Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

chimeracoder · 2012-05-24 20:09:16

I have a laptop running with Intel i7-2630QM. I know my laptop had worse-than-expected battery life, but I never realized how bad until I installed powertop. Turns out I'm idling at 29W(!). This is even after enabling pcie_aspm=force and the related boot arguments that supposedly improve battery life in Intel laptops.

I think a big part of the problem is my fan, as my laptop has always been particularly noisy. However, I can't figure out which chipset I should be modifying in sensors.conf.

Output of sensors:

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +57.0°C  (crit = +120.0°C)
temp2:        +55.0°C  (crit = +127.0°C)

radeon-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +55.0°C  

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0:  +58.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0:         +53.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1:         +52.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 2:         +55.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 3:         +54.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

Compared with my friends' laptops, I expected to see a line that corresponds to my chipset, but I don't - what line(s) should I expect to modify?

Last edited by chimeracoder (2012-05-24 20:09:43)

Trilby · 2012-05-24 20:28:08

I can't answer your question as stated, but for my systems I've taken a different approach to fan control when needed by finding the right file and echoing a speed to it. This takes some exploration of /sys/devices/platform/* but has never been to hard to find.

I first started playing with these when I found an entry on Allan's blog on writing a fan control daemon for macbooks. I've since learned that a similar simple approach can work on many other systems.

chimeracoder · 2012-05-24 20:33:59

How do you automate this, though? I don't mind manually slowing it down when I know I'm not doing much, but I'd be afraid of accidentally not starting it back up before running something computationally intensive.

Also, there's a file specified in the wiki page linked - I assume that's the one you're referring to?

Last edited by chimeracoder (2012-05-24 20:34:30)

Trilby · 2012-05-24 20:40:23

Setting it up takes some investigation as you have to find the appropriate sensors, but once you figure out the right files in that directory you're set with a simple loop that could be written in nearly any programming language.

Here's the page that got me started on it. That is specifically for macbook's, but a similar approach has worked well for me on some other systems. This may be a 'closer to the metal' approach than many of the monitor and control tools available out there. The cost of this is the requirement to really explore your /sys/device/... directory tree and figure out which files to use. The benefit is more control and less "moving parts" that can go wrong with updates.

I can't say I'd recommend this for everyone, or all systems. It's just an alternative worth considering.

Edit: this was as an alternative to the sensors package which I'm not remotely familiar with. The exact files that need to be read and written to differs on different hardware. Hence the need to explore the device directory a bit if you wanted to try this route. Perhaps someone else can help with the sensor package, I have no reason to doubt it's suitability to the task, I've just used a different approach.

Last edited by Trilby (2012-05-24 20:42:51)

Gusar · 2012-05-24 20:49:33

More info about your system would be nice. For example, do you have a nvidia card in there?

vacant · 2012-05-24 20:57:42

Have you checked you're not using performance CPU scaling rather than ondemand?

donniezazen · 2012-05-24 22:23:39

I use Thinkfan for my Thinkpad T420i. pcie_aspm=force is no longer required in latest kernel. On my system, discrete graphic card constantly sucks 5-10W but integrated GPU works with minimum resources. Checkout these kernel arguments and also laptop-mode-tool helps.

chimeracoder · 2012-05-26 18:33:36

donniezazen wrote:

I use Thinkfan for my Thinkpad T420i. pcie_aspm=force is no longer required in latest kernel. On my system, discrete graphic card constantly sucks 5-10W but integrated GPU works with minimum resources. Checkout these kernel arguments and also laptop-mode-tool helps.

Those are the arguments I was talking about - when I enabled those I got a boost from the 1.5 hours I was getting before (to the 2 hours I get now).

I have an Intel Core i7-2630QM (2 GHz, 6MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 2.9 GHz and a 1GB DDR3 Radeon(TM) HD 6630 switchable Graphics card. I'm not using performance CPU scaling;

Right now, for example, my computer is running at about 51 degrees and the fan isn't on full blast, but enough to be decently noisy. So while using more a proactive CPU governor might help, the fan itself is sucking a huge amount of power even when idling and cold.

donniezazen · 2012-05-26 19:08:31

@chimeracoder your temperature seems to be normal. What is the idle power consumption as reported by Powertop? My fan runs at least 2XXX because temperature settings are a bit conservative.

Do you get better battery life in windows? Quad cores are not so forgiving when it comes to battery.

Last edited by donniezazen (2012-05-26 19:09:27)

chimeracoder · 2012-05-26 19:11:29

Yes, the temperature is normal, but the fact that the fan is operating at such a high speed regardless of the temperature (even in the 40s) is not.

Also, I'm currently idling at 30.6 W. I don't think I've ever seen it dip below 25 W.

donniezazen · 2012-05-26 23:53:46

25W to 30W is outrageous. I am not knowledgeable enough to help but you got to figure out how to get that down to 10-15W and your battery life will improve. What is your DE? My system is powerful but gets crazy with Gnome, so, I moved to Awesome which is very light weight.

chimeracoder · 2012-05-27 00:14:03

Haha, yes, I know it's outrageous. It's not the DE/WM, though - I use wmii, and I had the same battery life when I was using xmonad, awesome, and xfce.

chimeracoder · 2012-05-27 01:31:37

Digging around, I do think it may be a problem with the GPU, not the CPU. I'm using the xf86-video-ati driver.

When I try to do

echo dynpm > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method

as specified in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Powersaving, I get the errror

bash: /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method: No such file or directory

chimeracoder · 2012-05-27 19:23:17

Okay, I've half-solved the issue - I turned off the radeon card, and my idle temperature dropped by about 10 degrees. I'm idling at about 18 W now, so I get about an extra hour of battery life (~3 hours). That said, since I could get about 5 in Windows on this computer, I think there's still some room for improvement, especially since the fan is still a bit noisy. (I can't measure it exactly, but to my ear, it sounds like it's running too high given my low temperature of ~45 degrees).

I'm assuming the fan is the number one power draw at this point, so is there any other way that I can get it down without pwm?

Here are the other devices in powertop:

            860.6 pkts/s  Network interface: wlan0 (iwlwifi)
            100.0%        Display backlight
              9.0%        CPU use
              0.0 pkts/s  Network interface: eth0 (atl1c)
            100.0%        USB device: usb-device-8087-0024
            100.0%        USB device: HP Integrated Module (Broadcom Corp)
            100.0%        USB device: EHCI Host Controller
            100.0%        Radio device: btusb
            100.0%        Radio device: iwlwifi
            100.0%        Radio device: hp-wmi
            100.0%        Radio device: hp-wmi
            100.0%        Radio device: hp-wmi
            100.0%        Audio codec hwC0D3: Intel
            100.0%        Audio codec hwC0D0: IDT
              0.0%        USB device: EHCI Host Controller

donniezazen · 2012-05-27 19:34:41

sensors

This gives you exact value of your fan speed and temperatures. What are you using to control your fan - manual/pwm or something like Thinkfan?

chimeracoder · 2012-05-27 19:40:45

At the moment, nothing - the original post for this thread was because I couldn't configure lm_sensors to control the fan. Here's the full output of sensors, though:

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +48.0°C  (crit = +120.0°C)
temp2:         +0.0°C  (crit = +127.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0:  +50.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0:         +44.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1:         +43.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 2:         +49.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 3:         +46.0°C  (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

radeon-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:       -128.0°C

(Obviously, the 0 and -128 readings are because I turned off the Radeon card - before they were giving readings in the same range as the others).

donniezazen · 2012-05-27 19:44:32

If your output does not display an RPM value for your CPU fan, and you are positive it is running, you need to increase the fan divisor. If your fan speed is shown and higher than 0, skip the next step - Wiki.

Last edited by donniezazen (2012-05-27 19:45:30)

chimeracoder · 2012-05-27 22:40:49

Yes, I saw that, though I'm not sure which chipset to modify, since I don't see anything in the sensors.conf file copied from /etc/sensors3.conf that corresponds to anything in the sensors output.

chimeracoder · 2012-06-16 21:25:03

Just wanted to check in on this again - after switching off the radeon card, I was able to get the power consumption down to ~20W, but I still don't see anything in the sensors output that tells me where to modify sensors.conf to help me adjust the fan speed. Is there any way to do this on this hardware?

tobsen · 2012-06-17 20:15:12

I think yo are looking for thinkfan or something like this...

cfr · 2012-06-18 00:17:06

Just to check, did sensors find your fan when you configured it (as explained at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lm … m_sensors)?

pocm · 2012-07-01 05:55:47

chimeracoder, I am having the same chicken/egg problem on a Latitude E6400:

$ sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +40.5°C  (crit = +107.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +39.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:       +41.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

Not much to work with! And yes, the fan is absolutely spinning ...

bwat47 · 2012-07-01 14:31:04

Two things:

1. That dedicated radeon card *Will* suck your power if you are using the OSS radeon drivers. You can try setting the oss drivers to low profile, but that didn't help enough in my experience. Catalyst is the only way to get good power management on those cards, and its a PIA to use on arch due to the kernel being so up to date.

2. You should probably look into using cpupower for frequency scaling, and using pm-utils and/or laptop-mode-tools for additional powersaving. I currently get ~5 hours, and all good powertop results on my intel only laptop usuing just cpupower and pm-utils hooks.

EDIT: Missed the post above where you turned off the radeon

Last edited by bwat47 (2012-07-01 14:33:46)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-05-24 20:09:16

Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#2 2012-05-24 20:28:08

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#3 2012-05-24 20:33:59

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#4 2012-05-24 20:40:23

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#5 2012-05-24 20:49:33

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#6 2012-05-24 20:57:42

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#7 2012-05-24 22:23:39

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#8 2012-05-26 18:33:36

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#9 2012-05-26 19:08:31

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#10 2012-05-26 19:11:29

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#11 2012-05-26 23:53:46

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#12 2012-05-27 00:14:03

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#13 2012-05-27 01:31:37

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#14 2012-05-27 19:23:17

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#15 2012-05-27 19:34:41

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#16 2012-05-27 19:40:45

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#17 2012-05-27 19:44:32

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#18 2012-05-27 22:40:49

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#19 2012-06-16 21:25:03

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#20 2012-06-17 20:15:12

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#21 2012-06-18 00:17:06

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#22 2012-07-01 05:55:47

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

#23 2012-07-01 14:31:04

Re: Lowering fan speed on laptop with Intel chipset

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