Octane III Weird fan behavior

[mikesaa309]

I have a Octane III with a GTX 1080 gpu and recently the fans have been pretty noisy even at idle. I've cleaned out the dust from the heatsinks and fans but still bit noisy compared to what it used to be like. Also one fan seems to be running slightly faster than the other but then occasionally the slower fan spins up faster for a few seconds and then slows down again. This is happening when laptop is at idle and temps seem fine.

Could it be that the thermal paste needs to be reapplied or is this some sort of software problem?

 

[Scott]

Sounds likely that it is temperature related. One fan is primarily for the CPU and the other is for the GPU. You will likely find that it's the CPU that's causing the fan spike rather than the GPU, especially when idling.

Monitor the temps of both the CPU and GPU. Anything over 40°C CPU will have the fans audible, 50+ it's very noticeable, 60+ it starts to take off.

 

[mikesaa309]

Idle CPU temp seems to be about 58c it's a i7 6700k. Fans have always been audible just not as much as they are at the moment.

 

[Scott]

That's toasty for idle. That's your issue right there. Probably just needs a good clean and a re-paste

 

[mikesaa309]

That's toasty for idle. That's your issue right there. Probably just needs a good clean and a re-paste

Trouble is I've never applied thermal paste before. Always had crap desktop computers until about 3-4 years ago when I got the Octane II then couple years later got this Octane III. I have taken pc's apart in the past but never built one from scratch nor had the need to reapply thermal paste so bit put off doing it as too much or too little can cause issues and not really a cheap laptop to mess up on. Guess other option is take it to a pc repair shop get them do it though would rather do it myself just hope I apply the right amount.

 

[Scott]

Clean everything thoroughly, heatsink, heat spreader, everything. Use alcohol if you can, cheap vodka is fine.

Paste the size of a petit pois in the center of the heat spreader plate on the chip (less on the GPU die). Put the heatsink on, job done.