Fan stopped working in VCS

[skorphy]

I noticed tonight that my fan was not making it's usual loud noise while playing thrusterlander. This is a stock unit. I did take the case off to reattach the Bluetooth antenna when. I first got it but other than that no upgrades have been done. I haven't opened it to see if it is just a loose connection because it's late here. Has anyone had this issue with their VCS? The unit was quite hot to the touch. I can't imagine this is good for the processor.

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

My fan used to be off the scale loud on my  VCS when playing Thrustlander but coming to think of it lately my fan has been mostly silent and I haven’t opened the machine up recently etc so maybe it’s the latest Atari OS firmware that’s tamed the fan curve?. I would recommend popping your VCS open again and just double checking you’ve not pulled the fan wire out or something but I imagine it’s most likely the recent update to Thrustlander with a combination of Atari OS updates that’s caused it to be silent and my VCS can get quite hot to but nothing major, if the fan was disconnected the machine would most likely turn itself off to prevent damage. 

[skorphy]

I guess I could have missed an update but I didn't run any manual updates. I don't get any fan noise at all even when powering up the system. Is that the case for you? 

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

31 minutes ago, skorphy said:

I guess I could have missed an update but I didn't run any manual updates. I don't get any fan noise at all even when powering up the system. Is that the case for you? 

I do get a slight fan noise on power up but I really have to listen for it I’m actually surprised how silent it is as when I first got the console back in January it sounded like a turbo jet or something it was literally unbearable at times to the point I thought the console was faulty but I got used it after speaking to Atari who said they where working on the issue with the fan curve and now it seems to be mostly silent so in my case at least it can only be a combination of firmware updates and game updates that’s calmed the crazy fan curve down. 

[skorphy]

I "flashed" the VCS at the request of Atari. Still no fan. I did it again and the fan came back! ... But only for a few minutes. I exchanged the unit for a new one a Micro Center. The worst part is I lost all of my game progress. I guess there wasn't much but I'm most saddened by the loss of my Ato progress, and all of my Thrusterlander achievements. Oh well. Hope I don't have issues with the new unit! The next time I guess I'll try to back the games up on a removable drive. I picked up an SSD to install for this reason and to give Windows 10 a try.

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

That’s good you got it exchanged but very unfortunate about losing your game saves etc!. I’ve put a lot of time into Thrustlander myself countless hours and a good few hours into Ato so that would definitely annoy me as it already has in the past after a firmware update decided to delete all my game save data on the VCS! On the bright side you’ll get to play through 2 great games again and hopefully with a fully working VCS. 

[zzip]

I just received my VCS a couple days back and can confirm that the updates did make the fan run a lot less.    Now it seems to throttle up and down based on the load.   But I have to wonder if it's healthy to run the fan with the speed throttling rapidly like that?

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

13 hours ago, zzip said:

I just received my VCS a couple days back and can confirm that the updates did make the fan run a lot less.    Now it seems to throttle up and down based on the load.   But I have to wonder if it's healthy to run the fan with the speed throttling rapidly like that?

I don’t think the fan speed throttling rapidly would be much of an issue with the VCS as the APU doesn’t really generate a lot of heat as it’s of a low TDP and with the design of the VCS it seems to help with keeping everything cool, if anything it throttling up and down is just annoying lol. My own VCS is only really audible in the Atari OS it definitely does throttle in that side of things which I noticed when playing Guntech the other day but in PC/Windows 10 mode I can run quite intensive games ones that aren’t really what the VCS is designed for and not hear a single sound from my fan unless I really listen for it the throttling is less Win 10 for me.  

[zzip]

10 hours ago, Atari_JaguarVCS said:

I don’t think the fan speed throttling rapidly would be much of an issue with the VCS as the APU doesn’t really generate a lot of heat as it’s of a low TDP and with the design of the VCS it seems to help with keeping everything cool, if anything it throttling up and down is just annoying lol. My own VCS is only really audible in the Atari OS it definitely does throttle in that side of things which I noticed when playing Guntech the other day but in PC/Windows 10 mode I can run quite intensive games ones that aren’t really what the VCS is designed for and not hear a single sound from my fan unless I really listen for it the throttling is less Win 10 for me.  

This was in Ubuntu.   Maybe there are power settings/fan profile settings I can tweak so it stays on longer at a steady speed and not throttle so much.

[tadream]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

This was in Ubuntu.   Maybe there are power settings/fan profile settings I can tweak so it stays on longer at a steady speed and not throttle so much.

I'm on linux,  core enhancement disabled, fan left on automatic in BIOS, CPU governor set to performance in linux. Have Brave browser open, listening to podcast and have 22 tabs auto reloading. CPU temp is 55-67 C.