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#1 2013-04-06 00:47:56

twelveeighty
Member
From: Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2011-09-04
Posts: 1,096

Dell Vostro fan control mystery

When I first installed Arch on my Vostro laptop back in October '12, I had to run the i8kmon and i8kutils to get the fan control to work. Without it, the fan was blasting at full speed all the time, no matter what the CPU temperature was.

However, this week I started noticing odd behavior in my fan control, in that the i8kmon service would start, but fail silently and the fan would remain off, no matter the temperature (not good). Here's the mystery: I disabled the i8kmon.service and since then my fan control is now BETTER then ever! The fan speed gradually increases and decreases based on system load, it's perfect.

Does anyone know what may be going on here? Perhaps the 3.8 kernel now supports this fan without special drivers? Of course, it could have been from earlier than 3.8, but I always had i8kmon running...?

Last edited by twelveeighty (2013-04-06 00:48:31)

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#2 2013-09-04 18:17:19

luuuciano
Member
Registered: 2007-01-27
Posts: 310

Re: Dell Vostro fan control mystery

Well, Im in the oposite side...
I have never used i8kutils, and the fan was working... at least I remember eat going out...
Now, it looks like the fan is always OFF! no matter what you do... so I get 75c temp watching a video, etc...
sad


I arch, you arch, he arch, she arch, we arch, they arch...

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#3 2013-09-05 16:05:21

rep_movsd
Member
Registered: 2013-08-24
Posts: 127

Re: Dell Vostro fan control mystery

Use the special key combo - It works on most Dell systems
Shift + FN + 1 5 3 2 4  from a VGA tty console - three lights will flash and one remain flashing. This enables a special Thermal management settings screen. Press FN + R to access it, you can change the fan speed, adjust the throttling and so on.

I need to set the fan speeds to 6000 and 5000 RPM, after which i8kfan 2 2 will reach max speed. Don't use this mode from within X, the system suspends everything else when in that mode and it goes into a VGA console, so things can screw up with the Wifi and the video adapter sometimes.

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