Fan Curve Software

[Hades]

Hi, Im literally on my second day of my new linux adventure. So far its been an emotional wreck of awesome and im loving it. But I have a worry about my inability to control my fan curves on m CPu tower, Case Fans and GPU fans. From what I can tell there is very little software to organise this.
My question is this, If I was to installk Adrenaline (AMD's Driver Installation and tweaking software) using bottles, would that be a silly idea or an acceptable solution to my concerns.

[powerwagon75]

Can you not do your fan mapping in BIOS?

I do all my fans that way..I don't use any ancillary software for it.
(use a thumb drive and save your BIOS configuration, if possible..all customizations go away if a BIOS reset is done.. on my MSI board anyway)

I know it can be nice to have a handy GUI available to tweak them at a moments notice. For GPU, sorry not familiar with AMD. NVIDIA has a method of allowing manual fan adjustment..I would think AMD would have something.

[Hades]

I suppose i could do it in bios, but that would be using my brains.

Thanks, honestly didnt think to do this.

[Nikolai5]

As for GPUs, if you have an Nvidia card, unfortunately there's curently no way to set a custom fan curve outside of scripts and applications that people have already made, but I don't believe there is a go to one.

The manual fan adjustment previously mentioned is just that. You can set the speed to a fixed value, but that would not be what you want.

[AndyMH]

Fan speeds should be managed automatically by your firmware. There is a utility tlp (it's terminal only) that can be used with thinkpads. There is also fancontrol (also terminal only).

I did mess around with tlp on a T430. At best I managed a 5C reduction in CPU temp and decided it wasn't worth the hassle.

[Reddog1]

There is a GUI, but I haven't used it and can't vouch for it. There may be a brand new flatpak for it in the near future, but there is a ppa for ubuntu now, and maybe a .deb somewhere.

Code: Select all

https://github.com/d4nj1/TLPUI

[rickNS]

Am curious if your actually having a problem, is something running too hot ? Or do you just want something like you had on windows?

Long time ago I had a fan problem on Acer laptop, the fan did not come on at all while using Linux, due to bad BIOS, Adding a kernel parameter fixed it, and then later a BIOS update.

[greenaslinuxmint]

Am curious if your actually having a problem, is something running too hot ? Or do you just want something like you had on windows?

Long time ago I had a fan problem on Acer laptop, the fan did not come on at all while using Linux, due to bad BIOS, Adding a kernel parameter fixed it, and then later a BIOS update.

I am not the op, but I am facing precisely the problem you have just described. Could you please save me with any tutorial how to do that (adding a kernel parameter)? It's like my second day on Mint, I can't unlock BIOS advanced settings on my Acer and due to my poor command of Linux can't properly install fan sensors either. I have been thinking about connecting my spare HDD and trying to solve the issue by using fancontrol on Windows I have installed there, but that probably won't affect BIOS and the changes won't get saved on the disk I am using for Linux. Thanks for any help in advance.

[greenaslinuxmint]

I suppose i could do it in bios, but that would be using my brains.

Thanks, honestly didnt think to do this.

I am on a "learn as you" go mission here myself, but in theory that's not very difficult to do as long as your advanced settings in BIOS are unlocked. You basically get into BIOS when booting then choose advanced settings where you can modify your fan settings, problems begin when your advanced settings are not unlocked.

[rickNS]

I am not the op, but I am facing precisely the problem you have just described. Could you please save me with any tutorial how to do that (adding a kernel parameter)? It's like my second day on Mint, I can't unlock BIOS advanced settings on my Acer and due to my poor command of Linux can't properly install fan sensors either.

OK, I'll tell you how to add a kernel parameter and which one worked for me, although as I said it was a long time ago, and may not work today ? but at the same time I'm quite sure it can't hurt, and you can reverse (remove) the procedure if it does not work.

First, I do believe you do have temperature sensors installed by default these days Mint 20 or 21 I expect your running ?
To check just type in a terminal,
sudo sensors
and you should get some temperature output. If not say so.

To add a kernel parameter you need to edit the /etc/default/grub file, and yes you can do it from an elevated permissions file manager, but might as well learn nano straight away, it is not that difficult.
In a terminal type,
sudo nano /etc/default/grub

You navigate the cursor in nano with the arrow keys.
so arrow down to the line,
GRUB_CMLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
and edit it to exactly this
GRUB_CMLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux"
or as I sometimes like to see the booting messages, this
GRUB_CMLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="acpi_osi=Linux"

Removing the quiet splash bit, and
IIRC if I recall correctly with the quiet splash removed you will see some message about the fan during shutdown ?

Anyway, save the file with
Ctrl + O (that's an 'Oh' not zero)
press Enter to confirm filename
Ctrl + X to exit nano editor
then update the grub config file with

sudo update-grub

Restart the computer, and hopefully your fan will run ?
And like I said if it does not work, you can reverse these actions.

A moderator may 'split' this off into your own thread (which is what your supposed to do), but you are new here so deserve a break, Welcome to Mint forums.

[Joss]

Recent BIOS fan control is quite good, very granular. I'd go with that.