Is It Bad If My Laptop Fan Is Loud?


One of the things that laptop users can easily notice while they are using their laptops is that the fan inside the laptop can sometimes become a bit too loud than it usually is. This can be quite common whenever the day is hot or when you have been using the laptop heavily. Some of us have dismissed this thinking that it’s just nothing. But is it bad if your laptop fan is actually loud?

It is bad if your laptop fan is loud because this can be a sign that it is working harder than it usually has to due to several reasons. Using the laptop in a hot environment will force the fans to work harder. An overworked laptop will also produce more heat, which the fans need to vent out.

Taking care of your laptop means making sure that it is actually functioning and working under the right conditions. Similar to how you never want to work under hot conditions, the laptop is the same as its fan needs to work extremely harder to make sure it stays cool. A laptop that has overheated can be dangerous to the entire machine and can damage it in the long run.

Dusty fan inside the laptop during servicing

Is it bad if your laptop’s fan is loud?

A laptop is indeed a convenient machine that you can carry around wherever you want to go as it is light, handy, and very portable. This will allow you to work or play on the go or whenever you just don’t want to stay at home or in your office. However, this convenience also comes with a price.

As you may have noticed, laptops may be a lot smaller than most desktop computers but this doesn’t mean that their smaller parts don’t need to get cooled. In fact, laptops come shipped with internal cooling systems such as fans to make sure that their parts don’t get too hot while you are using the laptop. But the problem here is that a laptop’s fan is smaller than that of a desktop’s. This means that it has to work harder for it to cool off a laptop.

So, while you are using your laptop, you might have noticed that there are times when the laptop’s fan sounds a bit too loud or is louder than it usually is. And when you try to touch the surface of your laptop, it also feels warmer than it usually is. So, is it bad if something like this happens to your laptop?

Unfortunately, yes. It could be bad for your laptop if its fan is a bit too loud because that only means that it is working harder to make sure that the heat it produces is vented out of the machine properly. A fan that is working harder means that the laptop is producing more heat. And the more heat that a laptop produces, the more likely it will end up getting damaged as a result of parts that have become too hot.

What causes a laptop fan to be louder than usual?

So, now that you know that a laptop fan that is louder than usual can be potentially dangerous and damaging to your laptop, what are some of the usual causes that will force the laptop fan to work harder? Well, here are some of the common reasons why your laptop’s fan is working harder:

1.    Working under hot conditions

If you are working under hot conditions such as when you are out in the open and the sun is shining as bright as it could during a particularly warm summer day, this can be bad for your laptop as the surrounding heat will also enter the laptop and force its fan to work harder. This can also be common in places that have no air-conditioning and have a poor ventilation system as the heat inside the room can also affect your laptop’s temperature and cause its fan to work harder to keep the heat out of the machine.

As such, it is important that you make sure that you are using your laptop under conditions that will allow it to work without getting affected by the surrounding heat. The room or the place doesn’t have to be air-conditioned as long as there is enough air and ventilation. Think of it this way: if the room or the place you are using the laptop in is too warm for you, then it could also be too warm for your laptop.

Notebook stand

2.    Not resting the laptop

When you are using the laptop, it is quite normal for it to produce heat on a regular basis. That is what the fan is for as it keeps the heat out of the machine so that it can operate at normal temperatures without getting damaged as a result of the heat that it is producing. But there are times when you have been using the laptop for extended periods of time without giving it a moment to rest by shutting it down. When that happens, the heat it produced since you started using it can end up piling up to the point that your laptop fan needs to work harder to keep the heat out.

As such, it is important for you to make sure that you also give your laptop some time to rest when you have been using it for extended periods of time. You may be trying to catch up to a deadline but you should also shut your laptop down or put it in a lower-power state so that it can rest and vent out all of the heat it produced from the start of the session. During that time, you can also rest for a while as you are waiting for your laptop to cool down.

3.    Pushing the laptop to its limits

Using the laptop heavily can force it to produce a ton of heat that will require the fan to do some extra work as well. This happens when you are using too many processes for your RAM to handle such as when you have a lot of apps and internet browser tabs open. When you have too many processes opened to the point that your laptop’s RAM can no longer handle them, it forces the machine to overwork so that it can keep up with the requirements of the processes that are opened.

At the same time, when you are playing games that tend to be too heavy on the graphics department and on the RAM requirements, you are also pushing the machine to its limits. This will force the laptop’s CPU, GPU (if it has a separate GPU), and RAM to work harder. And when the different parts and components work harder, they will produce more heat than the fan needs to vent out. As such, the fan would end up becoming noisier than it usually is

So, what you need to do here is to make sure that you are only operating the laptop within its limits. Try not to open a lot of different processes and tabs so that you won’t end up overloading the RAM. Meanwhile, try not to push the graphics to their limits when you are playing games if you don’t want to end up overheating your laptop and causing the fan to work harder.

Acer predator gaming laptop

Rob

I'm Rob, the founder of theonetechstop.com. I’m a Marine Corps vet with a master’s degree in Information Systems and have been working in the technology field for over a decade.

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