Fan speed and thermal paste on Lenovo Q190 Desktop (ideacentre) - Type 6281

[Filingo]

My friend has an old Lenovo Q190 Desktop (ideacentre) - Type 6281 with Intel i3-3217u CPU.

 

The temps seem to be alright: It idles at 50-55C and when he's doing his regular tasks it goes to 65~.

When running stress test for (100% CPU), the temps don't go beyond 72C.

 

But, the fan always spins at 4000+ rpm. Even when the temp is 50C

 

So I wonder if the fan spins fast because although the temps are good, the thermal paste is dry and the fan is constantly getting readings of high temps, causing it to spin at high RPM all the time, thus resulting in seemingly low temps - although I could get the same temps with much lower RPM?

 

The problem is my friend doesn't remember if the fan was always this loud even when it was brand new, or that's how it always operated.

 

I just opened the chassis, disassembled the fan and cleaned it of dust per this manual: (Page 33)

https://download.lenovo.com/consumer/desktop_pub/ideacentre_q190_hmm_en_20121219.pdf

 

But that didn't help.

The next step would be to replace the thermal paste (Page 32), but I'm not sure if I should do it because it seem to be delicate, so I want to be sure if the thermal paste is the problem, or that it is normal speed. (Couldn't find too much information about the model/fan/cpu/temps) - So I wanted to know your opinion

 

Thanks!

[SpookyCitrus]

Thermal paste is something that does need to be replaced, I would say once a year or once every other year is a good repetition for it. Dry thermal paste could cause higher temps, which then cause the fan to run harder to cool the CPU. Also check if there are fan settings in bios to control the fan curve it is possible the fan curve was tweaked or reset to a more aggressive curve.

[Filingo]

I already checked in BIOS - nothing there. I think I'll just replace. Thank you. But normally I don't replace every year or even two, only if something is wrong.. Too much work and I'm not OCing