That's just part of the problem, GPU runs at max power without powermizer fix; 
other problem is CPU idle state, which requires 2.6.35 or higher kernel to 
apply grub patch mentioned elsewhere in current issues list.

Sony is not known for producing quiet laptops, so I'm skeptical that upgrading 
to Fedora 14 and latest kernel with cpu idle patch will do much of anything -- 
would be great if it did, obviously, this is far from white noise....

I sent my computer into sony. They updated the motherboard and replaced the 
clogged fan. Things are marginally better now.

@Jason : Where are these lines supposed to go ? (xorg.conf?)
I have VPC12C5E and it's incredibly noisy 

I have a VPCF11Z1E and I sent it to Sony. No fix. They did nothing. Sent it 
back to dabs. They sent me a replacement. Slightly better. 

Sony sent out a patch to stop overheating. I applied the patch and it is now 
much worse.

The PC is fab but the noise is ridiculous for something that expensive.

Now I just live with it!

Any improvement would be good. 

@sdd.davies :  what do you mean DAB, FAB and ridiculous ?

I recently bought a Vaio F Series VCPF1390s, and the fan noise is still there 
FYI. Any advice?

My Vaio has been quiet and wonderfull for a year and now suddenly started 
blowing like mad! What is there to do?

[deleted comment]

The fan noise in my Vaio F Series 1390s is worst under Ubuntu 10.10 thatn 
Windows7, sadly... So is there a guide anywhere to undervolt my CPUs on Ubuntu? 
This is the only solution I see.

I also had loud fan noise with linux, however the fix is super simple. Most 
likely it's just a run-away process taking up all cpu power - firefox is often 
guilty of this.

Just fire up a terminal and type the command 'top' and see which process is 
using 100% cpu and noting the number of process, type kill -9 [# of process]. 
You may have to be root to kill some processes.  

Of course, anyone w/ any experience at all w/ linux already knows this but a 
lot of new users don't know about this. Hell, I've been using it for years now 
and just recently found out about it. Anyway, the fan should automatically 
subside after killing the guilty process.

I have two problems with my VPCF11Z1R: loud fan and occasional shutdowns due to 
the overheating. The latter happens when notebook works under load for long 
time staying on the same spot on the table. Must be because of intake sucking 
air not cold enough.

Also, sometimes fan just stops at maximum spinning rate, then gradually regains 
full speed. Scares me every time it happens. My imagination shows melted CPU 
and burnt plastic.

To sum up, it seems like cooling system is too weak/buggy for such "hot" 
laptop. Not sure it is a Linux problem, under Windows 7 things are not much 
better. Maybe Core i5 models are better.

désolé pour le français (je vous laisse traduire)
mais pour plus de silence, il faut que les cores du i7 soit le plus possible en 
mode C6, vous pouvez voir celà avec l'utilitaire I7z 
https://code.google.com/p/i7z/

pour passer celà, il faut utiliser le driver "intel_idle" inclus normalement 
dans le noyau et en écrivant la mention "intel_idle.max_cstate=4" dans 
/etc/default/grub sous ubuntu.

on oublie pas d'updater son grub grace a la commande sudo update-grub2 et on 
redemarre le laptop

il devrait etre nettement plus silencieux apres

@lacsebatien:  Je crois que tu tiens quelque chose de solide, je ne sais pas si 
cest l'effet Placebo, mais jai essayé ton truc et ça semble fonctionner, cest 
beaucoup plus silencieux!! Wow! Est-ce que tu en as d'autres comme ça des 
suggestions? je suis prêt à les suivre... Merci encore!

[deleted comment]

@lacsebatien le solution marche pas pour les kernels moins que 2.6.35, 
intel_idle n'est pas disponible, donc ca fait rien de faire les mods de grub.  
J'ai fait plusierues essaies, et rien sur Fedora 13 (2.6.34.7-56.fc13.x86_64 
sur Sony F12 i7 920)

For we anglos, the proposed solution by lacsebastien will not work unless you 
are on kernel >= 2.6.35. From what I have read in other threads in this group, 
max cstate of C2 is what one wants to achieve true quiet with these i7 power 
houses (but maybe C6 works as well).  I'm in Hawaii, with windows open, birds 
chirping, etc., so can't hear the fans, but when I head back to France in the 
spring I'm sure I'll go nuts again without a fix -- the fan noise in a quiet 
apartment really gets in your head, even with the machine off it seems the fans 
are still running ;--(

Unfortunately I've tried cstate 2, 4 and 6 on my Vaio VPCF13S0E and they don't 
seem to make any appreciable difference to the fan noise. 

