Which bios is best for cooling?

Got a m1530 and, so far, it is fantastic.

i've been keeping an eye on temps and was wondering which is the best bios for cooling.

at the moment my fans don't really kick in until the gpu reaches 70c. The moment the fan starts (not super loud like when you play games but louder than the normal hum) the temp drops back to 58ish very quickly (talking seconds). However, in my mind, it makes more sense to keep temps as stable as possible.

Without fans running (or at least without me noticing them running), my temps normally hang around high 50's low 60's on the gpu. However, if i am doing lots of stuff the temps slowly rise to high 60's before the fan turns on and brings it back to 58-63. I think if fans were on more often i could easily have temps in the low 50's pretty much all the time..

I think I have bios 13 at the mo.. that or 12. is there anyway to increase fan usage?

 

the latest is a12...which works the best for me. All my temps are relatively low

 

The latest bios is A12.

IMO A12 is the best bios for more 'stable' temperature/fan management.

My temperatures often idle between 61-66, which is pretty stable in my opinion, as compared to 58-69 in A09.

Lastly, there is NO software at the moment that can currently modify the fan speed or change the thermal setting. Hopefully someone in the future will make it ... but i doubt it ...

Cheers

 

I'm going to disagree. I've done extensive testing and bios A09 is supreme for temps.

Why? Because the set point for the fans to kick in is 5c lower than all other bios revisions. I can't be sure whether the CPU or GPU temp is the governor, but the fans will turn on when either the CPU hits 55c, or the GPU hits 65c.

I'm leaning towards the CPU being the governor since the fan is not controllable via Nvidia's software.

This is true. I have the source code for I8fangui and since no one else is doing it I might try and hack that myself. I have at least gotten it to compile under MSVC.

 

Don't know about others but A12 screwed up my lappie with exploding temps. I had to revert back to A09.

 

Yea ... give or take, different people will experience different result with A12

I would say ... experiment with A12, if its good, stay at A12, otherwise go back.

 

Precisely. A09 was the only bios revision where Dell responded to the gamers and high performance apps users by giving reasonable fan management.

With all of the other revisions Dell was obviously catering to the people who don't stress their system very much (if at all) but love to complain about fan noise.

(Dell) When you try to please everyone - you lose.

Dell needs to stop trying so hard to keep us high performance users from overriding our fan control. It would pretty much solve everything. They went through alot of trouble to make sure that i8kfan would not work.

I have no idea what they were thinking.

Stick with A09.

 

The problem was due to the fluctuations of the temperature being very frequent, not due to the temps being high. Hense, if the fan is kicking on often and making temperatures vary much faster than otherwise, that may lead to a greater problem. Hense why Nvidia tells M1530 users specifically to use A12 with their drivers on the web site.

 

Regardless of what Dell tells people on their site, A12 is garbage for temps.
A09 is very sensible. With A12 they just got too fancy with the algorythm, and as I stated above, A12 will turn on the fans 5c later than A09 will.

It's simple math - if you turn on the fan 5c later, the temperature becomes exponentially more dificult to pull down during heavy load. Turning the fan up earlier greatly helps pull down time.

A09 waits for the CPU to hit 56c, kicks the fans up, then waits for the CPU to reach 45c, then shuts off. End of story.

If your system can't run within that temp range, then you should check the many posts on this site that explain Dell's blunder with their thermal compound. Those posts will show you how to correct your cooling problem.

After correcting the flaw with your cooling system your machine will behave normally as posted above. If you have very cold ambient temps or you have revision 1 heatsink then you will run cooler and may never even hit the turn on temp of 56c (CPU). But under load you certainly will.

Edit: A12 is good for people who don't like to hear their fan. A09 is good for people who want to keep their machine cool. The OP wanted to know the best bios for cooling. The answer is A09.

 

Correct.

Nvidia cards are not failing soley due to high temps. They have a material weakness that is succeptible to BOTH high temps and thermal cycles. And it can get MUCH more complicated from an engineering point of view (rate of change etc). Unless you have access to the relevant data (and the requisite knowledge to understand it) you arent in a postition to say one BIOS is 'better' than another.

The correct course of action is to go the most recent BIOS at any point in time. It has been designed with the most recent understanding of the the material defect (ie failure curve with respect to changing thermal scenarios), and has also been designed taking into account battery life, fan life, etc.

And of course, regularly check for new BIOS updates.

 

Dell will "officially" tell you that it's perfectly normal for your GPU to run past 90c. If you like the sound of that, then take their word for it. If you know contrary information, such as the fact that if you do run 90c and higher, your card will downclock, and you now have stuttering frame rates, then you know that the "official" word from Dell and their engineers isn't worth squat.

All you have to do to understand that A09 controls the fans in a manner that provides the best cooling is to run unbiased testing. Just try it yourself. Without changing anything other than your bios revision:

1. Run bios A12
2. Run 3dmark (do not change any settings)
3. Record temps with Hardware Monitor
4. Run bios A09
5. Run 3dmark (do not change any settings)
6. Record temps with Hardware Monitor
7. Witness your lower temps while running bios A09.

You don't need a degree to figure this out, though I do have one in computer science.

Edit: If you do get different results, then I have a very unique machine (not likely). Post your results here after testing.

Edit: vc, if that "requisite" knowledge comment is directed at me, then it's way off base. You know nothing about my "requisite" knowledge. We don't throw jabs here on this forum. We conduct tests and try to help our peers.

 

Oh dear, it seems that, as always in life, there is no clear cut answer.

The highest my GPU has ever gone is 74c when playing games, but the machine is very new so give it time :s If i let it idle, I hover between 58 and 65.

I do feel however that the fans with bios 12 let to computer heat up and then cool down. When I get to 69 the fans switch on and litterally within seconds I am back at 60. The fans arent very loud when running anyway, so I am thinking I might get bios 9. That said, i don't want my gpu to die.

Ha, my last dell laptop lasted 7 years (and still works albeit very slowly)... they don't make things like that anymore.

Might play about with the bios.

 

That's a good temp proninja. I wouldn't worry bout a thing. That max temp indicates that your machine does not suffer from the thermal compound flaw that me and many others had to correct with our machines.

But if you are curious just run the tests I described. I would love to hear the results.

 

Hmmm out of curiosity, i reverted back to A09 again to test the temp

After making an idiot of myself online in call of duty 4 for a full day, i couldnt distinguish the difference between A12 and A09. Max temps still hovers around 79-82'C (GPU). Dont care much about min temps.

Maybe something is different in-between max and min temps, but i doubt it would make any difference.

Anyhow ... i decided to go back to A12 again since it gives me a more stable idle temp of around 61-65 (GPU).