Fan speed - can it be controlled?

I've just picked up the 1.6 MBA from a local dealer that allows up to 14 days for a full refund, no questions asked.
The MBA is so far amazing in every respect -- faster and more usable than many have suggested, and using USB 2.0 to transfer data from a backup drive, the problem of loading files onto it hasn't been that much of an issue. The screen and keyboard, and the overall build of this machine, are so perfect that it's a been a pure joy to own and to work with.
Except for one small but crucial flaw: the whirl of the fan. It spins at 2500 rm and generates a faint but very noticeable squeal that I'm not sure I can live with. It may just be a deal-breaker for what is otherwise an amazing machine.
I know that it runs at 2500rmps for technical reasons and that tampering with this could void the warranty. The question is: can it be controlled -- i.e., tweaked ever so slightly to see if the high pitch squeal goes away.
It would then be absolutely perfect!

Yes, thank you -- I want to lower the speed, and as it turns out just today, I discovered Lobotomo Software's 'fan control' (available here: http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/index.html).
This has allowed me to lower the speed -- at least so that I can confirm that the source of the whine is indeed the fan, and I'm happy to say that it is. I have adjusted the 'base speed' of the fan to 1500 (from the 2500 that is normally set at), and I've been monitoring the temperature of the MBA to be on the safe side. I'm not noticing any rise in temperature, at least not in normal use (email, safari, Word).
I don't need to turn the speed down unless I'm in a quiet room, but it really helps to be able to do so -- in fact, it addresses the only issue I had with the computer, and now I'm happy with it.
And man, is it quiet!

Similar Messages

MOVED: System fan 2 can`t be controlled!!!

This topic has been moved to AMD64 ATI/SiS/VIA boards.
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=135251.0

Quote from: Bas on 03-February-10, 15:57:27
Typical good powersupplies have a fan lead that controls the casefans in speed.
Wow, the things one learns here--I didn't know this!!! Thanks!

CPU FAN Speed & Voltages Question?

I have an MSI KT4 Ultra MB with a retail AMD XP2400 Processor which came with a Fan & Heatsink.
1. My Temps are fine, gen However my CPU Fan speed varies & I get the following speeds indicated at various times - 4141, 4167, 4116, 4193. Is this OK? I do not believe my Fan speed can be controlled by S/W so I was wonsering why this oocurs?
2.
Any advice or comments would be much appreciated! I am a compulsive worrier regarding my PC.
Cheers

1. post your PSU brand and amps
2. get another hsf, these delivered with cpu are not good.

Fan speeds go up when charging?

Hello, this is my first time posting here, and my first mac.
I was using my macbook pro 2.2 today while unplugged, then once i plugged it in when it was low, i noticed the fans sped up to about 3500 - 4000 rpm. I looked in the iStat widget and i guess the highest temp was the memory control, it was about 60c.
Is this normal to happen? If so, can someone explain why?

Yes, fan speed can increase when charging. This is simply due to the fact that the act of charging a battery produces heat which can just be enough to ramp up your fans, especially during summer when ambient teemperatures are higher.

Unusual Fan-Speed (up to 6200rpm @ 92°CPU), MBP 2011/ OSX 10.10.2

Dear Community,
I've got a problem with my MacBook Pro (late 2011) [2.4 Ghz/ 16GB RAM (upgraded)/ 256 GB SSD (upgraded)/ 500GB HDD (internal, upgraded (instead of DualDrive, iFixit-slot)).
Since last week I am observing that the fan of my Macbook revs up pretty high and pretty quickly up to 92° CPU temperature @ 6200rpm of the fan according to iStats Pro. This can happen in idle as well as load of any kind. I already cleaned the fan. Never experienced it before. Pretty unusual behaviour.
Do you have any suggestions/ guesses/ tips/ help for me? Thank you very much in advance.
Here's a copy of an (Etre)Check that I just recently ran. Hopefully it helps:
EtreCheck version: 2.1.8 (121)
Report generated 17 Feb 2015 09:56:42 CET
Download EtreCheck from http://etresoft.com/etrecheck
Hardware Information: ℹ️
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Thank you very much for your answer, OGELTHORPE.
I actually did reset the SMC several times the last few days and also observed unusual behaviour by the use of the Activity Monitor – with no result.
The CPU temperature as well as the fan speed can be at a top level without many processes at all. Happened right before I posted my question just after the last start of the system. Of course it also happens when I run a whole bunch of applications, but even in that case it differs. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes it's totally normal. That's why I called it "unusual".
Any further ideas besides the SMC reset?

