I have a Gateway M305CRV notebook. It works great, but when the cooling fan cycles on, it is VERY LOUD. Very annoying since I replaced a Toshiba notebook that you couldn't hear at all.

Will replacing the fan resolve my issue? Is the fan design proprietary to Gateway or is it possible to swap out with a non-OEM? How do I find out for sure and where do I start looking?

Is it possible that it's not the fan design, but poor case design that is the root of the issue? If so, can I somehow safely slow down the fan speed and lengthen the run cycle without overheating the processor?

The fan may be loose so you need to be very careful and try and tighten the parts around it and the actual thing but not an extreme tight because that can damage the parts. Laptops are very difficult to tamper with compared to a normal pc. My laptop is a few years old and it is a little bit noisy yet my brother has the same model just a pentium up and its silent. Hope i helped

I maybe should have been more specific about the type of noise. It's not a rattling sound, or like something is loose, it's more like wind rushing or a whining noise.

Cheap fans can cause high noise dba you would want to replace the fan with a decent good one. If you dont want to do that simply disconnect the Cooling Fan and see if it effects the system temp drasticly... which it might becuase its compact.

I would not disconnect the processor fan in a laptop! Don't do it or even think of doing it!

Fans with age collect dust and sometimes they get loud because all the dust on the blades. However, sometimes dust gets inside the ball berring casing and instead of the ball berring rolling smothly and being silent, they get a whining noise. If this is your case first try blowing it out with some caned air, and if that doesn't work just replace the fan.

Hi I just had the same problem today. And it happened to be due to the 95degrees it was today in NYC.
I opend my laptop and got scared because I need it from college in a few days.
So with my superior intellect , I noticed that the ac gives off a relative amount of cool air. So I closed the laptop and held the area where the obnoxious noise was coming from up to the air conditioner.
Keep it there for about 2 minutes, or until your laptop becomes rather cold. When you put it down, you will notice the noise has vanished.

Hope this helps.

My Gateway ML3109 also has a super noisy fan, but I've concluded that it's because we keep our house at 78 degrees and higher in the summer. In winter, we only do 70 degrees, and the fan hasn't made any noise in weeks.

Thanks for all the replies, but I think the problem is just a cheap, noisy fan. It's not squeaking or squealing like the bearings are dirty or failing, it's not the ambient temp in the house. It's that the fan is cheap and is very noisy. I could have tried the A/C trick someone here mentioned, but as soon as the processor warms up, the fan will kick in again. The cool air didn't make the fan run quieter, it cooled the processor to the point where the cooling fan wasn't needed momentarily.
Again, thanks to you all for the responses, but there's nothing that can be done about it, besides that, I believe my daughter has been using it while sitting on her bed. It hasn't been able to cool properly and I think the processor has been damaged by high heat, it takes forever to start up, shut down, perform any function, basically. I'm just going to wait for it to die and replace it with another desktop, I don't think laptops are all they're cracked up to be.

Check out DigiKey (or other sellers, I suppose) for the Vapor Bearing fans from Sunon. They don't cost too much and they're really quiet, reliable and move a lot of air.