Hi all,
My laptop's cpu fan has gotten quite loud. I tried cleaning, no help. It gets loud when I open big projects in SONAR. As soon as I close it fan get quieter. The CPU usage is around 50% in task manager. Anyone has any tips on how to fix this?
Also: do you think upgrading to SONAR platinum will help with the load balancing?
 
Specs:
Intel Core i7 (3rd Gen) 3720QM / 2.6 GHz
Quad-Core
20GB ram

You're probably jacking the heat of your processor making your fan have to work way harder to cool it. Laptops are really bad at controlling heat because they are so condensed and there isn't a lot of air movement.

My HP laptop is crazy noisy. It bothered me so much I now have tinitus. So I happened upon an Alienware which is the quietest computer I've ever used. Presently it's SUPER quiet as I crashed the OS trying to clone a new drive. Hopfully I'll get it back up this week...

I had a bad experience with this.  My HP laptop CPU fan stopped completely.  The CPU was getting way hot. Being and electronics engineer myself I thought I would have a crack at replacing it.  I ordered the part and it arrived.  The process for dismantling the laptop in order to get to the CPU fan was ridiculous.  I downloaded the service manual and it involved like 30 to 40 or more (major) steps to do it.  I ended up with a million parts everywhere.  The new part ended up being the wrong part.  There was no way I would have been able to rebuild the machine even if the part was correct in the reverse order.  In the end I had to throw the laptop away!
 
Your only hope is to take to an authorised service person or centre.  But get a quote though.  It will probably cost more than a new machine. The fan will die in the end so be prepared.  Laptops are only good while they are working.

Most laptops are designed to be quiet and the "cooling system" is iffy at best.  Heavy loads can cause higher fan speeds and can also cause more noise.  There could also be a thermal paste breakdown and that is causing it to heat up under load.  There are "laptop coolers" sold (basically a fan assembly that the laptop sits on) but that may not be an option or fix your specific problem. 
 
I agree that maintenance on a laptop is a hassle.  What has to come apart (and how it comes apart) can be a mess.  I worked on one for a client that the back had both screws and "snapped" on.  I had to be very careful not to break one of the plastic "catches" for the snap on part.  Fortunately what I had to do only required removing the back. 

FWIW
 
General-purpose laptops are not built for heavy CPU use scenarios.
The general-purpose user is rarely (if ever) going to put the CPU under sustained heavy loads (multi-track audio, or much worse... video or 3D rendering/animation).
 
If you've cleaned out the laptop and you're sure there are no obstructions... there's really nothing else to do (on the laptop itself) to minimize fan noise.
You could try a laptop cooling pad... with larger lower RPM fans.
 
 
 

Thanks for the all the replies. I looked into laptop coolers - they are relatively cheap. Going to get one at give you an update later.

Just as an added anecdote... I figured out once that my laptop was actually NEVER reaching full CPU load because the fan and heatsink were incapable of cooling the CPU as much as it needed to be cooled. Therefore, whenever the laptop would start to overheat the CPU would be throttled. Basically this means that the laptop was incapable of EVER hitting it's peak potential. In other words, the advertised specs were actually unobtainable.

Tho my R3 is really quiet, it also gets really hot. Cooling wasn't designed properly and a lot of people complained. The new R4s are redesigned more like the older ones with bigger cooling vents and my favorite feature: rear panel cord connections. The dumbest thing to me is having all these cords springing from each side. Makes for a cluttered work space.

Usually the fan gets louder when a bearing goes bad.

Replacing the fan helps this because the new fan will have good bearings.

Some laptops appear quieter because they angle the fan blades differently. This spreads the noise across the frequency spectrum like dither.

My laptop makes a little fan noise but I usually I use it for loud bands. Consequently, the noise is inaudible in the mix.

I have replaced the fan in my HP laptop but I think I had to remove every screw in the laptop to do it. It took a couple of nervous hours. I had to be willing to kill the machine. I have the stuff to read laptop drives, so the drives would not have been lost even if the computer was.

In the end, for around one hundred dollars including shipping, my fan problem was fixed.