Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

brazzmonkey · 2011-02-28 09:09:26

Hi there,

My laptop has a faulty video card (nvidia 7600go), which is really causing me troubles lately. It looks like it's a know issue since many other Acer Aspire 9810 users report video card issues or death.

My video card is not quite dead yet (random freezes and lock-ups and artefacts). I know the only real solution would be to replace the whole motherboard (GPU is welded). But I couldn't find such spare part, and Acer support is awful and impolite.

Nvidia driver, which I had to carefully configure in the past, is barely usable. Plus it's really unstable when not running full speed.
Nv driver is not much better.
I couldn't get nouveau driver working.
So at the moment I use VESA driver, which is stable enough to prevent lock-ups. Too bad I didn't achieved to make it display a 1680x1050 resolution.

There's only one fan for cooling different chips on my mobo, including video card. I cleaned heat pipes anf fins. I noticed mobo fan gently speeds up when my video card temperature is 85°C onwards. I'd like to keep this temperature lower, because it seems to improve stability (according to different experiences).

I can get video card temperature with nvidia-sttings or nvclock (the latter sometimes gives funny results, though). I've been looking for a way to force fan but I failed:
- no fan detected with lm-sensors
- no way to force fan in nvclock

So any advices would be welcome, thanks.

Last edited by brazzmonkey (2011-02-28 09:10:47)

nTia89 · 2011-03-02 20:00:06

i don't know if is possible to force fan value..... but

1) combine the cpu scaling feature to reduce laptop temp

2) you could find interesting acpi and related acer-specific packages as for eee netbook exists specific packages........

brazzmonkey · 2011-03-03 08:54:31

Thanks for replying.

My CPU mostly runs at full speed, but it seems to be properly cooled. But I guess I should try what you suggest, it may help to cool everything down.
Another idea I got would be to set up some artificial load on CPU (BOINC or something). It could spin up fan and thus provide further cooling to GPU. This would obviously work because my GPU never runs cooler than under heavy CPU load.

As for ACPI specific packages, I don't know of any (and my laptop is quite the opposite of a Acer One netbook: 20" screen, 2 HD and 7.8 kg!).

Anyhow this is faulty hardware and bad design. I guess the cleanest workaround would be a BIOS hack to lower fan spin-up GPU temperature from 85°C to something around 60°C...

R00KIE · 2011-03-03 14:04:44

I'd say that you are pretty much out of luck, except for the option of hacking the bios or hardwiring the fan (which could get annoying very fast).

Setting up an artificial load might work or not, depends on how/where the bios/hardware samples the temperature and changes the fan speed accordingly, besides I guess you would be wasting energy by doing so and as a side effect raising the overall temperature inside your laptop.

If things are done properly the thermal resistance from the heatsink's fins to air will probably be higher than the thermal resistance from cpu to gpu so you would end up heating the gpu with the heat generated by the cpu thus defeating the point of setting up an artificial load.

I'm not trying to say there isn't a workaround but it will most probably not be easy or pretty. On a less serious note you can consider this https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 93#p898793

brazzmonkey · 2011-03-03 17:55:52

R00KIE wrote:

I'd say that you are pretty much out of luck, except for the option of hacking the bios or hardwiring the fan (which could get annoying very fast).

I actually hoped there would be a software solution, but I couldn't find any...
I have a BIOS binary but not the skills to hack it.

Setting up an artificial load might work or not, depends on how/where the bios/hardware samples the temperature and changes the fan speed accordingly, besides I guess you would be wasting energy by doing so and as a side effect raising the overall temperature inside your laptop.
If things are done properly the thermal resistance from the heatsink's fins to air will probably be higher than the thermal resistance from cpu to gpu so you would end up heating the gpu with the heat generated by the cpu thus defeating the point of setting up an artificial load.

Yes, that might happen. Still airflow convection seems stronger: as I mentioned in my previous post GPU effectively cools down when CPU is under heavy load. Energy consumption is the most important side effect IMHO.

I'm not trying to say there isn't a workaround but it will most probably not be easy or pretty. On a less serious note you can consider this https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 93#p898793

I thought about that already, but that would be a shame. My ACER is a nice machine.
Plus I already recycled a legacy Celeron 600 into a router, web cache, printer server, music player, picture frame, etc. It could be improved but it does the job (and it's not so energy greedy: its CPU even runs fanless...).