How can I control fan speeds in Win7 on a MBP-R for gaming?

I have a MacBook Pro with Retina Display. It has had Windows 7 installed and I want to play some 3D action games. How do I stop internal parts from overheating? I intend to use a USB cooling pad but that'll do nothing if the internal fans remain at idle speed.
The only Windows fan speed control utility I could find was the 4-year old SpeedFan which fails to detect the presence of any internal fans. I'm not impressed with the Windows community's failure to offer more and better than this tired old relic.
So the questions remain:
(1) Is the hardware still capable of automatically accelerating the fans as temperatures rise while gaming in Windows?
(2) What In Windows forces the MBP-R to lock the nVidia GPU into continuous duty and ignores Intel GPU?
(3) What control does the user have for (2)?
(4) How can I protect my MacBook Pro/Retina from overheating while playing PC games, apart from not playing games?

Moved from the Creative Cloud to the Lightroom forum. They will be able to help you here.

How can I control my fan speed?

How can I control my fan speed on my macbook pro? I use SMC for gaming and streaming video from the internet when using my Mac OS, but I partitioned my drive and installed Windows 8 in order to play a different game (not a huge game) and the computer heats up dramatically when playing on Windows through Boot Camp to the point that it freezes every time (it never does this when playing a mac game or streaming on the normal partition Mac OS).
Any suggestions or programs to control fan speed of the mac from windows?

Get a cooling pad. That will much better than trying to constantly adjust fan speeds.
Ciao.

Can 945P Platinum control on-board sysfan, nbfan and pwrfan fan speed?

I bought a couple of 8" case fans. These fans comes with a connector (with 3 wires) which i connect to the motherboard fan connectos (pwrfan, sysfan, nbfan). Using "SpeedFan" software, i can see the RPM of these fans and even my CPU fan. But it seems that i can only control the speed of the CPU fan, but not the other fans. I reduce the fans speed to "0" on SpeedFan but the RPM does not seems to be affected.
Can the RPMS of the fans be adjusted fron SpeedFan? ???

I too am having problems with Speedfan. My PL945 Neo5-F reports, in speedfan, the existence of 4 fans.
Looking in the manual to identify what's what, it states that it supports 3 fans - CPU, Sysfan2 and pwrfan2 - what happened to sysfan1 and pwrfan1?
Anyway, I managed to work out that although speedfan reports 4 fans, it seems only able to control cpufan1 (fan1) and sysfan2 (fan 2). Neither fans 3 and 4 map to pwrfan2 (what is being reported).
If anyone has cracked this nut, please let me know.
I suspect it is something to do with the address the other fans report to - but I don't know how to find and fix it.
Core Center simply crashes and won't let me do anything. In fact, I can't get the front end to even appear now, no matter how many times I uninstall and install it.
I'm running Vista HP with 2 gb and a core 2 duo 6550. Graphics is a Saphire Radeon 3600).

MSI Z87-G43 can't control fan speed

Hi, i just bought an MSI Z87-G43 and i'm using a i5-4670 on it (yeah, 4670 without the K).
I wanted the minimum noise as possible so i bought a Noctua NH-U12P SE2
Like the pictures shows it has 2 fans.
I connected the 2 fans on cpu1 and cpu2 fan and both BIOS and Commander Center can see them correctly, but both of them can't change the rotation speed.
Those fans have a 3 pins connector.
How can i do it? Now my CPU is cool and i like it, but a little more hot for a little less noise is a good deal (and my goal!)
thank you

As alternative you can get a fan controller like Sunbeamtech Rheosmart PCI Fan Controller, it should allow to use 4pin PWM singnal and convert it into voltage control,
Quote
Product Details:
Smart Way Controlling all Fans & Airflow. The Rheosmart PCI Fan Controller is designed to make any existing 3-pin fan automatically regularized by the PWM signal from the Motherboard! With its ability to connect two fans to a single PWM connector at a maximum of 20W/channel, a wide selection of fans can be supported. When a normal fan is connected to the Rheosmart PCI Fan Controller, they become auto adjusting through the PWM signal.
The Rheosmart PCI Fan Controller operates in two different modes; when connected to a PWM-enabled motherboard you can allow the system to auto-adjust fan speed through he motherboard's temperature sensor. When switched onto manual mode by the pushing of the lever-switch to the right, you turn the connected fan onto manual control mode.

