Call Dell support and ask for replacement fans.

Search this forum with the word "Fan" and you will find you are one of many that are losing hearing acuity due to the fan noise.

Dell replacements might help if one of your fans is defective or perhaps you get a quieter brand than you currently have.

If not, you might find you will need to FIY to get satisfactory sound levels.

Good luck.

I didn't buy the idea that it was just a defective fan.
The design of the cooling system although adequate for cooling
that needs to be done. The problem is that in a quiet livingroom
the noise gets to a lot of users.

I couldn't stand it so I did it myself. as you can see here:http://mysite.verizon.net/vze6qyn9/deesmygalswebspace22/

I had to replace the Dell installed Heat Sync Retention Mechanism, which was a bit tricky, first.

Then I could remove the shroud and then I just keep replacing components and low and behold
the unit is cool, First order of business, and it is quiet, the second order of business.

If you will take notice to the cooler for the 9800 XT it is awesome and it is very quiet.
The only problem is that the heat is still in the box. They make a cooler for all other video cards, that exhausts
the heat out of the box, except the 9800 XT.

All in all avout $125.00 for everything.

The new XPS Gen2 just makes a lot of fan noise, it can sound like a jet airplane at times.

Dell needs to let the user adjust the fan control settings to reduce the noise. It seem that the fans have a temperature semsor on them and you can get a program that will let you monitor the temps that they are reading (Dell should have provided this). Anyways, it turns out that the fans that blow air out the back of the case don't run at the same speed. That is the top fan will crank up it speed to remove the case heat but the bottom fan will still be at idle.

You can get the motherboard monitor software here  http://mbm.livewiredev.com/

So the real problem is, as you use CPU power ( % CPU) you make heat in the case, also that video card you have will make a lot of heat in the case. So your fans will run faster to remove the heat in the case. If you make less heat then the fans are not that loud BUT fast PC make heat. So you need to mod the PC to reduce the noise.

Either less noisey fans and a video card that will exhaust the heat out of the case are a good start. One guy moved the temperature sensors for the back case fans next to each other so both fans would run at the same speed so the case temp had to get even hotter before both fans to run at a noisey level.

Good luck, as i just removed AVG and installed norton Anti virus software instead, and that made the fans run just a little faster and i now have started hearing the fans again as being a little loud. Before the CPU usage was about 2% (49C case temp) at idle now it is about 5% (51C case temp) and the fans running a little faster. So when i try to sleep at night and the PC is downloading files from the net all i here is Fans running at med speed.

.

Message Edited by mmainprize on 06-01-2004 07:31 PM

Here is a tip i just found out. It was not the anti virus software that made my fans run faster as i posted above. It turns out disable HT ( hyper threading ) in the BIOS before i made a ghost backup and then install norton AV. Well i forgot to turn HT back on.

The XPS Gen2 ran with a CPU temp of 51C with HT off, and when i turned it back on the CPU temp is 43C. The fans is much quiter with HT turned ON in BIOS.

No other changes were made.

I just got my XPS, 3.4GHz, 2GbRAM, 74Gb10K drive.  I downloaded Speedfan because Mother Board monitor wouldn't load on my system (XPpro).  It said I had 52degC at the CPU so I tried a Scythe Samurai, but it didnt' fit, but i modded the fan to work on the Dell cooling fins.  I run it full throttle, with a modded Dell cowling to the two external rear case fans.  9800XT256Mb video has it's own fan and the Dell case has a card bus fan and cooling plenum built in.  5 fans in total!  This thing makes some sound, but it's still quieter than my Dell 1Gb PIII (the original) that I use as a server.)  I managed to get the temp down to 47degC, but not much lower. 

How did the guy move the temp sensors for the rear case fans?

thanks,
phil gandini

I had horrible fan noise in my new XPS Gen 2. It sounded like a jet on a runway. I discovered that the heat sink fans in the rear of the machine (behind the large green plastic cover) had fallen out of place during shipping. The back 2 fans should be snapped into the tower frame. If they are not, simply snap them into place. The noise came from the vibration of the loose fans against the green cover.  My machine is really quite now. I can't even really hear it. I hope this helps. They supposedly fixed this design flaw in XPS Gen 3.

I read this forum a couple weeks ago because I had the same hair dryer/vacuum cleaner fan on my XPS. I'd just moved the XPS and my office to another room at home so I could hide it in a closet. The closet didn't work.

