How to keep your cpu cool and your fan quiet

[Soupbean]

@playdayz

This is how my the power settings in my BIOS look:


Power Mode fro AC: Maximum Performance
Power Mode for Battery: Maximum Battery Life

Processor Speed: Fixed Max
Suspend timer: 5 minutes
LCD off timer: 5 minutes
HDD off timer: 3 minutes

Hibernate by time: Disabled
Low Bettery Action: Suspend
Suspend when LCD is closed: Suspend
Suspend/Hibernate while docked: Disabled
RediSafe: Disabled
Resume on time: Disabled
Resume on Modem Ring: Disabled

Intel SpeedStep technology: Enabled
Mode of AC: Automatic
Mode for Battery: Battery Optimized
Screen Blanking: Enabled
Suspend to hibernation: Disabled
CPU Power Management: Automatic
PCI Bus Power Management: Automatic


By the way, i'm using this in puppy 3.01, i haven't tried it in puppy 4

[erikson]

thought you might be interested in this: (...)

Interesting indeed, thanks. Though the described Fn-F7 technique does not work on my laptop, it does something completely different

On quite a few brands and models of PCs (and laptops in particular), power modes can be managed with propriety techniques. These may be accessible via function keys (as in your example for the Compaq Armada E500) and/or via BIOS settings (as in Soupbean's example for the IBM Thinkpad). Since these techniques are propriety and machine-specific, users are left on their own to search the web if anything might apply.

The method I described is more general, insofar the processor and BIOS support industry-standard ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface), and insofar ACPI is not overruled one way or another by conflicting boot parameters or BIOS settings.

[PaulBx1]

I tried this for my Thinkpad A21m:

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modprobe speedstep-lib relaxed_check=1
modprobe speedstep-smi
modprobe cpufreq_ondemand
echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

It accepts this without error in rxvt however dmesg yields:

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ondemand governor failed to load due to too long transition latency

... and the scaling governor is still "performance".

I wonder if the kernel had this turned on during compile:

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CONFIG_X86_SPEEDSTEP_RELAXED_CHECK = y

I keep looking for reasons to retire this old Thinkpad and dig something a little better out of a dumpster. This may be a good one...

[jakfish]

This is a fantastically helpful thread, and I thank everybody who contributed to it.

For the record, CPU scaling works in an ASUS EEE 900/DingoPlus. Because the scaling oftens goes to max freq (900 in the eee's case), I set the max freq to 675 and the min freq to 337.

There's a little lag time to opening OO, and other hungry apps, but it's a small price to pay.

With this scaling, it's possible to keep the machine cool enough to prevent the eee fan from coming on. Since I still haven't found a way for manual fan control in a Puppy/eee setup, the scaling adds substantially to battery life--well over four hours.

One thing my amateur eye noticed: the lower the max freq, the higher CPU usage (shown on a conky). Without scaling, running at a steady 630mhz set in BIOS, DingoPlus runs OO in the background at about 16-18% in conky's CPU monitor. With the scaling specs set to PowerMode and 675-337 max/min respectively, the CPU monitor shows about 25-27%

I don't know if this means anything, except that scaling drops the machine's temperature about 3 degrees, key to fan control on the eee 900.

Jake

[SteveLeader]

Hi!
First of all - thank you for this incredible thread! It's great (even for beginners like me ).

I've got a Acer Aspire 1692 with a Centrino platform with a Pentium M 740 CPU (1,73 GHz).

My intention is to keep the fan silent. So I did the following:

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# modprobe speedstep-centrino
# modprobe cpufreq_powersave

and because i want to stop the fan, i fixed the maximum frequency to the minimum of the cpu

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# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_frequencies 
1733000 1333000 1067000 800000 
# echo 800000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq 

then i wanted to know, if he's running at the lowest level, which was confirmed by time_in_state

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# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/stats/time_in_state 
1733000 24817
1333000 0
1067000 0
800000 21950

# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/stats/time_in_state 
1733000 24817
1333000 0
1067000 0
800000 57498

so he's working at 800MHz only.
After doing that, the temperature fell to 40°C

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# cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/temperature 
temperature:             40 C

and stays at this level the whole time.
top says 100% idle...

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CPU:   0% usr   0% sys   0% nice 100% idle   0% io   0% irq   0% softirq

but my fan is spinning the whole time. it never stops (neither on ac nor on battery).

So I was wondering, if someone has an idea how to get my fan silent, because it's very annoying. This is the only problem with puppy...without it, it would be the perfect os

Thanks in advance!
steve

[erikson]

but my fan is spinning the whole time. it never stops (neither on ac nor on battery).

You could still try

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modprobe fan

[SteveLeader]

Thanks for your answer, erikson!

I've already tried "modprobe fan", but it didn't change anything.

