some options in my BIOS that have to do with fan speed and things like that, but I didn't know whether they would cause issues while gaming, when the CPU needs a lot of cooling. My wife games on occasion and I didn't want her PC to suddenly run badly because I screwed something up.

mechacontext · 25 Sep 2018

Win10Pro said:

Does it mean that before that your wife's computer had been running smoothly or did the problem start since day one, when you installed the system and ran it for the first time?

It seems to me like a hardware, rather than a system problem, like a specific (non common) component on your PC or an external device connected to it.

It could also be a broken PSU or board, but it's highly improbable because after a year of usage you would certainly have 100 other problems.

Day 1 of the build! And yes, there seem to be no other issues.

mechacontext · 25 Sep 2018

Barman58 said:

What you could consider is using a different mode to Sleep, Hibernation mode usually shuts down everything except the Ethernet port, (used for Wake on Lan).

Hibernation mode also allows you to actually switch off all power to the device and still have a fast startup, (not as fast as resume from sleep but far better than a clean start). You can even hibernate a system, package and ship anywhere in the world and when started you will see the cursor in a word document in exactly the same place as it was when last used.

As the fan coming on is probably "good" for the hardware I would likely look at using hybrid sleep, set this to trigger Hibernate after a short while (5-10 Minutes), which would allow your to put the system into "Sleep" as you do now and have 5-10 minutes to "change your mind" with minimal overhead, before the system hibernates and should shut down the fans, (would need confirmation by trying it )

These are great suggestions. I'll explore hybrid sleep and Hibernation to see if they solve the issue at all. I don't think my wife would mind if going into sleep mode would take a little extra time. It's just that having the fans fun on full blast when the computer is not in use is super annoying.