hello, with regards to the fan issue:

its always best to set the fan settings on the motherboard bios to automatic. there are temperature and fan speed sensors on each motherboard. depending on the motherboard brand and model number,

some has the behaviour of maintaining a constant fan speed -- thus making sure that good air is always blow to cool the cpu

some have a behavior that watches the cpu temperature, when it gets to a certain temperature it blows harder -- to cool the cpu better (and of course it will make some more buzz/humming noises). then when the cpu is cooler, it reduces speed to almost very slow (that you hear like the fan isnt spinning)

overtime the fans will degrade in speed and will cause some noise. this can be fixed (or we can say that we can extend the life of the cpu fan) by cleaning the fan and applying a tiny drop of oil to better the spinning. the noise brought about by older fans can be remedied by screwing it a bit tighter to the heatsink, AND/OR putting some non-flammable padding material to snugly fit the fan and heatsink.

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with regards to the power settings..

again it think its best to leave the power settings to the defaults provided by your desktop/laptop manufacturer. windows can manage your power settings Or you can let the default power settings software of the laptop manufacturer to work.

here in my office laptop.. ive let the Lenovo Power Manager settings do the work.. ive set it to "balanced/automatic" mode

below are some screenshots of the predefined settings for maximum performance power management settings



the first basic setting is for power saving in the LCD monitor


next, the setting for system performance


**newer computers can automatically adjust the processor performance and power consumption. depending in the amount of work you do on the computer, you can set it to give priority to low power mode, or set it to prioritize high power mode for more consistent fast performance.

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with regards to the usb ports..

try using only the back USB ports on your computer. the front usb ports are only extension usb ports. sometimes the extension cable to the small cirucuit board that handles the front usb ports would malfunction. ive experience front usb port problems in two computers. ive found that the back usb ports are more reliable.