You are not logged in.

#1 2012-11-12 16:52:28

aurelieng
Member
Registered: 2010-02-02
Posts: 104

Tweak the balance between fan speed and CPU temperature / Dell M6400?

Hi all,

I have a Dell Precision M6400 17" laptop. It runs really well on Arch, but is a bit noisy. It has always been noisy, btw, but I recently noticed that the CPU fan was blowing a lot of air even though the CPU temperature is lower than 70°C. I also have a macbook air, and its CPU runs at 70°C all the time, which seems to be normal. I would like my m6400 to behave similarly, and I'm sure someone here know how to change that smile

Hardware configuration
* Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU Q9300  @ 2.53GHz
* Quadro FX 2700M (G94M)
* 8Go RAM
* 2 hard drives

lspci output

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset DRAM Controller (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 92)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801IBM/IEM (ICH9M/ICH9M-E) 4 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G94M [Quadro FX 2700M] (rev a1)
03:01.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev ba)
03:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 04)
03:01.2 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 21)
03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 11)
03:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 11)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5761e Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300

output of sensors, idle:

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +45.5°C  (crit = +107.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +51.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:       +51.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:       +48.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 3:       +46.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

output of sensors when I start interacting (light browsing, mail, chat):

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +59.5°C  (crit = +107.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +63.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:       +63.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:       +62.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 3:       +63.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

When I start the laptop, its CPU fan stays at its minimal speed only for 1 or 2 minutes, then increases its rotation speed to a second level. It reaches it maximal speed only under heavy load, when the CPU reaches >80-95°C. I would rather let the CPU run a bit hotter before the fan starts to blow: let's say the fan could enter its intermediary speed between 70°C and 85°C instead of 55-80°C, and blow at is its maximum speed beyond that.

I checked the Fan Speed Control wiki page, but lm-sensors is not able to show me the status of the fans. Any idea ?

Aurel.


PS: the temperature of the GPU is not reported by sensors, and nvidia-settings reports around 60°C. Its dedicated fan is very quiet.

Offline

#2 2012-11-16 18:08:15

ginard
Member
Registered: 2012-11-16
Posts: 2

Re: Tweak the balance between fan speed and CPU temperature / Dell M6400?

aurelieng wrote:

Hi all,

I have a Dell Precision M6400 17" laptop. It runs really well on Arch, but is a bit noisy. It has always been noisy, btw, but I recently noticed that the CPU fan was blowing a lot of air even though the CPU temperature is lower than 70°C. I also have a macbook air, and its CPU runs at 70°C all the time, which seems to be normal. I would like my m6400 to behave similarly, and I'm sure someone here know how to change that smile



Hi aurelieng,
I'm in the same situation from at least 1 month ( INTEL CORE 2 EXTREME X9100, 3.06GHz with 8GB ram, one solid state disk 128 GB, and one sata disk 500GB)
My dell M6400 has dual boot: ubuntu and windows7. The fan works a lot and continuosly in both environment and this is the reason because I have doubt that the origin of the problem is in hardware problem?

output of sensors when I start interacting (light browsing, mail, chat):

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +41.5°C  (crit = +107.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +41.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:       +41.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

Last edited by ginard (2012-11-16 18:09:19)

Offline

#3 2012-11-16 19:50:42

Cdh
Member
Registered: 2009-02-03
Posts: 1,098

Re: Tweak the balance between fan speed and CPU temperature / Dell M6400?

aurelieng wrote:

I would rather let the CPU run a bit hotter before the fan starts to blow: let's say the fan could enter its intermediary speed between 70°C and 85°C instead of 55-80°C, and blow at is its maximum speed beyond that.

I had the same thought a while ago (my fans start spinning at ~50°C and that's only a little below the temperature my idle cpu seems to approach).

I have read that the fan control is mostly in the bios and that if your bios doesn't give you any controls of the fan you can't do much except use a "modded" bios.

I'm not really sure about when pwmconfig should work. I believe the mainboard and the bios must support it.


฿ 18PRsqbZCrwPUrVnJe1BZvza7bwSDbpxZz

Offline

#4 2012-11-17 05:06:06

aurelieng
Member
Registered: 2010-02-02
Posts: 104

Re: Tweak the balance between fan speed and CPU temperature / Dell M6400?

Thank you all for your feedbacks. I installed i8kmon and i8kutils, and now I am able to get more details when running sensors:

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +54.5°C  (crit = +107.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +59.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:       +60.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:       +56.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 3:       +58.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

i8k-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
Left Fan:    101940 RPM
Right Fan:   90180 RPM
CPU:          +54.0°C

The RPMs should be divided by some value. No fan control in the BIOS. pwmconfig reports that "There are no pwm-capable sensor modules installed". It seems I'm out of luck smile

Aurel.

Offline

#5 2012-11-27 06:36:20

ginard
Member
Registered: 2012-11-16
Posts: 2

Re: Tweak the balance between fan speed and CPU temperature / Dell M6400?

Solved. The problem was due to dust in both fan.
Make a deep clean.
Let me say if you will solve.

Bye

Last edited by ginard (2012-11-27 06:37:40)

Offline

#6 2012-11-28 07:27:03

aurelieng
Member
Registered: 2010-02-02
Posts: 104

Re: Tweak the balance between fan speed and CPU temperature / Dell M6400?

Although the fans seemed clean, I removed some hidden dust with a vacuum cleaner and it's now running almost 10°C cooler and is really much more quiet :-)

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB