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Hello all,
On a fresh Arch installation (base/base-devel + some basic stuff - xorg, mesa, ati open source driver, no DE), the fan remains constantly on and audible.
I let the system stay idle overnight (about 6.5 hours) in order to stabilize temperatures, and checked the sensors as soon as I opened the lid (screen turned itself off).
It's worth noting that fan was active in the morning, and I have no reason to believe it was not active all night.
CPU - the CPU is Intel P8600. Using cpufrequtils, I made sure the current governor is "ondemand" and indeed the CPU ran at it lowest frequency (800Mhz) prior to leaving the system.
GPU - the GPU is ATI mobility Radeon 4570. I used the Profile-based frequency switching, and echoed "low" as current profile (for the sake of testing), and indeed the GPU clocks ran at their lowest prior to leaving the system.
Once I opened the lid, the sensors read as follows:
acpitz-virtual-0
temp1: 52
temp2: 52
temp3: 59
radeon-pci-0100
temp1: 60.5
coretemp-isa-0000
core0: 47
core1: 47
I suppose the first one is the motherboard the the following are GPU, CPU in that order.
Now, for the sake of comparison, after taking the sensors measurement, I logged in to Windows 7, and waited a few minutes.
Temperatures dropped in about 5-7 degrees (and I've seen it lower in the past), which was enough for the fan to become less active.
This leads me to believe that the problem isn't in the fan itself, but rather with the temperatures that do not drop enough for the fan to calm itself down.
Any ideas what else I should do in order to lower the temperatures?
Thanks, Adam.
* EDIT *
Do tools like Laptop Mode Tools have an effect on temperature, or mainly on battery life?
Last edited by adam777 (2012-05-31 17:41:03)
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If I am not totally wrong, the GPU is the problem, since it has a pretty high temperature
radeon-pci-0100
temp1: 60.5
This is because the power management of the open source ATI driver is not as good as those of the proprietary ones. I am using the method outlined in the Wiki
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Powersaving
to enable basic power management and can get the temperature down to about 40 degrees on my desktop by using the mid profile. This, however, reduces the GPU frequency and may not be appropriate, if you run graphics intensive tasks (which I don't). I've also experimented with the dynamic method but the screen flicker was a bit too much for me.
Another option is to use the proprietary ATI drivers, since they are supposed to provide better power management.
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Thanks, MadTux.
I was blaming the GPU as well, but the above is, unfortunately, with powersaving enabled, so not much hope in that front.
Earlier I used compressed air to clean the inside of my laptop a bit, perhaps it should prove beneficial than expected.
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Looking for dust is always a good idea, but also see if there is dust on the blades of the fans, since it makes them less efficient. Am I right in assuming that you have cpu frequency scaling installed? Since that would allow the CPU to scale down once the load goes down. If the CPU frequency is reduced, temperature should also go down.
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Yep, both CPU and GPU ran at their lowest frequencies overnight prior to measurements.
I'll leave the system idle overnight again and see if anything changed.
Should I need to check anything else aside from the CPU+GPU combo, do tell.
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OK, second overnight is done - a little better now that the dust is gone.
This time I used dynpm for the GPU powersaving and not low, which might have caused the temperatures not to drop all the way down.
I got a drop of ~5-7 degrees across the board, which makes the temperatures comparable to the Windows system (though, in turn, the Windows system also manage to drop the temperatures a bit more).
Fan is still a bit too audible for my taste (not too bad, though), but I guess the only thing left at this point as far as CPU and GPU are concerned is switching to the ATI proprietary driver.
I'm not sure about the proprietary driver, as it seems it cause some problems here and there.
Adam.
* EDIT *
it's worth noting the above is done without a DE, I guess I can expect results to be worse once a DE is involved.
Last edited by adam777 (2012-05-29 07:45:25)
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