Y500 Experiment: Fan speed in Power Saver mode

Something weird I've noticed when I switched to power saver mode in Lenovo Energy Management, the fan speed actually increases. It is not a constant higher fan speed but it'll switch on and off in random intervals. Wonder if you guys are seeing the same thing. In Balanced and High Performance mode, the fan stays quiet. But in power saver mode, the fan definitely kicks in and lowers the temps by a few degrees when idle. I haven't played around with the advanced power options in power management but the only obvious difference I see in this setting compared to the others is that system cooling policy is set to passive instead of active. Which you would expect the reverse, silly Lenovo/Microsoft.

 

Actually that's what's supposed to happen. Passive cooling policy means the system slows down the processor before increasing the fan speed, while active does the opposite. This could explain the lower temperatures. In laptops, passive also means the system waits for the temperatures to trip a certain point before abruptly increasing the fans, while active adjusts the fan continuously to maintain a temperature threshold, which means quieter operation. I personally use High Performance only and don't bother to switch between the different Windows power profiles at all, as ThrottleStop gives me all the control I need.

When I read the title of this thread I got excited because I thought you'd found a way to increase the fan speed under load to improve temperatures. I just got my replacement Y500 and boy oh boy are the temperatures out of control. The main GPU is 10C higher than the Ultrabay and the CPU is reaching thermal shutdown running just 3DMark 11, which tells me the factory did a crappy paste job and/or the heatsink mount is bad. I'm gonna have to break this bad boy open and repaste. Hopefully it's not too difficult or time-consuming and I'll probably be taking a look through your Y500 disassembly thread LOL. Definitely not an auspicious start to my third (second replacement) Y500 unit. Looks like Lenovo still has not gotten its QC issues sorted out. I kind of doubt they ever will.

 

LOL, sorry to get your hopes up. I've noticed that the thermal settings in the bios does absolutely nothing in Windows 8 which tells me the OS is controlling the fan speed. If my system is hot and I go into the bios, I know the settings in the bios are working because the fan speeds up. Log back into Windows 8 and the fan slows back down. Definitely retarded. I have IC Diamond coming in the mail so I'm going to replace the AS5 with that and hopefully bring the temps back down to acceptable levels. Furmark is a motherf#$ker, I'm fine with games but Furmark would set my laptop on fire. I played 2 hours of Far Cry 3 with the system overclocked to 1200/2500 and the internal gpu maxed out at 77c. This is with no A/C and it is a pretty hot day. I run Furmark for 2 minutes and I'm already approaching 90c. Never had that issue on stock voltage in the winter, it maxed out at around 83-87c after a 15min run. My heatpipe might be dying.....

 

FurMark is a great way to kill your card not to mention it's a completely unrealistic representation of actual games. And it doesn't support SLI either. I thought I told you many times not to use it and go with Unigine Heaven instead? LOL.