CPU fan High speed, but cold CPU

English Hardware
#1

Hi everybody,
I’m using Tumbleweed aand opensuse for the first time, since 4 monthes on my office laptop Asus R510J.
On each distro I used with that laptop, I had some hardware troubles :

  • freeze with nouveau and compiz on ubuntu,
  • wifi with archlinux…

I hate this computer :smiley:

On opensuse, I also have some troubles, but the most important is the CPU fan. I don’t understand when and why it decide to make it works or not…

Here is the result of a sensors command :

incent@linux-z3id:~> sensors
nouveau-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
GPU core:     +0.60 V  
temp1:            N/A  (high = +95.0°C, hyst =  +3.0°C)
                       (crit = +105.0°C, hyst =  +5.0°C)
                       (emerg = +135.0°C, hyst =  +5.0°C)

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +38.0°C  (crit = +103.0°C)

asus-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
cpu_fan:     25500 RPM
temp1:        +38.0°C  

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0:  +39.0°C  (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0:         +39.0°C  (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1:         +38.0°C  (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

During a day, sometimes the CPU fan is low (i can’t hear it, but sometimes, it is very high, whereas the CPU is very low).

Result of top command :


vincent@linux-z3id:~> sudo top
[sudo] Mot de passe de root : 
top - 09:56:09 up 43 min,  1 user,  load average: 0,59, 1,06, 0,98
Tasks: 248 total,   2 running, 246 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  1,7 us,  1,2 sy,  0,0 ni, 97,2 id,  0,0 wa,  0,0 hi,  0,0 si,  0,0 st
KiB Mem : 12184536 total,   236476 free,  7077924 used,  4870136 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 12463100 total, 12462932 free,      168 used.  4278820 avail Mem 

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                                                                                                                                                       
 1813 vincent   20   0  654252  65704  48500 R 4,333 0,539   0:03.59 yakuake                                                                                                                                                                       
 3473 vincent   20   0 7480700 3,286g 3,117g S 3,333 28,28  21:06.40 VirtualBox                                                                                                                                                                    
 1800 vincent   20   0 5490880 174800  91996 S 2,667 1,435   1:11.62 amarok                                                                                                                                                                        
 1419 root      20   0  607048 225944 150076 S 1,333 1,854   6:39.59 X                                                                                                                                                                             
 3318 vincent   20   0 2862444 278268 103392 S 0,667 2,284   0:44.28 scudcloud

I assume that something is badly configured somewhere, but I don’t know where.

Any advices?

Thanks
Vincent

#2

Sure it’s the CPU’s fan, not the NVIDIA? My laptop has dual graphics, if I don’t turn off the NVIDIA completely and the wheather is like it is now ( 30°C ), it’s going bonkers from time to time.

#3

To be honest, I don’t know. as sensors says that it is the cpu_fan I trusted it…

I don’t even know how many fan there is in my laptop. Do you know a way to do this without open the laptop?

#4

Type:

su - (followed by your password)

modprobe thermal
modprobe fan

hwinfo | grep fan

#5 
linux-z3id:/home/vincent # lsmod | grep thermal
x86_pkg_temp_thermal    16384  0
thermal                24576  0
linux-z3id:/home/vincent # lsmod | grep fan
linux-z3id:/home/vincent # modprobe fan
linux-z3id:/home/vincent # lsmod | grep fan
fan                    16384  0
linux-z3id:/home/vincent # hwinfo |grep fan
        acpi-fan: module = fan
        acpi-fan: module = fan
  fan 16384 0 - Live 0xffffffffa0d6a000
    Driver Status: thermal,fan are active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe thermal; modprobe fan"

Here are the results.

#6

I would recommend that you install lm_sensors for detection and fancontrol.
See:https://software.opensuse.org/package/lm_sensors?search_term=lm_sensors

Add one of the repos of your choice to Yast.

Check out this Archwiki on lm_sensors on configuring lm_sensors:https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lm_sensors

lm_sensors

           **Hardware health monitoring for Linux**

           This package includes programs that show data from some sensor chips. The interface /proc/bus/i2c/ is provided by loading kernel modules.

Which modules to load can be interactively detected as root by calling /usr/sbin/sensors-detect.
Warning, before using the sensors the default configuration in /etc/sensors.conf has to be checked and changed to fit the actual set up of the mainboard and the BIOS used on that specific mainboard!