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Every time I boot my computer, the GPU fan is at max speed and very noisy.

The problem:

Fan speed stays at maximum level:

  • when I start the computer without screen or keyboard
  • when I use the computer directly but launched in text mode (configured in grud)
  • when I start lightdm from xrdp

Fan speed comes to a normal level

  • when I start lightdm from the computer

What I tried:

nvclock:

 Error: Your card doesn't support fanspeed adjustments!

Note: I have a GTX980.

Dummy monitor:

As described here. It did not change a thing.

nvidia-smi "hack":

As explained in this article

So I launched this command, and eventually the fan come back to a normal level.

nvidia-smi -l 180 > /dev/null

Is there a "cleaner" way of achieving the same result? OR How can I make the fan speed auto-adjust once the system is started?

Community
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alexandrekow
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1 Answers1

1

The short answer: maybe, depending on your BIOS and use-case

The long answer: The NVidia card doesn't expose its temperature sensor through hardware to the BIOS, therefore the BIOS is taking the safest bet and assumes it's working at 100% and thus cools at 100%. It's only the driver that exposes the hardware sensor through software to the machine and therefore the fan comes back to a normal level...

The only way to get the noise down depends on your use case and your BIOS. On my machine, I just disable the NVidia in the BIOS until I need it (to drive the HDMI port and to play games) so as the BIOS then knows that the card is not doing anything, the fan doesn't run at all and the noise is non-existent... If you don't want to use my system, your hack is already the most elegant solution you're going to get! ;-)

Fabby
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