Laptop fan speed

Kindatired · 2011-02-01 17:02:35

This seems to be more of a linux question rather than Arch specific, but people here are generaly more knowledge about this kind of thing, rather than some other unnamed forums. Ever since I ditched Windows in favor of Linux (three years ago) there has been one issue that I haven't been able to figure out - fan speed on my laptop. As soon as the OS loads the fan turns on, and pretty much goes full blast. If the computer is sitting idle the fan speed will be be somewhat low, but even just one instance of chromium the fan will just switch to full blast and stay there. I am sitting next to my girlfriends laptop, which is the same as mine (HP 6910p Business class laptop. C2D 2.0ghz, 2 gigs of ram, 120 gig HD, Intel X3100 graphics), only difference is she is running Vista. Her computer stays completely silent except when the computer is under HEAVY load or it's summer time in 30 Celsius weather , while mine goes full blast if I load one terminal in the dead of winter.

The part that annoys me is that currently my computer is barely warm to the touch on the bottom next to the CPU and HD, while her's is pretty warm/almost hot but still silent. So is there anyway in Arch to set the fan speeds. I know this might sound like it goes against the Arch way but I would prefer a program that has a GUI, even if it's only a text based one (like the arch install) which will let me adjust the fan speed on the fly?

From what I can tell after researching the forums, and the almighty google, I found out that Arch (or linux in general, not sure) has five fan speeds which can be set. The problem is that it requires a lot of config editing, So does anyone know of a program that will let me adjust the fan speeds on the fly from the desktop or will have to just do it all by hand, and keep adjusting them by hand as I see fit?

lagagnon · 2011-02-01 17:12:46

Have you gone into your BIOS to check that a feature such as "Fan always on during AC power" or similar is enabled when it should not be??

gazj · 2011-02-01 17:14:07

My desktop machine goes flat out until I enable fan control as shown in the link below. Be warned slowing your fans could lead to hardware failure. Make sure you monitor your CPU's temp carefully for an extended period of time (i.e over a period of days), before you trust it to control your machine when you are away from it (esp if you leave it compiling something)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fan_control

flan_suse · 2011-02-01 17:48:51

This isn't a technical tip, but what you can also do is buy a quiet laptop cooler, which will subsidize cooling your laptop along with its internal fan. By keeping the temperature low enough like this, it's possible to have two sets of fans running quiet, rather than one fan running loud. And using a laptop cooler has its own advantages as well. I consider them "must haves" for laptops and netbooks.

I'm not saying it will definitely work, but it's just another suggestion I'm throwing out there. It really depends on each individual laptop or netbook.

Kindatired · 2011-02-01 18:22:39

I already checked the bios and made sure that the fan wasn't always on when AC power, it was disabled from the time I bought my computer. As for a notebook cooling pad, I have one from but whether I use it or not it still makes no difference. Like I said, my laptop is barely warm at this time but the fan is going full blast. When I used Windows on this machine it was dead silent.

eldragon · 2011-02-01 18:44:28

how is battery life on the laptop compared to your gf's?

are both laptops the same age?

i found out on a hp dv6000 that a lot of dust would build over time making the laptop run 20C above what it used to.

disassemble, clean, replace thermal pad with a new one or with thermal grease, reassemble.

have you setup cpu-freq-utils corectly?

Kindatired · 2011-02-01 18:54:36

Battery on both are pretty much the same, about 45 mins on a full charge (batteries are old). As for dust, that's not really a concern. I recently had to replace the keyboard so when I had it open I cleared out all the dust not that there was very much there to begin with.

Like I said, on Windows the thing is completely silent but once it's running any distro of linux the fan is always on and mostly on full blast.

lagagnon · 2011-02-01 19:04:30

We need more info to help you. First of all did you try the stuff from the wiki gazj suggested above? If you did what happened exactly?

Also to pastebin.com show us the output of the following commands:

dmesg | grep -i acpi
cat /var/log/acpid.log

Also use your file manager to explore the /proc/acpi directory and show us any output of files there regarding the fan.

enyaw_ecurb · 2011-02-01 21:07:25

Do both laptops have the same bios version?

I have experience with a similar model (hp 6xxx, don't know exactly) which also sounds like a starting plane. The fan speed could not be controlled per software but was more or less hardcoded into the bios (the table for temperature -> fan-speed). Hp provided bios-updates do deal with this issue but I was unable to install them (it required a full-fledged windows).

Good luck!

jlacroix · 2011-02-02 03:07:51

My laptop (a Dell Latitude E6410) has this same issue. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but I have a suggestion. To my knowledge, Arch does not enable CPU throttling by default. I turned it on by using cpufreq (there is a wiki for it) and it helped a lot. It hasn't fixed it completely, but it made it better.

itman · 2011-02-02 10:54:17

Had some troubles with the fan on my netboot. A guy provided a script to control the fanspeed

beam me up scotty

You need to adjust some things though.

cheers

Pyntux · 2011-02-02 12:28:13

I have similar problem on Dell Vostro A860, and can not do anything from this link:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fan_control

But cpufreq does a lot. On Ubuntu fan is louder than on Arch Linux. I set up in bios for hdd to be slower but quieter and I think that this has led to improvements...but I don't know.

lardon · 2011-02-10 15:09:36

I'm also having problems lately on my Dell Latitude E5500. I'm running cpufreq, and my DE is KDE (I don't know if that matters, but I suspect it may be doing things behind the scenes).

fancontrol doesn't work. I tried i8kmon, and I'm able to stop the fans for a second or two with it, but afterwards it quickly comes back to full speed. Any insight?

Last edited by lardon (2011-02-10 15:11:27)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-02-01 17:02:35

Laptop fan speed

#2 2011-02-01 17:12:46

Re: Laptop fan speed

#3 2011-02-01 17:14:07

Re: Laptop fan speed

#4 2011-02-01 17:48:51

Re: Laptop fan speed

#5 2011-02-01 18:22:39

Re: Laptop fan speed

#6 2011-02-01 18:44:28

Re: Laptop fan speed

#7 2011-02-01 18:54:36

Re: Laptop fan speed

#8 2011-02-01 19:04:30

Re: Laptop fan speed

#9 2011-02-01 21:07:25

Re: Laptop fan speed

#10 2011-02-02 03:07:51

Re: Laptop fan speed

#11 2011-02-02 10:54:17

Re: Laptop fan speed

#12 2011-02-02 12:28:13

Re: Laptop fan speed

#13 2011-02-10 15:09:36

Re: Laptop fan speed

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