Sony Vaio F Fan - grounds for return/refund ?

MackDeToaster

I purchased a Sony Vaio VPCF11JOE from PcWorld a few days ago. It's a nice spec laptop but the fan never seems to turn off, even when idling, and it's driving me nuts.

I've had a look on several forums and found that this seems to be a common problem, if not actually a design fault, so I'm wondering what are my chances of getting my money back ?

I'm not particularly interested in an alternate model as they have nothing else that really matches my requirements at the moment.

AlmightyCushion

If that's the way the fan is meant to be then they don't have to give you a re-fund. If this is the machine I think it is (core i5, GT330, 6GBs ram) then I imagine that the fan is meant to be like that. That processor and graphics card are very powerful and thus will produce a lot of heat even when idling, I imagine anything with that spec will be the same.

They could still give you a re-fund but I doubt the chances are very high. If it was un-opened then your chances would be much better but it's going to be pretty hard for them to sell a second hand laptop. I would suggest you go in and ask, you never know what could happen.

Voodu Child

The only way you'd get your money back is if you'd walked into PC World and asked for a silent laptop and they'd recommended that one. In that case, the machine would not be as described. Otherwise i'd say youre stuck with it.

Ctrl-alt-del and bring up the task manager, and see what your CPU useage is. Maybe there is some app (or Windows component) running in the background that is keeping your CPU useage high.

There's also a setting in Win7 advanced power management that will let you change the system cooling policy. It will allow you to minimise fan useage - at the expense of performance. Click the battery icon on your taskbar and follow your nose and you'll find it. Might help a bit. Also try and keep your vents clean and free of dust, because if they start to get clogged, the fan behaviour is just going to get worse over time.

MackDeToaster

Thanks for the replies. Yes it is the I5, GT330, HD model. There is a massive thread on these, mostly the i7 model, at http://forum.notebookreview.com where an awful lot of people are complaining about the fan noise, there seems to be both constant noise and whining noises amongst others.

A lot have gotten refunds or returned them, others are getting Sony to repair, and it seems to be an ongoing issue. I certainly would not have thought overheating would be an especial problem with the lower spec i5 anyway, seeing as most manufacturers will be switching over. I had been talking to Techdirect.ie a month ago about the i7 model as that was the one I was mostly interested in, but they had said Sony were withdrawing that particular model here temporarily due to problems.

I don't have the whining high-pitched noises which some do, it's simply that the fan never stops going, even at 1% cpu, and it is very noticeable. There is a constant humming/whirring, and then when the cpu rises enough it really kicks in even louder. This is the case in both Win7 and Linux Mint which is my main o/s. The fan on my last laptop, a HP DV series, would never be running at low cpu usage, and this one much louder, it's intensely distracting when trying to get work done in a quiet room. Writing this post doesn't raise cpu above 3% on Mint 64bit, doing absolutely nothing leaves it at 1%, but still that constant humming, gah !

InReality

Jus to note , If you got it online and the packaging is still in good condition you can return it no questions asked up to 7 days after you got it.

It sounds like you got it in the shop though.

again if the packaging is ok , they may just take it back , although they don't have to legally.

You could try looking for some software to control the fan , i think , NHC , or AHCI , are some abbrv to search with.

AlmightyCushion

MackDeToaster wrote: »

I certainly would not have thought overheating would be an especial problem with the lower spec i5 anyway, seeing as most manufacturers will be switching over.

It's not over heating, the fan is stopping it from over heating. The i3 is meant to be taking the mid range segment with I assume the celerons still being kept for the lower end. i5s will be upper mid to high end and i7s will be the bleeding edge for people who need brute force horse power. Also you have to remember there are other components that need cooling. The graphics card in this laptop is pretty powerful and is going to use a lot of energy and output a lot of heat. I imagine that is the main reason for the fan being as low as it is.

MackDeToaster

Ah yes, sorry I phrased that wrongly. I think you could be right on the other components part ! The more I listen the more I think there are two distinct sources of noise, one is the really annoying constant hum, then there is the actual main cooling fan which kicks in from time to time as it should (I can feel hot air coming from the vent when this comes on).