I'm using a Liquorix 2.6.37 kernel on Mint Debian Edition.

peut etre que le driver intel_idle n'est pas inclus dans le kernel par debian 
car il est possible que ça soit un driver propriétaire 

@jef, oui je sais celà, je ne l'ai pas précisé, met a jour ton kernel sinon 

intel_idle is enabled in the Liquorix 2.6.37 kernel I am using.

$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuidle/current_driver
intel_idle

@phill

did you try the powermizer options? That helped quiet the fans for me (still 
loud when doing cpu intensive ops). Have not yet tried intel_idle, I'm on Fed 
13 2.6.34 kernel (intel_idle available in >= 2.6.35)

I presume the powermizer lines at the beginning of this thread is supposed to 
go in my xorg.conf "Device" section?

Anyway, I did this, added the lines, but there was no appreciable difference.

I guess I'm stuck with the noise.

The one thing I can say, if I open Terminal and hold down a key such as right 
arrow, the fan noise drops quite a lot, to almost nothing in fact.

I think I've made some progress on this. The fan is not yet silent, but it is 
certainly quieter than before.

What I needed to do was make some changes with regard to CPU Frequency Scaling 
governor

First I installed sysfsutils on my Debian system. Then using cpufreq-info I 
looked at what cpufreq governers were available. In my case cpufreq-info looked 
like this:

> cpufreq-info
cpufrequtils 007: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009
Report errors and bugs to cpufreq@vger.kernel.org, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: acpi-cpufreq
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency: 10.0 us.
  hardware limits: 933 MHz - 1.73 GHz
  available frequency steps: 1.73 GHz, 1.73 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.47 GHz, 1.33 GHz, 1.20 GHz, 1.07 GHz, 933 MHz
  available cpufreq governors: powersave, conservative, userspace, ondemand, performance
  current policy: frequency should be within 933 MHz and 1.73 GHz.
                  The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 933 MHz.
  cpufreq stats: 1.73 GHz:0.10%, 1.73 GHz:0.00%, 1.60 GHz:0.00%, 1.47 GHz:0.00%, 1.33 GHz:0.00%, 1.20 GHz:0.00%, 1.07 GHz:0.00%, 933 MHz:99.90%  (4)

This was repeated 7 times for each CPU I have.

I wanted to change my governor from ondemand to powersave. To do this I edited 
/etc/sysfs.confo by adding the following:

devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor = powersave

I did this for all CPUs, so added the above line 7 more times changing cpu0 to 
cpu1, cpu2, cpu3 etc

Then reboot.

cpufreq_info now looks like:

> cpufreq-info
cpufrequtils 007: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009
Report errors and bugs to cpufreq@vger.kernel.org, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: acpi-cpufreq
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency: 10.0 us.
  hardware limits: 933 MHz - 1.73 GHz
  available frequency steps: 1.73 GHz, 1.73 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.47 GHz, 1.33 GHz, 1.20 GHz, 1.07 GHz, 933 MHz
  available cpufreq governors: powersave, conservative, userspace, ondemand, performance
  current policy: frequency should be within 933 MHz and 1.73 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 933 MHz.
  cpufreq stats: 1.73 GHz:0.10%, 1.73 GHz:0.00%, 1.60 GHz:0.00%, 1.47 GHz:0.00%, 1.33 GHz:0.00%, 1.20 GHz:0.00%, 1.07 GHz:0.00%, 933 MHz:99.90%  (4)

I have now found that when CPUs are idle the fan is much, much quieter, 
although of course it still spins up under load.

Also, I tried changing the intel_idle.max_cstate between 2,4, and 6 after 
making the above changes. I found that 6 produced the quietest fan.

Unfortunately, the high pitched whine (described in another thread here) while 
now less frequent (it seems to increase repetition with higher fan speed) is 
much more noticeable because of the quieter fan.

I would take a noisy fan over my 140deg F computer.  

Has governing the cpu's helped with heat at all?  Right now if I run a game or 
something intensive I'm almost reaching the critical temperature.  Normal 
everyday computing has it sitting at 140deg.