Can't control fans speed after upgrading to kernel26 2.6.31 [solved]

Mother board is ASUS P5Q-SE. After upgrading pwm sensors disappeared. I can get temp and fans speed but not set. Any ideas? :-\
Last edited by urandom (2009-10-12 15:52:51)

"This works for me" is a little vague. What worked for me specifically was to start with your link and drill down two levels of links to this webpage, http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/7932.html, which explained what the problem is and that the workaround is to add acpi_enforce_resources=lax to the kernel command line in /boot/grub/menu.lst.
Someone who understands this issue better than I do should probably amend the appropriate sections of the wiki (lm_sensors, fancontrol, et al).
Jay

K9n Platinum fan speed control

Hi!
I have the following configuration:
-Motherboard: MSI K9N Platinum v1.1
-Bios: AMI v1.3
-CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core)
-CPU cooler: Artic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro
-Memory: Kingmax 2*1 GB
-Video card: MSI NX7600 GT
-Power Supply: Antec NeoHE430 430W
-Hard Drive: Samsung 250 GB SP2504C
-Operating system: Win XP Pro SP2
I would like to control the speed of the CPU fan automatically, according to the temperature.
I tried
-the Dual CoreCenter utility from MSI, but it allows me only check the speed manually (If I did not miss anything)
-control from BIOS HW Monitor setting SmartFan but it does not work at all. ( Iam not sure but this can be because my cooler, it has 3 pin connector, and th MB user guide tells it works only if I use 4 pin connector. Can you confirm this?)
-Speedfan 4.31, it seemed working, but the system become instabile. I check the programmers site, and this MB did not supported.
Do you have any suggesions, experience about controlling the CPUfan?
Thank you in advance!
T.

Thank you for the answers.
Unfortunately the smartfan feature is not working in my case.( set to 3-pin in BIOS) I asked the MSI Technical Support and they said:
As this motherboard includes 4 pins connector for cpu fan, the 4th pin is used to controlled cpu fan speed, if you use 3 pins fan, fan speed will not be changed automatically and smart fan will not function.
I feel a small contradiction here
Do you have other ideas other than smartfan and speedfan?
T.

How do I control my fan speed?

Hello, I have a HP ENVY dv6 laptop, and from time to time it gets really hot, so i would like to have the opportunity to control my fan speed manual. Is there any way I can do that?
Please Help
Sincerely
Crab

Hi Crab,
If your Notebook is running hot then there are few methods you can try to maintain the Temprature.
1.) Go to www.hp.com/go/support website and go to Download Driver section listed under Support.
2.) Look for BIOS and download and install the latest one.
3.) Follow the on-screen instructions to install BIOS and NB might restart multiple times and make sure Ac-power Adapter is connected during the update/installation.
4.) From the Download Driver page, look for Software-Solutions and download HP CoolSense Technology software and install it.
(HP CoolSense Technology is a feature in some HP notebook PCs that combines hardware, software, and mechanical design to dynamically manage the temperature of a notebook).
5.) Restart the Notebook and check.
Also, check the below links for more troublshooting instructions for PC being warmer than normal.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=us&dlc=en&docname=c01007591&lc=en&jumpid=reg_r1002_us...
****Click the White thumb to say thanks****
****Please mark Accept As Solution if it solves your problem****
****I am an HP Employee****
I work for HP.

[Solved] Asus L1366 mobo, cpu fan speed control

Hi, everyone,
I finally have this new core i7 system, to replace my old AMD athlonx2. I have one question about the CPU fan speed control.
I remember that in my old system, the cpu fan speed control works out of box, no configuration is needed.
But when I install arch 64 on this new i7 system, the cpu fan is running at its maximum speed constantly while the CPU temperature is modestly low. I know there is a wiki teaching how to do it.
However, I am just curious why it doens't work out of box any more? Does CPU fan control work for you guys out of box normally? especially the new Core i7 cpu users?
Please let me know, really appreciated it.
Thanks a lot.
Update: the issue is solved, see my last post, the solution is blacklisting: asus_atk0110, instead use w83667hg.
Cheers.
Last edited by mark.altern (2009-10-01 08:18:18)

