fan runs, hard drive noise

[Russell]

Greetings. I'm new to this forum, and to ThinkPads, having just made the jump from a Dell. I've got 2 questions. Somewhere on the forum I saw a post regarding the fan, which said that it could be made to stop running nearly constantly by switching to an "adaptive" power setting. What is an adaptive power setting, and is it a good idea? The fan is a bit annoying; I was surprised by it: my old Dell ran silently unless it was being asked to do serious work. Also, the hard drive has a constant whishing sound, like ocean waves. I wonder if it's defective. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[RonS]

There are essentially four speed settings for the Centrino processor: Very Slow, Slow, Adaptive and Maximum. Your TP is probably set to Maximum, which will keep the CPU at full speed all the time, and also generate more heat, which in turn triggers the fan to stay on.

The Adaptive setting is really what the Centrino was made for. It automatically steps up into maximum speed when there's work to be done, and throttles back to a slower speed when idling. In the benchmarking I've done (and intense use runnign applications), I've never noticed any performance difference between Maximum and Adaptive.

You can set your CPU speed in the Mattery Maximizer Wizard (double-click on the battery % meter near the taskbar). You can create a new power scheme, or right-click on the existing scheme, select Modify, and change the CPU speed to Adaptive.

[Russell]

Thanks! Strange that, since adaptive is what Centrino is all about, my ThinkPad 42 would come pre-set without it operating. It's great now, though.

[daeojkim]

In the battery maximizer select "Create New powerscheme" for AC power and select adaptive for CPU.

By default there is no adaptive mode for AC so you will have to create one.

Your CPU will run about 7 - 8 C cooler during idle. Thus less fan spin

[Russell]

A followup. I changed the setting to Adaptive, but the fan still runs nearly all the time. Anyone have any thoughts?

[treker]

My T42 is set for adaptive and runs at 600mhz and 43C almost all the time. Very few apps cause it to run at 1700mhz. My fan runs all the time. I can't hear it...just feel the slight breeze out the side exhaust. On startup, the fan runs high speed, very audible for a second or two and then settles down to the inaudible speed. When a high speed video game is played and the temps rise to 67C or so, the fan does increase ever so slightly but is still inaudible, only the breeze is higher.