I had thought this louder noise was the constant hum source just speeded up, but now I'm starting to think that the source of it might in fact be a fan on some other component entirely, most likely the gpu.

Hmmm, I'll have to either open the thing up to have a closer look or find some blueprints somewhere. If there are two separate components I doubt there's anything which can be done.

AlmightyCushion

MackDeToaster wrote: »

Ah yes, sorry I phrased that wrongly. I think you could be right on the other components part ! The more I listen the more I think there are two distinct sources of noise, one is the really annoying constant hum, then there is the actual main cooling fan which kicks in from time to time as it should (I can feel hot air coming from the vent when this comes on).

I had thought this louder noise was the constant hum source just speeded up, but now I'm starting to think that the source of it might in fact be a fan on some other component entirely, most likely the gpu.

Hmmm, I'll have to either open the thing up to have a closer look or find some blueprints somewhere. If there are two separate components I doubt there's anything which can be done.

Before you do anything you really should just go in and see if they'll return it. They might not but you won't know until you try.

MackDeToaster

Well much to my surprise they took it back and gave me a refund no problem. They weren't impressed by the fan noise issue, however I also had two more.

The next was even worse imo, I'd discovered just how bad the viewing angle and backlight bleeding was, maybe only one third of the screen was black no matter what angle I had it at. Rubbish for the photography that I'd mostly mostly be doing, and utterly useless for trying to watch a movie that had any darkish scenes. However, they weren't even particularly impressed about that either.

But then I listed problem number three, the battery was losing most of it's charge overnight, e.g. last night it dropped from 88% to 19% when fully powered off, i.e. not on suspend or hibernate.

I thought they'd just want to change the battery, but as soon as they heard that it was off to Sony with it, would you like a replacement, a credit note or cash ? I took the cash.

Hayte

I know this thread is old but it turns up in google searches alot when using the terms 'fan' and 'whine' so I felt it was best to add this information here where people will likely get redirected from google. The fan is not actually making the whistling sound described by the OP. The cpu makes that noise intermittently when it enters into lower sleep states (C3 to C6 states). I don't know the mechanics of it but it appears to be an issue broadly inherited from C2D and is possibly a piezo-electric effect when the cpu switches down to lower voltages.

Some people report that disabling their mobile graphics reduces or stops this whining sound and this may be possible if it causes the cpu to take on the burden of some things that are normally handled by the gpu (such as Aero). This puts more of a computational burden on the cpu which prevents it from dropping into the lower sleep states. You may notice that the whistling sound never occurs when your cpu is handling a moderate to high load.

There is a solution to this problem, namely disabling C3 to C6 states in your BIOS although please note that to my knowledge this is not possible on Sony F series as it has an extremely restricted BIOS. It wont let the user change anything other than to enable/disable VT, changing system date/time and boot order. Thats it.

One final thing to note is that if you do this your computer will never enter lower sleep states so your power consumption and battery life will be rubbish. On the flipside, you won't get tormented by the cycling high pitched whistle when your computer is in various idling states.

glaston

MackDeToaster wrote: »

But then I listed problem number three, the battery was losing most of it's charge overnight, e.g. last night it dropped from 88% to 19% when fully powered off, i.e. not on suspend or hibernate.

I get this problem too, my battery leaks charge (when fully powered off). It isnt quite as bad as your case but its much worse than my 6/7 year old dell. Also it seems to charge much slower. Could this be a fault, how much charge drainage can be expected?

Another thing that annoyed me was the brutally slow boot up time with windows 7, it felt like forever (much slower than the dell with xp). I managed to improve this a bit by removing all the unnecessary Sony software running in the background.

Hayte

The leaking battery is unfortunately a Sony thing that is well documented and so far has not been fixed. You can minimize it by taking the battery out of your laptop when not in use. Theres something terrible happening where even an unpowered, switched off Sony laptop sucks significant battery charge if its left in.

This is not a particularly convenient solution but it does work if you happen to have a Sony laptop and are reliant on your battery. That sounds strange because Sony is nearly always worst in class when it comes to battery life figures so if you need serious range, you probably want to buy one of the smaller macbook pros with the integrated battery.