Tweak the balance between fan speed and CPU temperature / Dell M6400?

Question

Hi all,
I have a Dell Precision M6400 17" laptop. It runs really well on Arch, but is a bit noisy. It has always been noisy, btw, but I recently noticed that the CPU fan was blowing a lot of air even though the CPU temperature is lower than 70°C. I also have a macbook air, and its CPU runs at 70°C all the time, which seems to be normal. I would like my m6400 to behave similarly, and I'm sure someone here know how to change that
Hardware configuration
* Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU Q9300  @ 2.53GHz
* Quadro FX 2700M (G94M)
* 8Go RAM
* 2 hard drives
lspci output
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset DRAM Controller (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 92)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801IBM/IEM (ICH9M/ICH9M-E) 4 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G94M [Quadro FX 2700M] (rev a1)
03:01.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev ba)
03:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 04)
03:01.2 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 21)
03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 11)
03:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 11)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5761e Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300
output of sensors, idle:
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +45.5°C  (crit = +107.0°C)
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +51.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:       +51.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:       +48.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 3:       +46.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
output of sensors when I start interacting (light browsing, mail, chat):
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +59.5°C  (crit = +107.0°C)
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +63.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:       +63.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:       +62.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 3:       +63.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
When I start the laptop, its CPU fan stays at its minimal speed only for 1 or 2 minutes, then increases its rotation speed to a second level. It reaches it maximal speed only under heavy load, when the CPU reaches >80-95°C. I would rather let the CPU run a bit hotter before the fan starts to blow: let's say the fan could enter its intermediary speed between 70°C and 85°C instead of 55-80°C, and blow at is its maximum speed beyond that.
I checked the Fan Speed Control wiki page, but lm-sensors is not able to show me the status of the fans. Any idea ?
Aurel.
PS: the temperature of the GPU is not reported by sensors, and nvidia-settings reports around 60°C. Its dedicated fan is very quiet.

Answer 1

aurelieng wrote:
Hi all,
I have a Dell Precision M6400 17" laptop. It runs really well on Arch, but is a bit noisy. It has always been noisy, btw, but I recently noticed that the CPU fan was blowing a lot of air even though the CPU temperature is lower than 70°C. I also have a macbook air, and its CPU runs at 70°C all the time, which seems to be normal. I would like my m6400 to behave similarly, and I'm sure someone here know how to change that
Hi aurelieng,
I'm in the same situation from at least 1 month ( INTEL CORE 2 EXTREME X9100, 3.06GHz with 8GB ram, one solid state disk 128 GB, and one sata disk 500GB)
My dell M6400 has dual boot: ubuntu and windows7. The fan works a lot and continuosly in both environment and this is the reason because I have doubt that the origin of the problem is in hardware problem?
output of sensors when I start interacting (light browsing, mail, chat):
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +41.5°C  (crit = +107.0°C)
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +41.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:       +41.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Last edited by ginard (2012-11-16 18:09:19)