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Hi,

I have Dell T-7500 workstation that I bought in 2012. It is out of warranty.
I run 12 Monitors using 3 ATI Fire Pro 2460 Low profile fanles cards without any problems for 5 years.
Today, I ran into a problem & it is the Front Large fan that sits on top of another smaller fan.
It sucks the air from front of system & blows it in. It pretty much throws air on the 3 video cards.
It started making loud noise so opened he side cover & found out it runs almost at 2 to 3 times normal speed.

(1) I turned up my office air conditioner just to make sure the system is not heating up.

(2) I also took out the side cover so system is open so it gets more air.

(3) I blew air to that fan using an air blower to clean it out.

It quieted down to normal for 2 to 3 Hrs. but then problem started again.

(4) So I took out top video card & then second video card but that did not help.

(5) I have 4 HDDs so I stopped power to 3 of them leaving only one but that did not help.

Kindly help.

What will happen if I run the system with that problem fan ?

Thank You

How do you know that it runs with 2x-3x speed and that it is not just generating much more noise due to worn bearings? I think it is quite hard to visually determine the rpms of a fan.. Can you see the RPM in the BIOS or somewhere else? If indeed it is running at a higher than normal speed, then the problem is likely not with the fan, but because the temperature sensor that controls the fan is too hot. This could either be due to dust build-up somewhere (clean out all dust from the entire machine to rule that out) or perhaps one that some fresh thermal paste is needed somewhere.

Do you know if it is the video card temps that controls the fan?
If you can see the fan RPM in the BIOS, perhaps you can also see the various temps from the CPU, MB etc and check if one of them seems excessively high? You might also have various fan profile options in there like 'silent', 'normal' etc. I am not familiar with Dell workstations, but this is commonly seen in other systems.

High RPM definitely. I put my hand when it was running normal & barely felt any air coming in.
Then when it was making loud noise I again put my hand & can feel airflow very high.
I don't know if video card controls the temp
I don't know how to deal with BIOS..

Buy a replacement. If it's the top fan, then a fixed RPM fan should be fine.

There are endless choices. It looks like a 120mm fan to me, so this Cougar fan for $12 would fit the bill. (Black version also available)

One concern I have is why this fan is spinning up and no others are. The fan is probably controlled by GPU temperature (since the CPU has it's own fan and wouldn't be affected by the top fan). Have you checked temps on your CPU and GPUs? HWMonitor is a good program that shows you all your system info in one place. Have you blown the dust out of your GPUs lately? (can of air, hold the GPU fan stationary)

Very well could be the CPU temps. A lot of motherboards will ramp up the speeds of all of the fans (CPU and case) if the CPU gets too hot.

I would check the CPU temperatures and the condition of the CPU heatsink and fan.

That's certainly a possibility (and definitely more common to control case fan speeds off the CPU temp), I just hoped Dell had a little more common sense when they were setting up fan controls for this particular case.

Let me answer some questions.

1. GPUs all 3 are fan less. No fan. It is low profile.
2. I just turned the system on after 12 hours of shut sown with one GPU running 4 Monitors. No problem so far. But I did the same thing yesterday with just web browsing & no other programs running & after few minutes that fan was running like crazy. Right now I will see how long it runs with just web browsing.
3. If it goes crazy again, I will take that card out & connect 2nd card which is cool for 12 hrs. If that does not ramp up the fan then likely that GPUs are getting too hot ?
4. Other fans are running normal except I can't tell the CPU Fan which is very small & black & hard to tell if it is running fast or not.
5. I have installed GPU-z sometime ago & I just checked the GPU Temperature & it shows 58 degree Celsius. ( 140 Degree Fahrenheit )
6. Fan speed 47%
7. Just installed HWMonitor = CPU core temps range 98 F To 125 F ( Running few webpages only & using one Video Card & 4 Monitors )
Question :
A similar video card came with the system which is low profile too but runs only 2 monitors. So if I want to install it how should I install drivers for that card ? Just on top of current drivers ?

dan99t wrote:

But I did the same thing yesterday with just web browsing & no other programs running & after few minutes that fan was running like crazy.

This screams component temperature problem.
I'd recommend NOT using web browsing as a test since that can be a highly variable load. Normally web browsing is a low stress task, but maybe you're visiting sites that are running background scripts to mine cryptocurrency from your PC while you're on their site.
Certainly passively cooled GPUs can get hot, but since this situation just recently started happening, it's unlikely that ALL of the GPUs' heatsinks came loose at the same time, but it probably only takes one steamy GPU to trigger the fan speed increase. 58C isn't high at all, but it sounds like that was the temp during your successful test where the fan didn't scream. It would be interesting to know what the GPU temp(s) are when the machine pushes the fan speed up.

Took out 2 GPUs & ran only one& 4 Monitors for 2 days with no problem.
So inserted all 3 GPUs & have been running with no problem till today.
CPU is running at around 62 to 64 C.
GPUs are running at around 68 C.
Neither have gone beyond 70 C.
Have not made any changes but for absolutely no reason problem started & went away on its own. Go figure ?
Thank you all for your support.

hmm, any driver/software updates that might have triggered the problem, and a subsequent update fixed it?