My CPU fan keeps coming on, what should i do?

Question

It never used to come on, then it started to come on periodically (it's really fricken loud) and now it comes on almost every five minutes, sometimes sooner. A diagnostic tool told me my CPU has reached 144 degrees F at one point... i run very little on it (tho someone who shares it plays games for long periods). It's an HP Pavillion a1310y in case you need to know. Should i open the case and clean things out? What else can i do to lower the temp of my CPU so the fan stops coming on so often... and why is it getting hotter over time??

Answer 1

buy a can of compressed air, open the case and blow all the dust out.  You probably dont have adequate air flow and the processor is overheating- that is bad  :(

Answer 2

The fan that is directly on top of the CPU by design is always supposed to be on & spinning.  The reason for the increase noise is because your system is running hotter so the fan spins faster to compansate for it.  If the fan doesn't spin, pretty much say goodbye to the cpu.

If you were to open the case, I would probably get a can of compressed air to blow some of the dust out.

Answer 3

your cpu fan should be on all the time.  that noise you are hearing is probably something (dust, crumbs) stuck in the fan, or the fan itself going bad.  try cleaning out the fan and if that doesn't work, get a new fan.

Answer 4

You probably have too much dust in your computer. Open it and clean out the dust.

And make sure you don't overuse your computer like leaving it on for long periods of time, playing full screen games that uses a lot of graphics, watching movies for like 10 hours straight, etc.