Cooling fan has recently started running a lot

I can't say exactly when, but the cooling fan on my laptop (specs in my sig) has start running longer, harder, and more frequently. If I do Ctl-Alt-Del and start Task Manager, it very briefly shows 80+% CPU usage, which of course accounts for the fan. But the act of starting Task Manager makes usage drop to 25-30% immediately and the fan follows suit.

I just tried starting Task Manager two or three times. Each time, it showed "System Interrupts" using 80+% for less than a second, then it goes to zero and total use drops to 20-odd. When I close TM and restart it, same thing.

I'm wondering if it's something from the recent Patch Tuesday update. Ideas, anyone?

what I've been reading so far about your unit is that Temperature is a big issue. I'm not one for cosmetics. I've dealt with communications gear & had to cool it down. I'm not sure about yours, & the last patchs? Maybe someone later will post an answer. I used to pull out fans & put in ones that had more rpm's? Lots of cooling pads went out with your unit. I'm stuck.

Welp, I updated to "2024-10 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 Version 23H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5044285)" and the DPC/ISR issues I'd spent DAYS resolving (I won't bore you w/ details) resurfaced. SO yeah, it might be recent upgrades that are the root cause.
My DPC/ISR issues started a few MS patches back.
I have a fairly potent system, so these issues shouldn't happen.

Not a solution to your problem. Just to let you know I'd swap problems with you. Count yourself lucky your fans are doing what they're supposed to. I've been fighting a problem for months with my older i9-10900 on an OEM system. It's much less powerful than yours with no overclocking ability and I have no fan control at all. I lost fan control around 6 months ago and have narrowed it down to a cpu, mobo, or bad bios update. I really think it's the UEFI bios update that did it and it's one Dell won't let me roll back. I've had this thing torn apart 3 times. Am now living with it and having to monitor temps very closely. I don't think I'm going to spend another dime on it.
I can stop the overheating by turning off HT and speedstep but then I have to run at base speed all the time and I'm not prepared to do that right now.
I would LOVE to hear my fans speed up every once in a while.

Just an observation in your case. I would start at the beginning and troubleshoot the problem as though it was a brand new system I had just put together. (and I'm not even a system builder but I even do this on new systems I buy) I would stress test it with all OC turned off and monitor my temps.. There are many tools out there designed for this.
Aida64, Realbench, OCCT personal or Prime95 come to mind for stressing and HWinfo 64 for monitoring. Furmark is excellent for stressing a GPU. You'd need to do your research to decide on which one you want to use. There are articles all over the internet on how to stress test a system's hardware.
Did you run the machine through it's paces when you built it as you should have done?

In my case since I'm stock, I felt Aida64 more appropriate for me since it's more balanced whereas Prime95 is very intense. I do know OCCT is very popular with sytem builders (the free personal edition). I've never used it myself but I believe it both stresses the cpu and ram as well as monitors temps at the same time. You'd have to check that out to see if I'm right, or maybe others experienced in system building will jump into the thread to give their opinion about OCCT or other suggestions. OCBASE/OCCT : Free, all-in-one stability, stress test, benchmark and monitoring tool for your PC

S0C9 said:

Welp, I updated to "2024-10 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 Version 23H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5044285)" and the DPC/ISR issues I'd spent DAYS resolving (I won't bore you w/ details) resurfaced. SO yeah, it might be recent upgrades that are the root cause.
My DPC/ISR issues started a few MS patches back.
I have a fairly potent system, so these issues shouldn't happen.

Click to expand...

DPC and ISR are outside my experience. How might they cause the fan to run more? Why does the recent patch Tues update cause them?

@glasskuter Overclocking is outside my experience. I (perhaps naively) thought overclocking was something a user, say a gamer, did by choice and intent, through some setting they changed themselves. Do I understand you correctly that the system might, using whatever criteria, decide to overclock itself? If so, how do I find out if mine will do that?

And about your BIOS update. After using PCs since the mid-1980s, painful experience has left me with the conclusion that updates far too often bring problems. I had an isolated, one-time BSOD a month or two ago. Ran a lot of tests and didn't find anything. Was recommended to do a BIOS update. My usual caution kicked in and I haven't done it.

No, Overclocking will not activate itself. It's just a standard operating procedure warning for benchmarking a system. In fact, I must apologize to you as I looked at your system specs wrong and advised inappropriately.. I had several windows open at the same time and looked at the wrong one. So let.'s back up a little.

Fans speed up for one reason and one reason only...to dissipate heat. Overheating can be caused by a number of issues, common ones being hardened or bad application of thermal paste, dirty fans or components, or flakey hardware that is breaking down. The first thing is to determine just how hot the device is getting and under what conditions it's getting hot. It's hard enough to troubleshoot this in a PC, laptops doubly so IMO.
In all honesty, the times, I've encountered an overheating laptop, I clean it and replace the thermal compound. If that doesn't remedy the issue, I don't waste my time further as there's no way to swap test components easily. While not fixing the problem, sometimes a cooling pad makes all the difference when using a laptop,.
I use a little app called Coretemp that sits in my system tray all the time so I can tell the load on my systen and the temp of my highest core.It alerts me if so I can shut down before damage is done.

Buddy said:

DPC and ISR are outside my experience. How might they cause the fan to run more? Why does the recent patch Tues update cause them?

Click to expand...

If your PC is being bogged down with increased cpu time to handle backed up DPC + ISR calls from various devices (audio, network, etc.) then the system may decide that it's running "hot" and bump up the fan speed to cool it down.

But that wasn't the point of my post..
That was.. things are getting overly complex in the PC world (gazillions of devices, drivers, interop) and an MS upgrade/patch can often introduce issues you did not previously have.