Asus M50Sa fan problem

[laxus]

Hey guys, lately I'm having a problem with my Asus M50Sa laptop fan. It kind of start at irregular intervals. Sometime immediately after startup and sometime 5 to 30 minutes after that. This has cause considerable amount of heat build up in the system to a point that my laptop would automatically shutdown. The thing is I'm not quite sure if it's hardware or software related cause once the fan start spinning, things would be quite normal. I'm contemplating of getting a new fan but just want to be sure that it is indeed the fan problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[ALLurGroceries]

It could be a bad motor, or it could just be lacking lubrication. It could conceivably be a software problem, but the fan should start immediately on power up no matter what. If you're out of warranty, you could disassemble and clean the fan, and then try using some wd40 or 3-in-1 oil on the fan bearing. I'm not exactly sure what your fan looks like, but often you can pop the fan blades off with a little (careful) force, since usually they are held in place magnetically. Sometimes it's not so easy, so be prepared to trash your fan if things go wrong.

If the motor is worn out, and it's not a lubrication problem, your fan would start sometimes and not others, and probably make bad clicking sounds when it tries to start sometimes. I have also seen this happen with bad connections, either bad wires or a bad connector on the board side. If your fan isn't turning on at all when you turn the machine on (put your hand near the exhaust to feel air moving), something is surely wrong. You can try resetting your BIOS to defaults, but that's a shot in the dark, and it's probably your fan failing.

[laxus]

Hi, first off thanks for the reply. The fan is actually spinning but at a very low rate of 100 rpm during startup. Most of the time it would speed up to around 2000 rpm within seconds and fluctuate between 1500 - 3400 rpm depending on the programs or games running. Unfortunately on several occasions the fan just decides to stay put at 100 rpm even when the cpu/gpu temps shoot up to over 100 degree Celsius.

[ALLurGroceries]

That is strange, it could be a problem on the board if it's not the fan that's the problem. Give the BIOS CMOS reset a try. You could also try a liveCD like ubuntu with some sort of stress test like mprime (prime95) to see if it's a software issue Free Software - GIMPS

[laxus]

I believe that the problem is either software or bios related cause once the fan start spinning, there is basically no problem at all. The fan irregularity only occurs during startup and I could actually remedy the problem by restarting the laptop.

I will give the BIOS CMOS reset a try and see how it goes.

[ramgen]

Detach your fan power cable and connect it to an external 5V power supply and see what it does. If the fan spins at full speed than the problem is not in the fan itself.

Then you can directly connect your fan to one of the USB power line (+5V). Your fan will run always, at full speed, but your notebook will not shutdown due to the heat issues.


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[laxus]

Give the BIOS CMOS reset a try.[/url]

Unfortunately there is no option in the BIOS to do the CMOS reset. The only way to do it is to physically remove the CMOS battery (I believe it is located on the other side of the mainboard and requires dismantling of the whole laptop) and I'm not very comfortable doing that.

Detach your fan power cable and connect it to an external 5V power supply and see what it does.

There's no way for me to test the fan cause the the connector of the fan does not fit any of the power supply I have. Anyway I don't think the fan is faulty at all.

By the way I've decided to get a cooler like the one shown below.

[laxus]

Ok guys I've managed to weed out the problem. Apparently there's a dead bug stuck in between the rotor of the fan. No idea how it got there but I managed to remove it and now everything is back to normal .