i8kutils

Precision 5520 - i8k and bios competes for fan

Asked by zeal301

OS: Ubuntu 16.04
Hardware: Precision 5520 with Xeon
BIOS: 1.2.4 (latest)

The settings get overridden by BIOS(?), hence i8kfan n n commands runs and then fan immediately reverts back to some speed set by the bios. Fans consistently run even below 40C cpu temp, hoping i8kutils can do a better job than bios. Any solutions to prevent BIOS from overriding i8k settings?

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zeal301
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zeal301 (zeal301) said : 		#1

Found a solution for this. I used smm to relieve BIOS from controlling the fan. Now i8k controls the fans beautifully.

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Valentine (valuxin) said : 		#2

Can you tell what you did exactly to stop the BIOS control the fans? I'm trying to solve the same problem on my oldie Precision M4600 (Debian 8.8), but ./smm 30a3 don't work for me and the BIOS still controls the fans.

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zeal301 (zeal301) said : 		#3

nothing special... same thing. My startup script looks like this.

sudo ./smm 30a3
sudo service i8kmon start

I'm running Ubuntu 16.04 with 4.10-0-20-generic kernel.