Last weekend, I "fixed" the computer so that it's invisible. The solution cost $99.00 including freight.

My savior was a tech at a place called endpcnoise.com, located in Vancouver. My XPS is quiet and cool. Here's the scoop, and Dell made it a little harder than maybe it should have been, but I'm done.

I bought a combined unit of big head sinks and a small quiet fan for my video card. It wasn't noisy, that I noticed, but that installation was very straightforward. Because I use a PCTV card, I was concerned that I might be heating up the card so now it's cool. Easy.

The second BIG job was replacing the hooded fans in the back. I removed the old ones and installed two fans of about the same diameter, but they are 19.5 db each. That's really quiet. the trick for the XPS was to use #10 1-1/2" stainless self-tapping screws and mount the two fans about where existing holes are already in the case. In my case, I just used two screws for each fan, at diagonals. It would be too big a trouble to drill holes above the motherboard, and getting a screwdriver in all four is darn near impossible, anyway. You have to search out and look for a standard "disk drive" unused or other power connector, and daisey chain the new fans. The connectors for all the fans aren't the same connector as the old three-pin ones, and I was uncomfortable guessing at how white/red/balck relate to the old red/yellow/black or whatever the heck they were so I used the big clunky power connectors. I DIDN'T use the existing two motherboard power connector pins for fan power, and so this creates an error message when you boot up. The boot up message says the fans aren't working and some key or another to do something, OR press F1 to continue boot --- which is what I do, and it boots and runs fine. I looked around in the Bios to see if I could eliminate the fan message, but life only provides so many minutes for futzing, and a fan message isn't going to disturb mine.

The third final BIGGEST job was/should have been easy, but it was a challenge (by the way, my "challenges" were still all done in less than about two hours and if I did it over again, I could have done the job in 30-45 minutes max). I removed the big finned head sink thingy over the P4 processor. A piece of cake. Instead of just a finned replacement, the elegant replacement is actually a circular finned heat sink with a fan in the middle. So a very quiet fan is right on/above the P4 processor, and it circulates air on the fins silently. No one said I needed the two case fins I described as the second step above, but I figured I wanted to exhaust all the heat. Not that I get that much heat, but I wanted to be sure. Anyway, I got the old heat sink off, and prepared to install the new fan/heat sink. There is a significant problem because the squarish bracket around the P4 processor doesn't have the conventional holes or configuration that are shown in the instructions for the fan/heat sink. What I ended up doing was bending out the "locking" side that held in the old heat sink, and I wedged one side tab of the new one under the locking side tab. Then I put two small zip ties around the tabs so that the fan/heat sink was held firmly on one side. This takes smaller fingers and patience. The other side is a challenge because the fan/heat sink on that side has a tab that can't be wiggled or put UNDER the locking tab on the other side. What I did was position the fan tab over the frame locking tab and again put two zip ties to hold it securely. The zip ties in both cases form an "X" that goes in/over/under the tabs so that the fan/heat sink can't be moved when you're all done. Patience, but I didn't want to mess with changing out the basic head sink holder on the motherboard. The next thing to handle was where to connect for power because I used up wires and connectors. Ultimately, I ended up cutting some red/white wires and just splicing everything to get power for the new fan. Not beautiful, but effective.

When I'm done, I no longer have a hooded fan enclosure or vacuum cleaner fans, and I have an extremely quiet computer I never have to turn off in order to carry on a normal conversation. My thanks to endpcnoise.com for a very well-documented and relatively cheap solution, and especially all the exchanges I had with their support guy, who was patient and wonderful in recommending the solution.

Yes, this sounds like a lot of work!  I worked with Scythe to get my fan setup to work, because of the non-standard heat sink mount Dell uses on the motherboard.  But even with lots of bending the new heatsink would not make perfect contact with the CPU, so I had to choose the next best thing--use the Dell heat sink, with fan mounted above it, pulling air up and out over the CPU.  You know the rear fans on the Dell are thermostatically controlled?  And if you get the right software you can measure the CPU temperature directly.  I'd be interested to know what temp your CPU is running under your setup.  Also, I chose to keep the bright green cowling, since it channels the air directly over the CPU, whereas you're running a total case cooling solution with the two big fans.  There's enough case cooling in the XPS already with the front fan, but it's not a big issue. And if it works for you, it works!

cheers,