smoothmove,

Does this ramp up occur while sitting in the bios or just when the operating system is running?

When the system is running.  Ambient temp is 68 degrees F. 

  I used to have this problem with other Dells, but it is usually solved with Bios upgrades.  I know on the 730X you can set your own fan speed, but not the T3500.

   It gets very loud with the fans on high.  I tried to reseat the heatsink and add Thermal paste- Artic Silver- without any improvement.   It has got to be a Dell setting for the fans/temp that is causing this.  Even with Speedstep on and the CPU at min, the fans still are loud.

  Thanks, Stan

You could try speedfan (www.almico.com/speedfan.php).

It was listed in June issue of Maximum PC as an essential app and may solve your problems - or at least help you isolate it.

The correct solution:

The supplemental fan on the hard drive should NOT always run.

The no talent assembly line tech that put one of our T3500 together jammed the power/sensor lead wires between the case and the HD caddy.

The wire was exposed and grounding against the chassis.

This caused an open loop reading to the BIOS - the bios log showed "HD fan out of range"

I reinsulated the wires w. electrical tape and repositioned it when reinstalling the drive caddy.

Cleared Bios event logs and updated to Bios A03.

No more HD fan noise even when fully booted to the OS.

Check the wire on your system - you'll find it in similar shape.

My T3500 suddenly started making with the loud fan noise. Both fans seem to be running at max speed I checked the wires. They look ok. I upgraded the bios to A11. I erased all the event logs I could find. Still the loud fan noise. I can find nothing on the Dell support site about this issue except this forum thread. Does anyone know of any other causes or remedies?

Add me to the list of people with befuddling T3500 fan problems....  Today, I opened my T3500 case and used the canned air to (very carefully) blow the dust out of the machine, and lo and behold, when I put it back together and turned it on, jet plane noise - the fans down at the bottom (behind the HD tray) are running full tilt, and won't slow down.

Anyone have any suggestions?  I checked all the wiring I could find related to those fans and didn't find anything out of place or exposed or whatever.

I finally 'solved' my fan noise problem when I moved the computer ten feet away so I wouldn't have to listen to it. The fan noise quit! I realized that when my computer is laid down horizontally it makes the noise. When it is stood up vertically it is quiet.

Thanks for the response, wish it'd been that easy in my case (I actually tried moving the machine around, changing its orientation, to see if I could figure out something specific that was wrong)....  Called Dell tech support folks, they had me try a bunch of things, and they're sending out a tech to try to figure out why the fans are stuck on full tilt.  I'll advise once the tech has been here.

Was wondering if you ever got a resolve to your fans issue...?  I am having the same problem.

Hi there,

I've just a few questions before I ask you try any steps, if that's alright:

1) How long has the fan problem been ongoing?
2) Does the fan sound like it is overspinning or is there a grinding noise or electrical noise?
3) Do you have the latest BIOS installed in your Precision?
4) What steps have you tried yourself to resolve the problem? This is just so I make sure I don't ask you to do the same thing over and over again.

Thanks! Hope to hear from you soon.