First off, it would be useful to know what the sensors-detect script actually reports.
Okay. How fan control works on Linux: First, navigate to /sys/class/hwmon
Each of these folders, i.e. hwmon0, stands for a sensors monitor / fan controller on your mainboard that may control one or several fans. Inside hwmonN, there should be a subfolder called device, which contains several interfaces if your BIOS allows software-side fan control. You can read them with cat and write to them with echo.
Examples:
pwm1_enable shows if OS-level fan control is enabled (1) or disabled and in BIOS control (0). Changing fan speed won't work if this is disabled. (i.e. cat /sys/class/hwmon0/device/pwm1_enable reports 0 -> disabled; you could enable it with echo 1 > /sys/class/hwmon0/device/pwm1_enable).
pwm1 allows to change fan speed. The values range from 0 (fan off) to 255 (full speed, 12V).
fan1_input shows the current RPM if a fan is connected. You can only read from this interface. Its useful to check all of these in the each of the hwmon folders to find out if there is actually a fan connected to the fan controller (they often have more ports than mainboard manufacturers use).
There might be a fan1_div, this is somehow related to how the kernel reads the RPM, I don't know how it works.
temp1_input interfaces can appeare too, if some of the chips have temperature sensors located somewhere. I *think* lm_sensors places the core temperatures it reads from CPU (the coretemp-isa-000X thingies) in one of the hwmon-folders too.
There might be interfaces for different fans in the same hwmon folder, i.e. pwm2_enable, pwm2, fan2_input, etc., all interfaces with the same index belong to the same physical fan connector, and all in the same hwmonN are managed by the same IC on your mainboard.
Warning: These interfaces, if they work, control the fans directly without any kind of security measure. If you shut some essential fan down, it will stay off until you reboot your CPU shuts down.
(If you see something likein0_alarm, in0_input, in0_max, etc. it's a voltage monitoring chip.)
If one of those interfaces can do something, OS-level fan control does work, if none of those folders contain a working pwm interface, fan control seems to be unavailable.
Sometimes there is an option in the BIOS to enable it, and for some BIOSs software-side fan control only works if dynamic fan control is disabled in the BIOS and fan speed is set to a static value - or vice versa.
I don't know what you are using to control fan speed, there are many applications that use these interfaces, i.e. GNOME or KDE power managers, so I'm not sure what is happening:
IF: Windows 7 enables OS-level fan control and sets it the RPM to those you observed and you have nothing that provides fan control in Arch and so fan control stays at BIOS-level, which might also read out a different sensor / the same sensor differently or it might be more conservative in setting fan speeds altogether;
OR: You have something that provides fan control installed in Arch and it reads out a the wrong value supplied by lm_sensors and thus sets a higher fan speed.
Anyway, possible solutions I can think of:
Find out if you have some kind of fan control software and what it does. For example, I use the fancontrol daemon, I can't help you if you use something else.
The wiki mentions how to assign a fan speed to a certain temperature sensors. You might assign it to a different one. For example, there are no sensor chips on the mainboard of my EEE (no temp1 etc.) so I assigned the fan speed to the temperature reported by the BIOS via ACPI (those are in /sys/class/thermal, also no "device" subfolder on EEEs):
FCTEMPS=/sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/pwm1=/sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
You could also change the MINTEMP/MAXTEMP values to one higher than those you actually want to compensate for the effect of lm_sensors reporting temperatures that are too high.
It is currently not possible for a mortal user to change the coretemps lm_sensors reads, see this post, last paragraph.
There is a configuration file, /etc/sensors3.conf, you can change sensor names and adjust offsets here, but only for the monitoring chips and their sensors that are on the mainboard.
Last edited by Malstrond (2009-08-19 19:34:22)

Satellite A100: looking for software to control the fan speed

Hi,
I'm looking for software to control/read out the fan speed of my laptop, because Power Saver does not seem to do anything. It does not seem to matter if i set the 'Cooling Method' to 'Battery Optimized' or 'Maximum Performance', or even the fixed CPU processing speed. I've (de)installed the Common Module & Power Saver a couple of times to no avail.
Also SpeedFan & NHC do not work.

Hi
Sorry but I do not agree with your opinion about Power saver utility. Do you really believe that Toshiba create tool like this for nothing? Just for info: power saver utility is not available with Vista OS and on this forum you can find topics where people really missing this nice and useful utility.
Anyway it is well known that many tools you can find on the internet have no much influence on notebook cooling fan speed. To be honest, something like that can be very dangerous because most users want to have silent notebooks and overheating issues are totally underestimated.
Can you please be a little bit more specific about your problem? Is your notebook too loud for you or is battery running time to short? Why you are not satisfied with this tool?

How to control or know Fan Speed of the TBD

Hi, I Need to know how to control the Fan Speed of the Thunderbolt Display.
And the current temperature and the fan speed of the TBD.
Thanks..

Not sure you can. I have never seen any app that would do that.

Fan speed - can it be controlled?

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