Any tips to reduce or prevent the fan from starting up

[ctitanic]

I encountered an issue today again where the fan randomly came on when the computer was just sitting idle. Looking at task manager showed the CPU going to 90-100%cpu and 100% disk usage. After again monitoring processes, discovered that the system was defragmenting my disk. Turns out that this is a weekly process that runs and from what most say, it is not a good idea to defrag SSD's. The Surface Pro's are all set to defrag weekly so I went and turned that setting off. But just adding that to the list of "Things that make our fans BLOW".

I have it set to defrag and optimize automatically weekly and never had any problem.

 

[Zog1971]

I have it set to defrag and optimize automatically weekly and never had any problem.

Let me rephrase......."Things that make our i7 fans BLOW".

 

[ctitanic]

Let me rephrase......."Things that make our i7 fans BLOW".

I see, you are having a lot of fun with your i7!

 

[Zog1971]

I see, you are having a lot of fun with your i7!

For the most part, I really am. It still may go back for an i5, but I'm gonna give it a little more time. The issues I have had I have been able to resolve and in normal use and in the programs I use it for in Adobe, it has been a speedy dream and no fan/heat issues. Time will tell.......

 

[GreyFox7]

It must be catching... I'm not talkin to you anymore...
After three reboots... I seems I am back to a quiescent point.
My main external monitor was misdetected which made it look like a new monitor
Reboot
Monitor ok now but can't click on anything and launch it, corners are not active can't get charms
Did ctrl alt del from kybd tried to launch task manager ... no joy ... managed to tab to the power icon and shutdown.
Reboot
Now system, and system interrupts taking 25% CPU. - also have CSICLIENT running and an IE task even though I didn't launch it.
Reboot

There's something wrong with Windows 8.1 - NFR

 

[ctitanic]

It must be catching... I'm not talkin to you anymore...
After three reboots... I seems I am back to a quiescent point.
My main external monitor was misdetected which made it look like a new monitor
Reboot
Monitor ok now but can't click on anything and launch it, corners are not active can't get charms
Did ctrl alt del from kybd tried to launch task manager ... no joy ... managed to tab to the power icon and shutdown.
Reboot
Now system, and system interrupts taking 25% CPU. - also have CSICLIENT running and an IE task even though I didn't launch it.
Reboot

There's something wrong with Windows 8.1 - NFR

Time to refresh...

 

[GreyFox7]

Time to refresh...

I just did ... on Wednesday.

 

[Edo0003]

Check your indexing options and exclude the user and IE temp folders from it.

View attachment 3001

What does indexing do?

 

[GreyFox7]

I'm guessing you have the i5/i7 version. I dont know anything that will prevent it, but to minimize it you could try undervolting. But there is something more direct you can try by lowering the CPU's frequency. MS removed power settings that allow you to force the CPU to run at lower frequencies. But that is 'easily' remedied.

On a side note, you can enable the power profiles that microsoft removed doing similar things. But here's what you want to do. Supposing 'Balanced' is your power profile, open a command prompt with admin privileges (I dont remember if necessary, but I always do this by default). Type in with enters after each bulleted command

• powercfg /setdcvalueindex SCHEME_BALANCED SUB_PROCESSOR PROCTHROTTLEMAX 50
  
• powercfg /setacvalueindex SCHEME_BALANCED SUB_PROCESSOR PROCTHROTTLEMAX 50

What you just did was make your max CPU frequency 50% of what it normally is. Change 50 to the percentage you want. This forces my i3 SP3 to hang at 680Mhz

But you're not done yet. You need to reset the power profile. Type in

• powercfg /l

You will see something like

Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e (Balanced)​

The text in red is the ID of the power profile. Copy it (right click->mark->highlight text->press enter).

Finally type

• powercfg /setactive 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e

Now your CPU will throttle only up to half its max. I'm not sure how it will work alongside turboboost but feel free to experiment.

Pure Gold! +1000

 

[hertsjoatmon]

I have it set to defrag and optimize automatically weekly and never had any problem.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong my my understanding from researching in to SSDs is that defragging your SSD does nothing to improve the performance. It does how ever add several cycles to the sectors in question and as such reduces the lifespan of your device. How much it is reduced is debatable, but for next to no benefit I'm not going to take the risk

What does indexing do?

Again someone can correct me if my understandng is wrong, but indexing is just a way for windows to increase the speed of your search results when trying to find files through search. Rather than searching through your entire hard drive, it searches through the index to find what it is you are searching for.

 

[leeshor]

Windows 7 or 8, installed on an SSD, understands that it is an SSD during the install process and makes adjustments to the way it uses the drive. This is not the case if the OS has been cloned from a standard hard disk.

The general rule of thumb on Windows 7 and 8 installed on a hard drive was not to defrag it even on a hard disk. Both OSs take care of regular maintenance in the background during idle time. It does this a little differently from a normal defrag but it does a decent job in order to use the files more efficiently.

On an SSD you should not defrag fore the reasons already stated as it will mostly wear the drive unnecessarily. Also most SSD tools will disable indexing and prefetches, (there is also a super fetch), for some of the same reasons, and they were intended to speed up a regular hard disk. That performance improvement is not required on an SSD.

 

[the1spicymeatbal]

Just FYI, Windows 8 and beyond know when you have an SSD, and it no longer attempts to defragment it, it only optimizes it (TRIM).
Think of defragmenting as a 2 step process: identifying empty space(TRIM), then physically moving everything around to compact the amount of empty space to minimize head movement in the future.
Well an SSD does not have a head- that's why it's so fast. So moving the data around becomes pointless. It is still useful, however to tell the SSD what space is no longer used, so that it can write over it care-free. This first step of defragmenting is now called a TRIM command.
A TRIM command tells the SSD which parts of the drive are now considered "deleted", so it can continue day to day operations without having the overhead of trying to figure out what space it can use and what space is holding actual data. This operation does not "use up" any of the drive's usable life.
So you'll notice that Windows has changed a lot of the wording on the "Defragment" screen to now say "Optimize".....

Now you know why.