Cooler! Quieter! Q on CPUFreq

polarrr · 2005-03-24 01:21:30

Hello folks! I have a Dell Inspiron 8200, P4-M laptop and I wanted to know if there are ways to reduce CPU temp even more. Here's the skinny on my situation.

When I used to run Windows XP on it, I had I8KFAN set at 55*C for low fan speed, and 60 *C for high. While idle, CPU temp floats around 50*C to 55*C, usually without fans kicking in. Routine activities such as web browsing etc was done under 60*C, the only time high fan kick in was when I was running AV scan or playing games.

However, linux seem to run a bit hotter than Windows, which is alright by me. I have I8Kutils installed and low fans are set to kick in at 60 (keeps running until temp hits 50*C, and high fan for above 61*C. The default bios fan settings seems to be set around 70*C for low fan speed to kick in and 75*C for high fan speed. If I manually disable fans, it would probably keep going up above 80*C while idle. The problem is, when this laptop is idle, CPU temp rises rather quickly from 50*C to 60*C, about every 2 minutes the fans kick in. I have kernel CPUFREQ enabled, and I have a little script that loads ondemand settings at boot time, also I have gkx86info showing CPU speed, so I can see the CPU frequencies switching between 1200Mhz to 2200Mhz depending on the CPU load. However, the rate of temp change seem exactly the same on ondemand and performance. So either settings, the fans would kick in every two minutes.

Now, that is quite a lot of fan activities. This laptop has two fans side by side and they are quite noisy after 2.5 years of constant use (heat sink, fans, air intake are clean by the way). So I would rather prefer to have fans kick in less often. Hence the question:

1. Is my fan settings too low? Should I set my fan settings to something similar to bios settings (seem quite high though)? Or something like 65*C for low speed?

2. Is it normal?

3. What is the normal operating temp of p4-m? And what is the high threshold for this CPU (I'll go check on Intel's site to see if I can find something as well)?

4. What are other people's fan settings like?

By the way, I don't have tons of daemon or services running. My laptop is really basic in terms of setup. No servers, p2p, memory hoggers. It's pretty much base install, x-server, fluxbox, plus a few apps (firefox, gqview, xmms, gxine, mplayer and few others). Pretty much default everything.

If anyone have any comment, please let me know. Meanwhile, I'll go and see if I can find something else about it.

Polarrr

agm · 2005-05-01 11:57:00

I'm not sure if this is helpful (anymore :-)), but I reduced the fan-activity by installing speedfreq (http://www.goop.org/~jeremy/speedfreq/) which increases the cpu-freq. step by step (In my case (1,4 GHz Centrino) 600 Mhz --> 800 Mhz --> 1000 Mhz --> 1200 Mhz --> 1400 Mhz (if so much power is needed)).

jerem · 2005-05-01 16:38:47

Personnally I have an Inspiron 8600 and I use cpufreqd with great success.
Ther is also cpudyn which can manage your hd spindown too.

Also know that there is a solution called i8kutils. To use that tool you will need to load the appropriate module(which is in the kernel).

Upgrading your BIOS may be a good idea. Dell provides official BIOS upgrades on their site. You will need the serial number of your laptop(which you can read at the bottom).

Michel · 2005-05-02 14:21:11

Heya,

there is also a laptop-mode for the linux-kernel I believe. It will make your harddrive spinup less I believe by waiting a little longer before writing to it or something like that ...

Michel

jerem · 2005-05-03 10:41:37

Laptop-mode and laptop-mode-tools are still under heavy development and to my opinion they're not stable enough for a daily use.

CyberTron · 2005-05-03 12:01:55

I have an Dell inspiron 8500..and for the dynamic change of cpufreq i use Powernowd

excellent program, no configs needed (works perfect)

jerem · 2005-05-03 12:26:27

powernowd ?
I might give it a try...

CyberTron · 2005-05-03 12:58:47

good for you
here is the link

http://www.deater.net/john/powernowd.html

agm · 2005-05-07 10:39:59

The tip with powernowd was very good, the program seems to respond faster than speedfreq!

jerem · 2005-05-07 11:13:10

I'm currently trying cpudyn, and I am surprised.

It manages to lower my cpu speed from 1.4Ghz to 200 Mhz !!! It's also quite responsive.

Arch Linux

#1 2005-03-24 01:21:30

Cooler! Quieter! Q on CPUFreq

#2 2005-05-01 11:57:00

Re: Cooler! Quieter! Q on CPUFreq

#3 2005-05-01 16:38:47

Re: Cooler! Quieter! Q on CPUFreq

#4 2005-05-02 14:21:11

Re: Cooler! Quieter! Q on CPUFreq

#5 2005-05-03 10:41:37

Re: Cooler! Quieter! Q on CPUFreq

#6 2005-05-03 12:01:55

Re: Cooler! Quieter! Q on CPUFreq

#7 2005-05-03 12:26:27

Re: Cooler! Quieter! Q on CPUFreq

#8 2005-05-03 12:58:47

Re: Cooler! Quieter! Q on CPUFreq

#9 2005-05-07 10:39:59

Re: Cooler! Quieter! Q on CPUFreq

#10 2005-05-07 11:13:10

Re: Cooler! Quieter! Q on CPUFreq

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