Just to complete a previous successfull attemp to slow down the whole thing, 
which was adjusting in my grub file the max intel_idle cstate, I've change the 
scaling frequencies of my cpu to conservative, and wow! Now it is very silent!

Have a look at the two post below, it helps to make persistant change to freq. 
scaling. You have nothing to loose, try it ;)

http://superuser.com/questions/179329/disable-frequency-scaling-ondemand-daemon-
on-ubuntu-10-04

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8790599&postcount=11

hi 
Comment 21 worked for me with ubuntu 10.10

but now i'm on natty and it doesn't work anymore. after a restart its still on 
"ondemand"

any suggestions?

@philclarke, your solution looks to be the one; however, I believe that it 
requires the BIOS to have been updated to R1120Y6, which is impossible if you 
are not dual booting, or have Win7 XP 64-bit running on a USB key (i.e. you 
need windows to update the BIOS)

Before tossing provided HD with Win7 I applied BIOS patch, but that was in 
September 2010; BIOS update R1120Y6 was released in November 2010 so SOL until 
I get a copy of Windows and run off USB key.

For those of you lucky enough to have the latest BIOS, do you see C-state 
management option in the BIOS? Also, does powertop show C-state info (and not 
just P-state as is the case for me)

Great machine, love it, and I have reduced fan noise to an acceptable level, 
but the subtle background up & down whining noise, how much better life would 
be without it!

I went trough trouble to update R1120Y6 to my VPCF12S1E and yes there is now 
option for enabling/disabling C3/C6 states. Disabling this makes all those CPU 
related high pitch whines go away. I've also managed somehow to get rid of 
screen related whines and mic related whines so this computer is starting to be 
usable. 

This is what the powertop tells me:

Cn                Avg residency       P-states (frequencies)
C0 (cpu running)        ( 0.0%)       Turbo Mode     0.0%
polling           0.0ms ( 0.0%)         1.74 Ghz     0.0%
C1 mwait          0.2ms ( 0.0%)         1.60 Ghz     0.0%
C2 mwait          3.3ms ( 1.3%)         1466 Mhz     0.0%
C3 mwait         17.2ms (98.8%)          933 Mhz   100.0%

The fan is constantly running but mostly low rpm so I think this is the best I 
can get on this laptop. 

@obimeis, great, glad to hear the BIOS update is the key to C-state whining 
issue -- now to get a copy of Win7, arrggghhh, should not have tossed the HD 
when I replaced with SSD ;--(

btw, if you have not already done so, try the power miser option for the video 
card; that reduced fan noise considerably on my end.

In France, will have to wait until I get back to States in a couple of months.

This laptop is absolutely awesome, btw, so much happier having left Apple for 
Linux ;--)

Only noticeable difference has been downclocking the GPU, that was significant, 
instant relief.

My CPU temps are in the low 50s, and when under load (e.g. running virtual 
machine(s)) in the low-to-mid 60s.

Post BIOS update I am not sure if disabling c3/c6 states a whole lot, perhaps 
the tinnitus ringing up/down sound is less, but the fan may blow even more now 
(since c-state is pinned to max consumption).

At least I have some options to experiment with now; on 2.6.34 with old BIOS I 
was completely powerless.

Good luck to everyone, great machine, overall I'm very happy with it ;-)

How exactly did you downclock your GPU? 

I've also found another interesting thing today, PHC, 
http://www.linux-phc.org/. I'm not entirely sure yet if it applies, or how it 
applies.. but if it does what it promises, that's a very interesting path to 
explore as well.. Anyone have any insight here?

Just to say that I tried PHC and after a lot of effort and getting the patched 
PHC kernel, the CPU voltage doesn't accept the reduction that I wanna do. It 
seems to be locked.

Someone know if there is something special to do to get PHC working with a 
damned Vaio? :P

Breaking news that I forgot to tell: After a CMOS reset, my fan are much more 
silent! Temp are between 45C and 53C in normal use ( a C compilation with make 
bring the temp to 70C max.).

---------------------
VPCF1390S

Shame about PHC, was really hoping that would make a difference.. but if the 
frequencies are locked, bleh. 

I'm doing 61c now using KDE/Openbox doing some minimal browsing with chrome and 
netbeans open. Fan is reasonably quiet.. I've got some magazines propped under 
the battery to slightly lift the laptops back up, this decreases the temp by 
about 4c or so.

