Running my laptop without CPU fan for i7 3630M for 24-hour period under mostly light use - what could go wrong?

Question

My Lenovo laptop (Y500 I believe) has been bugging the living daylights out of me for months. The CPU fan kept going wild, spinning unpredictably, making a horrible noise, and actually slowing my PC down a bunch - especially on boot. The Windows 8 Desktop Windows Manager would take about 30 seconds to load.

I tried replacing my fan but stripped the screws, got frustrated, and just yanked out the power. Now it is running without a CPU fan but it is so wonderfully fast. Obviously there must have been something wrong with the fan.

I already have the replacement fan but I cannot do anything about it for about 24 hours when I get a chance to go to the hardware store and purchase tools to remove the stripped screw.

I am wondering - in the meantime, how bad is it to use this PC?

SpeedFan says:

Win9x:NO  64Bit:YES  GiveIO:NO  SpeedFan:YES
I/O properly initialized
Linked ISA BUS at $0290
Linked Intel 7 Series SMBUS at $4000
Found nVidia GeForce GT 650M
Linked nVidiaI2C0 SMBUS at $3D403E3F
Linked nVidiaI2C1 SMBUS at $3D403637
Linked nVidiaI2C2 SMBUS at $3D405051
Scanning ISA BUS at $0290...
Scanning Intel SMBus at $4000...
Scanning I2CNVidia SMBus at $3D403E3F...
Scanning I2CNVidia SMBus at $3D403637...
Scanning I2CNVidia SMBus at $3D405051...
Found SAMSUNG MZMPA016HMCD-000L1 on AdvSMART
Found ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB on AdvSMART
INFO : SCSI DISABLED by user or because iaStorA.sys is installed
Found ACPI temperature
Found Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3630QM CPU @ 2.40GHz
End of detection

SpeedFan indicates Core's at about 65, 71, 68, 68 C, which is definitely hot but not insane. Intel rates it at 105 C max, for what it is worth.

Can I get away with this for 24 hours?

Solution 1

It can operate w/o fan, but it will start to smoke within minutes and it will be fried.

It will also shut down without warning.

It does not necessarily need a fan, but it does need a heatsink to keep from overheating.

use Laptop Cooling Lap Board or cooling system that are available commercially if you want

However, doing this will also void the warranty and if you do not know what you're doing, it's very easy to ruin the computer.

Solution 2

It can operate without fan.

• The CPU gets to hot and throttles down, or
• The CPU gets too hot, it asserts PROCHOT to the motherboard and the CPU shuts down completely.

What certainly will not happen is smoke.

Having said that, depending on how good the remaining cooling is and how hot the enviroment is it might to an emergency shutdown before you finished booting. Or it could work fine for week under light CPU load and a decent heatsink and air flow.

Note that I did not write "airflow for the CPU fan". Regular convertion might be enough. Still, do reached a fan as soon as possible. And make sure it is oriented correctly. A fan which is attached the wrong way can be less efficient. ANd in the worst case the system has multiple fans and the wrong way fan would actually work against the other fans.

I am assuming that either the last was the case, or that the stuck fan got warm from friction (and that heat was added to the CPU rather than cooling it).

Regardless, the CPU will not get overly warm, explode, or smoke. I am not sure if the rest of the board has similar protection build in. So turning it on without sufficient cooling is still not a great idea.

Solution 3

The reason for the slowdowns you experienced was almost certainly the CPU throttling itself because it's too hot.

Since it's running faster now without the fan, the temperature should be lower than it was having the broken fan. So running it without fan should be less damaging than what it endured for several months.

70 C is a bit warm, especially for an idle CPU, but it should still be safe.

Comments

[Dave]

The answer is definitely a maybe! The point is, it's too broad for us to answer accurately, sorry. However, if you're worried about it, just don't turn it on for the 24 hours?

[Suici Doga]

I had a HP laptop with i3 which had a problem where the fan would not start sometimes and I have to spin it to get it to start.One day I accidentally watched a HD video for about 30 minutes the computer when the fan was not on.The PC was quiet and did not shutdown but was hot to touch.The temperature was 84c on core 1 and 85c on core 2. Then I spinned the fan and it ran at full speed for about 2 minutes and then the temperatures went down to 72c (which is normal).The laptop still works

[CodesInChaos]

Are you sure? AMD CPUs had a reputation for frying themselves 15 years ago. But I'd expect modern CPUs to slow down or shut off before reaching that point.