[GRLUG] Worried about my laptop's temperature control

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Thu, 2011-08-04 at 19:05 -0400, Mike Williams wrote:
> Under reasonably heavy use, my laptop's CPU temperature often approaches 
> 100 Celsius. This is measured by the Gnome Sensor Applet, which I'm 
> pretty sure is measuring the right temperature sensors. As the machine 
> starts to get warm, the fan does come on, but I'm not convinced it is 
> working at anywhere near its top speed. I haven't found much for fan 
> settings in the BIOS or operating system, but there has to be something. 
> Where would I find it? And how hard is it to tweak the fan control 
> settings so it goes to a higher speed at a lower temperature?

Run sensors-detect and see if it picks up anything new?  The "sensors"
command will list the currently configured sensors.

Also see the manual page of the fancontrol command.  Milage may vary
depending upon hardware.

My recent laptops have all had a hard-to-find BIOS options to run the
fan "automatically" or "always".  I typically just set that to "always";
and then, oddly, it runs not always but more frequently than with the
other settings.

It also helps to annually replace the fan.  For laptops I generally
replace the fan and the hard-drive every year it is in use as my primary
device; regardless of if there are signs of an issue. That way you can
just schedule it rather than have something fail during corporate
year-end.


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