One thing I've been wondering, and I might be totally off here, but does using 
a SSD decrease the temp at all? Has anyone noted a significant difference from 
this?

@rian

SSD should run cooler as it consumes less power and has no moving parts. The 
heat generators are of course the CPU & GPU.

Pick up an iRizer for a decent cooling solution (I'm @54 degrees C with windows 
VM, IntelliJ, Chrome, and Skype running)

Actually, I stand corrected: disabling c3/c6 in the BIOS + downclocking GPU via 
Powermizer + perhaps grub entry "intel_idle.max_cstate=2" will make your 
machine very quiet.

The problem is, when running your machine for days & weeks on end without 
reboot (in my case, just suspend/sleep), then it will get progressively louder. 
 Why is this? Powertop is your friend here, just look at the top causes for 
wakeups and you'll see the source of the noise.  For example, today I saw 
Chrome was top o' the list with something like 2,000 kernal ticks (compared to 
most other processes which are under 100), followed by VMware (my Windows VM) 
at around 500 ticks.  The end result is 10% of the time I was in C1 when idle, 
which means, arggghhh, noise. Shutting down Chrome and VMware brought wakeups 
per second down to 55 (before it was in the thousands).

I prefer Chrome to Firefox, but will go with the latter if Chrome continues to 
go nuts, and only run Windows VM when necessary.

So, to sum up: if you have done the necessary fixes and still experience a 
noisy machine, go to powertop and see what's causing the machine to wakeup from 
idle state (relatively idle, I should say, since ironically, we can't even get 
into true power saving idle state by disabling c3-c6).

Good luck, silence is beautiful!

[deleted comment]

It seems that we all found different solutions to lower the fan noise on this 
thread, so I post my complete workaround below (which worked perfectly after 
some hours of tests and attempts) to turn my Vaio (VPCF13C5E) quiet on Linux 
(Ubuntu 11.10). Instead of just writing a straight-forward and setp-by-step 
method, I'll also detail some of my attempts, so you may find YOUR way, just in 
case some settings don't work for you. 

Until now, I was in a multi-boot context with most disk space allocated to 
Linux (Ubuntu 11.10) and a small partition for Windows 7.

On Windows 7, since I've set the power plan to "Silent" in Vaio Control Center 
utility (then Power management -> thermal options) that ships with the Vaio, it 
has always been very quiet, altough the fan speed tended to vary a little upon 
load. But on Ubuntu at least, the fan was VERY noisy all the time.

So I decided to follow the tips above on this thread, but the options I had to 
set are a bit different to make the fan stay quiet.

I'm not a gamer, so I don't need intensive CPU / GPU usage but I use a few VMs 
in VirtualBox, so you may adapt the following procedure according to your needs 
(make a copy of all the files you edit in case you want to roll-back)

--------------------------------------------
1. Check your Vaio's exact model

To find the exact model reference, I rebooted, then pressed F2 before GRUB load 
to enter the BIOS.
On the "Main" tab :

Machine name was : VPCF13C5E
BIOS version was : R0180Y9

--------------------------------------------
2. Upgrade the BIOS if needed

 -- Read this paragraph completely before following this step 
    As far as I know this step * CANNOT * be undone but it's always better to have a recent BIOS --

I couldn't find the famous c3/c6 option in my BIOS.
So I went to Sony Vaio support site of my country (I guess you could also go to 
Sony US / global site), looked for support related to VPCF13C5E and found a 
BIOS update (BIOS R0190Y9 instead of mine which was R0180Y9)
Downloaded the .exe file containing the BIOS update and the upgrade was done in 
less than 1 minute, rebooted the PC, pressed F2 upon boot and disabled the 
c3/c6 options in the BIOS.

Then I first tried to boot on Windows 7, to see if it was still quiet as 
before. IT WASN'T ! Now as loud as in Linux !

So I enabled the c3/c6 option back in BIOS.

As a matter of fact, after different attempts at the end of the procedure 
below, I HAD TO KEEP THE c3/c6 option ** ENABLED ** to make the fan quiet on 
Linux.
On Windows 7, the fan noise with c3/c6 enabled was as quiet as before with 
prevoius firmware, but now more stable, so upgrading the BIOS was stil helpful.

