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I have installed Ubuntu 12.10 leaving Win 7 licensed version. But again as usual I need to fix so many issues.

This time fan is generating lots of noise. It looks it is running at max speed. My Laptop is becoming hotter than it usually was in the same period on Window.

I was looking for the solution and found the below:

sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq </sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_min_freq

But I read that cpufreq is for cpu frequency. What to do now? I have already executed the command.

What is the solution for the problem of fan sound in Ubuntu 12.10 ? In win 7, this is not the problem.

My Laptop is Dell Studio 1555.

Update: I have noticed that even after using Ubuntu for an hr or so due to which my Laptop became hot, when I switch to Win 7, fan sound has reduced to half. The sound in Win 7 felt normal.

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Fans making almost any type of noise mostly means that the fan bearings are shot. It also could be too much dirt in the box, or something blocking airflow. – vonbrand Jan 31 at 23:09
@vonbrand Fans make airflow noises, even with perfect bearings. Especially high-RPM fans are noisy just from the airflow. – derobert Feb 11 at 14:55
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When you say it's becoming hotter, is that just an assumption from the fans running louder? Or is that from an actual temperature measurement (or at least feeling the heat with your hand)? If its actually running hot, that's the problem to solve... – derobert Feb 11 at 14:57
It is loudness of the fan as well as heat I feel when I touch Dell Studio laptop at the bottom. If I continue to use Ubuntu then my laptop life will be less. I edited grub so that I see ubuntu first in dual boot and many other things to use Ubnutu this time instead of win 7. – Satya Prakash Feb 13 at 12:55
In just 3 hrs it becomes hot enough that I feel the health of my laptop. Also at night time, fan sound is very irritating. It disturbs me. If anyone suggest me better well known Linux distro other than Ubuntu to which I can use easily then I can think of it. Fedora/mandrake/ ... ? – Satya Prakash Feb 13 at 13:04

3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

You might have a look at fancontrol.
Configure it with pwmconfig. You have to do some trial and error to get a good balance between core temp and noise.
By default, the fan control is left in "automatic" mode, ie managed by the BIOS. (On my ACER desktop this means it runs at lowest speed whatever the temperature, hence stability issue...)

Edit
Googling around for "Dell 1555 fancontrol linux" gives you a bunch of wiki pages and forum threads. It seems that there can be 2 problems: CPU fan with kernel ~ca 2.6.32 (should not be relevant w/ ubuntu 12.10) and GPU fan with recent open source radeon driver. You could try fglrx, the proprietary AMD driver. I can't help you for that as I don't have ubuntu, but IIRC there is a simple men to get it installed.

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This looks worth trying. Currently I am out station much so I cannot try for few days. – Satya Prakash Feb 6 at 16:56
Output: /usr/sbin/pwmconfig: There are no pwm-capable sensor modules installed. :( – Satya Prakash Feb 10 at 16:26
up vote 0 down vote

There used to be a program, called dellfand but it's site has been off for a while and the project seems to be abandoned; although you can still find version 0.9 here, but you have to compile it. It solved reducing fan speed for me with a Latitude E6400 anno.

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Reduce fan speed --> CPU doesn't get cooled (enough) --> Paf. – vonbrand Feb 11 at 17:15
Usually Dell is a bit paranoid on cooling, there IS a limit where you could safely raise the lower end temperature limit for fan speed. Of course, use it carefully. – petermolnar Feb 11 at 17:51
@petermolnar can you tell me more about it! How to raise lower end? example etc. – Satya Prakash Feb 13 at 13:00
up vote 0 down vote

This problem isn't as easy as changing a setting.

It is related to more that one thing probably.

From my experience, most problems of a "fan being loud" means that your CPU is running hot and your fan is trying to cool it, and said fan, has some kind of mechanical issue (breaking, broken, or about to be...).

This happens because your fan has been probably been working too hard for too long, took on some dust and now is failing. This is fairly common in notebook computers.

There are three things you should think about doing :

1. Clean the fan.

this option is a good place to start...

Shut off your computer and blow out the fan with some compressed air as best you can.

Better outsite if possible! Clear out all that junk in the fan.

2. Monitor your daemon processes and ram usage

run a quick top to see which processes are using a large amount of your CPU. if they seem out of the ordinary, try to resolve the issue.

also try free to see how much free memory you have. If you dont have much free ram, a lot of the data might be "swapped" in and out of your swap space using a lot of CPU overhead.

3. Dynamic frequency switching

Definitely look into some programs to switch your CPU frequency to a lower speed when you are doing simple tasks, email, writing docs etc.., and to a higher frequency when you want more power, for games or compiling.

you can also do this easily with a couple of small bash scripts similar to the command you are running in your post.

OH NOES!, Fan Still Super Loud!

If you tried everything and you still have problems, you will most likel

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Swapping doesn't tax the CPU, quite to the contrary (no data at hand to frob --> CPU is idle). And be careful, free will tell you memory is almost full all the time, look at the line "+/- buffers/cache", that tells you if memory is really full. – vonbrand Feb 11 at 17:13
If fan is dirty etc then same problem will be visible on win 7 as well. Even I decided to use Linux and I kept Win7. – Satya Prakash Feb 13 at 12:58

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