I recently acquired a TR from a friend and I have to say its one of the nicest laptops I’ve used even given its age.  I have been doing a lot of reading on this forum to get caught up on the TR and I was surprised to discover the very knowledgeable and competent user base here which really helps to quickly answer the questions I have come up with.

That being said, I have noticed that the fan of the TR is making quite a bit of noise and i would like to replace it.  I looked around on the net and sony direct and found that an OEM replacement is roughly 60 dollars.  That seems extreme for a fan.  Is there any better way of dealing with this loud fan other than replacing it with a rediculously overpriced OEM fan?  Thanks.

Someone here has to have replaced their fan before.  Am I stuck just paying for the OEM replacement?

I am sure glad u raised this issue again!  My TR3 fan has been dead for over a year and I can’t find a replacement here in Nepal, so I have tried all kinds of things to keep it cool, as it acts as a net server most of the time. Do a search on my userid and the word “fan” to see what i mean. What I have come up with is to use Notebook Hardware control to keep the CPU at the lowest setting, always, and then to use a laptop cooler (chinese plastic bed with 3 fans inside) at all times.  The laptop stays between 49 and 60c that way. But there has to be a better way.  I think there is a link here for the OEM fan at an OEM supply site for about 60usd, which in my mind is a total ripoff for a 1USD part.  But hey, ke garne….
jigs

How can you tell if the fan is not working? My machine gets quite hot, is there a sound I should look for?

@Milian26.

Check if theres warm air coming out the left side of your TR.

The next thing you can do is removing the keyboard and youll see wether its running or not.

In order to do this you only have to remove 2 screws on the bottom of your tr. Its the two screws hidden UNDERNEATH the two rubber thingies to the right and left of your batterie.

After that lift up your keyboard from the upper side (Function keys). There are still two kind of “Clips” holding your keyboard on that side. You can carefully push them away with a flat screwdriver. Now you are able to see your fan.

Both methods wont make sure whether the fan is running at correct speed

@All of you:
I also noticed that my TR3 has gotten warmer than the day I got it (2 years ago). However… could no longer use it on my lap without feeling uncomfortable.

This is why I opened up my TR a few days ago. I thought the fan wouldnt work properly or I have at least expected to find lots of dust…

But my fan was running. Dust was not worth mentioning…
So I dissambled the whole mainboard in order to dissamble the fan itself (2 screw on bottom of mainboard).

I was suprised when I finally hold the blade-unit in my hand. I couldnt see a bearing or something. The only bearing it had was the axle that it was standing on. I greased it litle and assembled it all (renewed heat conducting paste on cpu)

Cant tell that made a change :x
After surfing on the forum for a while I found the program:

Notebook hardware control

I used that program to reduce the voltage on my 1GHZ CPU and I still wonder how far I can go. I reduced the voltage many times and by now for the highest Speedlevel (990 MHZ) Ive reduced it by 10 percent what makes about 0,1 Volt of formaly 1,04 Volt and its still running fine. Ill go on testing how far I can go You guys should try…

However, the programs also shows the temperatures of your CPU and your HD. Using that function I realized that sometimes my harddisc, that is actually located beneath the card reader (right next to the cpu) is even warmer than my CPU ?!?!!?

When idle at 990 MHz:
CPU: 52 degrees Celsius
HD : 53 degrees Celsius

Packing big RAR Archive at 990Mhz:
CPU: 58-60 degrees celsius
HD : 58-59 degrees celsius

According to the scale the two units had about the same temperatur. But
when touching the bottom of my laptop while packing the RAR Archive the spot where the HD is located is definetely warmer! It makes me believe that my HD is going to give up soon since the regular operating temperaturs of HDs are at least 10 degrees Celsius less.
And I think that this is where the “extra heat” comes from.

My questions:
Can you guys tell me the regular operating temp of the Toshiba 1.8” Hds?
Would you guys use “Notebook Hardware Control” to read out your temperatures and post them right here?
Is it possible to read out the rpm of the fan? Whats the programs name doing that? Whats the regular rpm of TR3 fan?

Once again I beg you guys reading out the temperatur of your harddisc.
Mine is a Toshiba MK4004GAH with 40GB

According to specs this drive is supposed to work in temperatures between 5-60 degrees celsius. But according to my “notebook Hardware control” drive is getting warmer than 60 degrees celsius.

I need to know wether its going to die.
Im pretty sure that the enormous increase of temperatur in my TR3A has got something to do with the harddisc!

silyb0y:

I just replaced my factory toshiba 4004GAH with a 4006GAH which I believe is the same drive except for having 2MB of cache.

