Fans always on high

[romeyn]

I gave up trying to install or upgrade to 17.1 on my late-2009 core 2 duo Mac Mini and now have it running on an HP Compaq dc5800 (also core 2 duo).  There are two fans on this computer, and they're both running at top speed.  Is there any way to activate automatic fan control?

[bartjsmit]

http://www.drapertools.com/product/60743/110mm-Carbon-Steel-Diagonal-Side-Cutter perhaps? ;-)

On that theme - cut your coat according to your cloth. Check system activity in the GUI and remove services that claim high resources. You are most likely CPU bound given a 8+ year old box.

Newer i3's and i5's are very nice. They also do AES in silicon. Just saying.

Bart...

[romeyn]

Here's a screen shot.  There is nothing connected to the WAN port at the moment.  It's not passing any traffic.  CPU reads zero.

[bartjsmit]

Did the fans spin hard during that reading? Do you get CPU temperature readings from the health page?

High CPU temperature at low loads could indicate poor heat dissipation. You may want to check the heatsink and/or replace the heat paste.

It may also be worthwhile to run a live USB distro (e.g. sysrescue) to see if the fans go full tilt regardless. Is there any fan setting in the BIOS?

Bart...

[romeyn]

I'll try a different LiveCD and report back.

[romeyn]

Well, poop.  As I booted from an Ubuntu LiveCD, the very first thing that appeared on the screen was a line of text indicating some sort of temperature sensor error.

I guess I've found the problem!  (I could cool my drink on the heat sink...CPU at zero in my 50 degree basement with the lid off and the fan running full-tilt boogie.)

Time to find another unit!