--------------------------------------------
3. Set CPU governor to Powersave in Linux

I first had a look to the method indicated in comment #23 above 
(http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8790599&postcount=11) but it seemed to 
be hasardous, so I decided to harcode
the values for each CPU like stated here : 
http://superuser.com/questions/179329/disable-frequency-scaling-ondemand-daemon-
on-ubuntu-10-04

My CPU is i7, so quadcore -> 8 CPU seen by the system (0 to 7)
In doubt, do cpufreq-info in command line (or apt-get cpufreq-info In Debian / 
Ubuntu if not installed), you'll se the IDs of each core.

sudo vim /etc/sysfs.conf

Then I wrote (like in comment #21) :

devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor = powersave
... in 8 lines (cpu1, cpu2...) until ...
devices/system/cpu/cpu7/cpufreq/scaling_governor = powersave

--------------------------------------------
4. Tweak your GRUB

sudo vim /etc/default/grub

Change the line : 

    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
To : 
    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash intel_idle.max_cstate=6"

It's true that the higher cstate you set (6) more your CPU will be 
"powersaving" and more quiet will be the fan...
as sated here : http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/611

Then save / close and still in command line :
sudo update-grub

--------------------------------------------
5. Downclock your GPU (NVidia CPU)

sudo /usr/bin/nvidia-settings

(If not installed, try to install a package like nvidia-settings or google for 
that)

Then go to the Powermizer section of Nvidia Settings GUI.
In the "performance levels" table, the active line may be 1 or 2

You have to set it to level 1, so that the GPU will use less power (thus less 
heat dissipation and the fan noise will be much lower), and remain stable for 
most use cases.

To change the max performance level you see here in Nvidia GUI / Powermizer 
section, you have to edit your xorg.conf file :

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

In the "Device" section in this file, find a line like (mine was like this) :

    Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1" 

And complete as follows (on a SINGLE line) :

    Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1; PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x3333; PowerMizerDefault=0x2; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x2"


Note :
PowerMizerDefault (battery) and PowerMizerDefaultAC (AC power) values in 
xorg.conf are actually ** MAX ** levels (not really default levels).

In other words, if you set level 1 as a default through xorg.conf, level 2 will 
never be reached in any case, including on GPU overload, but level 1 is 
sufficient in most use cases (while level 0 as default will cause unstability 
in some cases and level 2 will increase heat dissipation and therefore fan 
noise).

Here are the equivalences between maximum Performance levels you may want in 
the NVidia GUI / Powermizer -> "Performance level" table and the values for 
PowerMizerDefault and PowerMizerDefaultAC you have to set in xorg.conf :

xorg.conf     Nvidia GUI table

  0x3 :    Performance level 0
  0x2 :    Performance level 1
  0x1 :    Performance level 2

Those changes in xorg.conf will not take effect in Nvidia settings GUI until X 
restart or reboot (see below).

--------------------------------------------
6. Reboot and enjoy

So, after all those settings are done, reboot your Vaio :

    sudo reboot

Now you should have your device much more quiet on Linux, at least as quiet as 
on Windows with Sony proprietary drivers (Vaio control center -> power 
management -> silent mode ;-)

Of course, on Linux, as on Windows and any other OS, the fan speed will still 
vary upon CPU / GPU load, but at least you can now have the fan noise downgrade 
at best.

And remember that in Vaio F, like in most laptops, the only way to limit fan 
noise is to find the best compromise between heat dissipation and CPU / GPU 
performance according to your needs (in other words, there's no way to set CPU 
throttles directly on BIOS, like on some motherboards for destktop PCs).

Hope this helps.

@gle, nice write-up.

Interesting that enabling c3-c6 has helped quiet your machine; everything seems 
to point to the noise coming from cpu-state constantly going between power save 
and full throttle. 