Using NHC @ 990 Mhz IDLE I observed the CPU and Hard Drive temperatures to both be 51C.

Using NHC @ 990 Mhz while creating a RAR file under BEST compression over 4 minutes I observed the CPU and Hard Drive temperatures to reach about 55 or 56C.

I noticed that the CPU and Hard Drive temperatures are never far apart from each other for whatever reason.

ALSO, I started this thread because I thought my CPU FAN was dying due to excessive noise coming from the laptop.  However, once I had opened the laptop up to replace the hard drive (which I diagnosed to be going bad for other reasons) and turned the laptop on, I noticed that the fan was quite, working fine, and that it was the hard drive making all the noise.  Unfortunately I did not record any temperatures using NHC with the old hard drive before I replaced it.

I hope some of this helps.

spdylude:

Hi pal. Thanks for your feedback.
Yeah it helps alot so thank you. I now know that my hardisk is not totally out of spec.

That makes me focus the fan again. If the higher temperatures in my TR are not caused by a big increase of CPU or HDD temperature than its the fan that no longer runs in spec.

Unfortunately I havent found a tool to read out the rpm of the fan yet.
NHC wont support reading out fan rpm using ACPI before the next version. Havent you got any problems with the temperatur in your laptop spdylude?

I have noticed that the underside of my TR gets pretty warm, but since I got the laptop secondhand I figured it had always been that way.  I recently used the program Prime95 to raise the CPU temperatures in order to test the CPU fan and found that it will push a lot of air when the tempertures get high enough.  However, I have never noticed the fan get up to those speeds under normal operation.  It would be nice if there was a fix for the underside getting so warm, but I tend to think that there is nothing wrong and the temperatures are normal for this laptop.

spdylude:

thanks again for replying so quick. You helped me alot. Thank you once more.

I still believe that the temperatur has increased over the last years.
As I told it didnt use to be that hot when I got it years ago.
It has never been uncomfortable to have it on my lap until now.

Ive also used a program to check stability of my TR that also has a function to stress the cpu (makes it hot) -> everything stable.
In normal operation the cpu wouldn get that hot.

However. For all the folks who think that their TR gets top hot:
-check your fan.
-read out your CPU and HD temperatures
-decrease voltage on your CPU using notebook hardware control
For every speedstep (988MHz, 900MHz, 800MHz and 600MHz) I could  
decrease the voltage by about 0.1 volt without loosing stability. This still
isnt the limit and I think I can go further. Didnt try yet cause it takes  
time to check for stability (with another tool) after every decrease of
voltage for each speedstep.

I didnt find further information about the fan regulation yet.
All I know is that modern fans have got different rpm steps that sets in at a pre defined CPU temperatur.

Im looking forward to the next version of Notebook Hardware Control.
The author will add another function that alows to set these temperatures.
Right now there is a fan control function but it doesnt seem to be supported by our TRs.

It actualy is supposed to reduce the noise of your laptop by increasing the set-in temperatur for the fan but Im sure you will also be able to reduce the pre defined temperatures. Hope this will cool down my TR.
I love Notebook Hardware Control so much that Im about to donate for the developer

Keep on posting if you find something interesting

For those who are intersted.

The new version of notebook hardware control (pre release) is online.
It has got ACPI support now. There arent any ACPI classes for the Vaio TRs out there yet but if you guys have got programming skills you could support the developer team.

ACPI classes have to be written for every single notebook model in order to have Notebook Hardware Controls ACPI Support work with your Laptop Computer.

This is the board where you find support about writing ACPI classes for Notebook Hardware Control.

Its actually a german board but since that program is pretty famous all around the world theres also an english speaking section.

[quote author=“silyb0y”]For those who are intersted.

The new version of notebook hardware control (pre release) is online.
It has got ACPI support now. There arent any ACPI classes for the Vaio TRs out there yet but if you guys have got programming skills you could support the developer team.

ACPI classes have to be written for every single notebook model in order to have Notebook Hardware Cogotntrols ACPI Support work with your Laptop Computer.

hello i just got a vaiotx3 (france) ... the XP/B

and it’s a core solo

so NHC does run with it ?

because my TR work very well, but do cleary more noise when for the same work i plug it

otherwise on battery i don’t heard it

do you know if i can manage this fan with anotner program than tne vaio control center ?

thanks again

If you could get a replacement for $60, you shuold consider yourself lucky… although there’s always the chance one will pop up on ebay.