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    GPU Fan almost always spinning and being loud even when idle (on Linux)

    Discussion in 'Sager and Clevo' started by madadam, Jul 13, 2017.

  1. madadam

    madadam Newbie

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    Hello,

    I've recently purchased Schenker's XMG P507 (Clevo P651HP6-G or P65xHP) with i7 7700HQ and GTX 1060 from mysn.de. I'm experiencing rather annoying behavior of the GPU fan: It keeps spinning and being quite loud even when there is no GPU-intensive activity going on. There are two behavior I'm observing:

    1. The fan is relatively quiet, but then spins up for no reason, keeps spinning for about a minute or so, then goes quiet again.
    2. (happens much less often) The fan spins up to what seems to be its maximum RPM, and stays there forever.

    (both of these happen on idle, mind you).

    Is anyone else experiencing this behavior? Anything I can do to stop it?

    I'm using Linux as my only system, so I don't have access to any of those fancy fan-curve tools that are available on Windows. None of the potential means of fan control on Linux worked for me (neither lm-sensors + fancontrol, nor nvidia-settings with coolbits).

    Couple of observations:
    - The GPU fan starts to spin rapidly when the temperature reaches 50C (according to nvidia-settings), then stops after a while after it drops below it.
    - The CPU fan doesn't seem to have this problem
    - This problem isn't caused by me accidentally pressing the Fn+1 key combo
    - It seems that when running on the open-source nouveau drivers, the problem is less severe (fan keeps spinning on what seems to be medium RPM - audible, but less annoying). On the proprietary nvidia drivers it's worse.
    - If I disable the Nvidia card and switch to the Intel one (via nvidia-prime), there is no GPU fan noise at all. This, however, is not acceptable solution for me, because then I cannot connect external monitor, as the HDMI port is connected to the Nvidia card.
    - Super mysterious thing: sometimes, when the GPU fan is spinning for longer time, and I press one of the key combos controlling the keyboard backlight, the fan stops o_O It always starts spinning shortly after, however. Possible explanation I have for this is that there is a bug in the open-source driver for the keyboard backlight thing (clevo-xsm-wmi), but not sure.

    Things I haven't tried yet but am considering:
    - Flashing the BIOS and / or EC. My current version are 1.05.04 and 1.05.03 respectively, and it seems that 1.05.05 of both are available on mysn.dn.
    - Re-applying the thermal paste

    So, anyone has any ideas? Would you guys recommend flashing the BIOS or repasting? Or something else?
     
    madadam, Jul 13, 2017
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  2. skandal

    skandal Notebook Evangelist

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    I would try this. It seems that the fan curves of the EC might have some sort of problem and start spinning the fans too early.
    Don't forget that you are using the nVidia GPU, even with light load, and the GPU needs to be cooled.
     
    skandal, Jul 13, 2017
    #2