It must be that fixing cpu cores to "scaling_governor = powersave", pins 
cpu-state in c3-c6. In other words, cpu cores are permanently downclocked 
(which kind of defeats the purpose of having a quad core CPU since max ghz is 
already slow, 1.87ghz in my case on an F12 signature series)

Anyway, how are things now in Linux a week after your patches? I'm particularly 
curious to know how things are if you run for a week straight without 
rebooting; i.e. just suspend/resume.  I start out quiet on reboot, but later 
that day, the noise returns (nothing like before, but still this up & down 
sound which is not the fan, but something else, and constant----ly irritating, 
lol, love this machine, but man, it would be laptop nirvana without this f-ing 
noise)

@gle, enabling c3/c6 in the bios and setting intel_idle.max_cstate=6 in grub 
conf has had a positive affect on the noise ;-) CPU core temps are also down 
from 47 degrees celsius to 43 (forcing max cstate of 2 at bios & grub level 
keeps cpus pinned in max power consumption and therefore heat generation)

Still this winding up & down subtle grinding sound, but less than before which 
is nice -- enabling higher cpu idle states does the trick, probably the best 
you can do in linux on this machine (downclocking the gpu is of course a must). 

Far from MacbookPro quiet, but with the collected patches here, a vast 
improvement over out-of-the-box-post-linux-install noise nightmare.

The true benchmark will be how the noise level changes when running without 
restarting for days (or weeks in my case) and relying on suspend/resume (which 
is rock solid on Fedora 14, btw)

Thanks again for the collected breakdown on the various patches, particularly 
the bit about c3/c6 actually reducing noise factor (was under the impression 
the noise was caused by constant back & forth between power saving and 
non-power saving states)

@sit1, thanks for your feedback, nice to hear that some of my settings did help 
you also, to answer your question I can't test if the fan noise remains quiet 
after a few days without rebooting, as I use my laptop between work and home 
with virtual machines on Virtualbox and Ubuntu 11.04 doesn't hibernate / resume 
correctly with VirtualBox machines running or have been running during session 
(unlike on Windows) so I have to fully shutdown and restart twice a day. It 
seems that suspend / hibernate and resume had improvements on Ubuntu 11.10 but 
I had to downgrade back to 11.04 to avoid all the defects I found on Gnome 3 
and Unity interfaces (waiting for 12.04 LTS or any more mature version of Gnome 
3 :-) So I don't know if the fan noise remains quiet after long sessions, but I 
noticed that it does at least after 24 hours up.

Definite noise improvement with your enable c3/c6 suggestion ;-)

I'm on Fedora 14 and am holding off until Gnome 3 issues are sorted out.

re: sleep/resume, rock solid here, but I don't use the GUI to enter sleep mode, 
I use a terminal alias "gosleep" that calls "acpitool -s"

100% reliable, have done a couple thousand sleep/resumes with the above ;-)

Have not tried System > Shutdown > Sleep since Fedora 13, worked maybe 50% of 
the time for me, so had to search for another solution.

This is the greatest thread ever! My Vaio VPCF11S1E/B has sounded like a hair 
dryer from day one. I've basically put up with it and worn headphones whenever 
I use it (otherwise I'm left with a ringing sound in my ears after 30 or so 
minutes of use).

I haven't tried the C3/C6 settings yet, but will do when I get home. I'm using 
Ubuntu 12.04, and this is what I did to silence the unit:


1. Install the CPU frequency setting app: sudo apt-get install indicator-cpufreq
2. Restart the computer.
3. Set the CPU frequency to 0.93GHz.
4. Run on two cores: echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/online
5. Physically removed the 2GB RAM stick.

I can now use my Vaio VPCF11S1E/B without using headphones!

why have you remove 2gb ram ? 

I removed the 2GB RAM stick because RAM generates heat. I'm not sure why, but 
it definitely makes a huge difference. I will post a video to YouTube later 
this evening showing the difference between running my Vaio with 4GB and 6GB. 
This difference is significant.

ok I did not see any difference between 4 and 6 GB of ram, I have a f11s1eb but 
 between ubuntu 12.04 and archlinux; on ubuntu 12.04 the pc much less heating, 
a check in the long term

Any suggestions for Windows 7? I dont really use Linux

Thank you!

My F12 serie Vaio was shutting itself down because it was overheating. I have 
cleaned it with a compressed air and the noise and overheating problems are all 
gone.

Do you need to take it apart to do so?

Hi guys! My F11 was hitting over 70 degrees,

I took it apart and cleaned the hell out of my fan and now I'm below 50 the 
whole time!!

Great results didn't expect it!

The guide i followed: 
http://www.monteverde.org/images/Sony_Vaio_F11/Vaio_F_Series_Keyboard_Replacemen
t_Guide.htm

Yeah!

Couldn't find a solution for the fan noise. I took it apart and cleaned the 
cooling system and the noise is gone.