I looked very carefully at the start and i found out the following:
After the bootup the temperature of the CPU raises to 43°C (at 800MHz, with fullspeed it's over 50°C). But although the temperature stays at 43-44°C, the fan starts to spin after a few minutes. Then the temperature falls to 39°C, but, as I said, the fan never stops again.

What i found out too: after a reboot, the fan is even spinning while booting. So i thought, maybe there's another sensor, who gives the heat information. Because otherwise it wouldn't spin after a reboot. Is this possible?

[erikson]

What i found out too: after a reboot, the fan is even spinning while booting. So i thought, maybe there's another sensor, who gives the heat information. Because otherwise it wouldn't spin after a reboot. Is this possible?

I'm not familiar with Acer.

Anyway, fan spinning at a CPU temperature of 40°C is pretty weird (mine on an hp/compaq kicks in around 60°C).

I googled some and found a.o. following discussion, see in particular post # 5: http://www.notebookforums.com/thread180665.html

So yes, it's possible that other sensors (e.g. on graphics adapter) are involved in fan control - maybe that gives some hint in which direction to look for a solution. Good luck!

[SteveLeader]

Thank you very much!
So I'm pretty sure it's the grapic card's fault. Put the clock down would be easy in Win****, but maybe there is a soultion; I will see.
Thanks again!
Steve

[Aitch]

Hi Steve

Have seen notes about changing video driver from fglrx to ati xorg to reduce polling interrupts & found this ACPI info

http://acpi.sourceforge.net/documentation/thermal.html

Check ACPI settings in bios, and try different settings for differences in fan/other performance

I believe there is a bootup setting of

puppy ACPI=force

but don't know what it was suggested for

HTH

Aitch

[PaulBx1]

On my Dell computer, I could not get that pet package to work; however the procedure in the initial post works fine. It reduces the frequency of use of the fan although does not eliminate it altogether. I just wonder with this dual core machine what's going on (in standard Puppy 4.1) with the other core - i..e., is it sitting there running at the max freq, doing nothing at all?

[106498]

My /lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/ appears to only have a file in it called apm.ko. Not sure what to do now...

[erikson]

My /lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/ appears to only have a file in it called apm.ko. Not sure what to do now...

That's normal.

For kernel 2.6.21.7 the acpi modules (including processor.ko, fan.ko etcetera) are in
/lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/drivers/acpi
and the cpufreq modules are in
/lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq

Actually there's no need to worry about where exactly the modules are, just leave them in place and modprobe is supposed to find them.

[106498]

Well that was silly of me. I didn't realise that modprobe was a command Anyway, modprobing speedstep_lib returns no errors. All the other ones do. Modprobing speedstep-centrino gives a weird on though

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FATAL: Error inserting speedstep_centrino (/lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/speedstep-centrino.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

Not sure what that means? A google search reported that many people have the same problem. For some changing the kernel version seems to fix it.

[technosaurus]

This is how I got my Quad core to room temperature with zero noise for no $$

Step 1.

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Unplug power

Step 2

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Thats it.  It even reduced the power consumption down to nothing

[Aitch]

"and for my next trick....."

Aitch

[erikson]

Not sure what that means? A google search reported that many people have the same problem. For some changing the kernel version seems to fix it.

For me it reports something else:

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1# modprobe speedstep-centrino
FATAL: Error inserting speedstep_centrino (/lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/speedstep-centrino.ko): Device or resource busy
1#

To the best of my knowledge, speedstep-centrino is deprecated and the generic acpi-cpufreq can be used instead. It works like that on my laptop, which has a Centrino.

@technosaurus: I'm even smarter than you because I didn't spend any $$$ on a quad-core

[106498]

Modprobing acpi-cpufreq returned

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# modprobe acpi-cpufreq
WARNING: Error inserting processor (/lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/drivers/acpi/processor.ko): No such device
FATAL: Error inserting acpi_cpufreq (/lib/modules/2.6.21.7/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/acpi-cpufreq.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

Oh dear. I think I'm running out of stuff to modprobe here...

[Aitch]

106498

Maybe a system file error somewhere?

try booting with the pfix=purge parameter

Save your configuration somewhere just in case, though

Else check your ACPI settings in BIOS

Aitch

[JPsDad]

I am running Puppy4.12, Centrino with Pent.M 1.6. My rc.local looks like this:
#this file called from rc.local0
#you can edit this file
#When firewall is installed, will append lines to this file...
modprobe ac
modprobe battery
modprobe fan
modprobe thermal
modprobe cpufreq_userspace
modprobe speedstep_centrino
modprobe cpufreq_powersave
modprobe cpufreq_ondemand
modprobe cpufreq_conservative
echo conservative > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

my CPU can run from 1.6MHz down to 0.6MHz. but I cannot see what it is doing. My fan seems to run continuously.
When I was running Mepis 6.0, it included KDE, with Ksensor, that displayed temp and freq. and they varied with CPU load.
Trouble was - much too long a boot time for a laptop.

How do we monitor with Puppy?