R00KIE · 2011-03-03 21:54:43

If not considering hacking the bios and hardwiring the fan there might be a quite tricky solution which I guess you probably don't want to try.

The fan speed is most probably controlled by pwm, so if you find a way (using some electronics between the fan plug and the fan) to limit the minimum duty cycle then you can get a higher minimum fan speed and probably be able to cool the gpu without needing to load the cpu and it would somewhat avoid the noise of having the fan working at full speed.

However there may be a catch here, if the feedback from the fan is used to help regulate the fan's speed, the control circuit (the one on the motherboard) might go haywire and do something unpredictable. And if this doesn't sound too simple then actually making it work is even harder, but I can still share some ideas if you'd like.

eldragon · 2011-03-04 00:05:24

i guess your best shot is to remove the cooling blocks and replace the thermal pads with good old thermal paste.

that will shove some degrees off your GPU.

i did this on a hp dv6000 and i got about 10C lower on an apparently failing nvidia gpu.

brazzmonkey · 2011-03-04 09:56:05

@R00KIE
Well, I could use my computer under water, too...
I'm not suicidal.

@eldragon
Actually I already did that when I cleaned the whole thing. I had a few drops of Artic Silver left...
It didn't really help, except that cooling down is a wee bit faster when the fan spins.

anonymous_user · 2011-03-05 17:55:32

Try using the nvidia driver and this script:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=828369

R00KIE · 2011-03-05 19:16:35

Well ... like I said, tricky solution might work but it would probably require a micro controller between the fan and the fan's plug.

It would require finding a 5V supply (and probably also a 12V supply point). A good start point would be the usb ports. Then you would need to find out the pwm frequency at which the fan's controller works (probably can be found on some hard to find datasheet) and then the fun part, writing and debugging some code to do the required task.

The next fun part would be designing the circuit around the micro controller to drive and emulate the fan, making the pcb and soldering all the smd parts (space is at premium inside a notebook after all).

Like I said before, you can always hard wire the fan, you'll probably need to find a 12V supply point (if the fan's nominal supply voltage is 12V). I'd say a good place to find it would be on a pin of the fan's controller (this info can probably be found on some hard to find datasheet).

brazzmonkey · 2011-03-07 09:11:27

anonymous_user wrote:

Try using the nvidia driver and this script:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=828369

nVidia PowerMizer can be adjusted in xorg.conf. In my case it is set up for maximum performance because other settings affect stability.

songgao · 2011-04-12 13:19:33

Hi,

I control the fan speed by setting parameter with

/proc/acpi/ibm/fan

however, this file seems to be related to only ThinkPad laptops. I am not sure whether there's similar things on other laptops. Maybe it's something like /proc/acpi/fan?

You may want to see this: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_control_fan_speed
It's for ThinkPad computers but I guess the steps should be similar...

brazzmonkey · 2011-04-12 13:45:41

I wish I could but I have no fan detected with ACPI...
I can monitor temperatures, but can't read nor set fan speeds...

Your link is exactly what I'm looking for, unfortunately I don't have an IBM laptop and haven't found anything relevant for my Acer laptop.

Thanks anyway.

songgao · 2011-04-15 04:38:11

@brazzmonkey U're welcome :-) Summer's coming. A cooling pad might be helpful?

brazzmonkey · 2011-06-14 21:07:41

I set up 2 virtual loads on my CPU, and it helps me to keep my GFX temp as low as 65°C.
So far so good, I'm able to use nvidia drivers again (laptop is slightly noisy, though).

(this message is part of the testing process: it's not rare for me to write something on these forums, and realize a few moments later that I'm wrong...).

*edit*
Indeed: failed.

Last edited by brazzmonkey (2011-06-19 19:35:28)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-02-28 09:09:26

Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#2 2011-03-02 20:00:06

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#3 2011-03-03 08:54:31

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#4 2011-03-03 14:04:44

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#5 2011-03-03 17:55:52

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#6 2011-03-03 21:54:43

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#7 2011-03-04 00:05:24

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#8 2011-03-04 09:56:05

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#9 2011-03-05 17:55:32

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#10 2011-03-05 19:16:35

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#11 2011-03-07 09:11:27

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#12 2011-04-12 13:19:33

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#13 2011-04-12 13:45:41

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#14 2011-04-15 04:38:11

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

#15 2011-06-14 21:07:41

Re: Force fan to prevent GPU overheating

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