I’m experiencing ongoing thermal and fan‑related issues on my HP 15s‑FQ5916NV laptop (2022 model, thin chassis). The device has only one cooling fan which seems unable to co
ol the entire system effectively.
Typical behavior:
• Idle temperatures around 50°C
• Fan randomly switches between very quiet to verry loud
• If my laptop was warm or I leave it on standby for many minutes KDE animations will start slowing down/lagging noticibly uppon unlock
• Sometimes right side of the keyboard becomes noticeably warm
(Its summer ofcorse but this isnt an excuse as my house is not a hot place)
What I’ve already tried:
• Switched from Kubuntu to Fedora — no improvement
• Tested with animated wallpapers (I know they add load, but the issue happens even without them)
• Manually disabled the fan once (for testing) — the keyboard became dangerously hot, so I immediately force‑shutdown the laptop
I’m trying to understand whether this is:
• an Intel driver problem,
• or simply a limitation of this thin HP model with a single fan.
Any guidance, tools, or recommended diagnostics for Fedora would be greatly appreciated.
I want to fully understand if the thermal behavior is expected because of the build structure or if It needs service from a professional
First you should check if you have the latest BIOS update. Firmware controls power/fan profiles, sometimes manufacturers optimize this with patches.
HP also has a PC Hardware Diagnostics UEFI tool that might be worth running as a quick test.
Lastly, I would see how the laptop performs under Windows with the power-management drivers from the manufacturer’s support page. This should give you a baseline to compare against, so you can get an idea if the Linux experience is within expected norms. (Linux should spin up your fan less than on Windows, as there are fewer background tasks running on Linux.)
There are ways to optimize power/fan use on Linux but I’d probably check the above first. Typically, the out of the box experience on Linux should be decent.
@yurislnx First, how am I able to compare it cause I dont dualboot, I study cs and I have abandoned windows a year ago. Second of all I dont know if its possible to update my BIOS through linux?..I can say for sure that one guy from zorin forum back in the day when I was a begginer suggested to extract the bios update and move the folder somewhere? I dont remember much but It indeed didnt help. Also I need to note that my laptop had always bad power management chronically. Back in at the days of using zorin I actually already sended my laptop to service once for thermal throtelling and we had found A faulty battery and charcging brick. I can remember how I updated my bios through a live win 11 desktop and didnt help. So maybe the thermal and fan problems now are kinda related
I suggest you update it from Windows. I would not risk playing around with unofficial ways to upgrade the BIOS (and I doubt your system supports LVFS.)
Besides, it would be good to install Windows so you can have a baseline comparison for power management to get an idea of how Linux should perform on your system, so may get both aspects out of the way.
Doubt the most recent version would have changed power management/cooling optimization - it’s most likely just security fixes at this point.
EDIT: I see you found it. I guess I would still install Windows to get the baseline for the expected performance for the system. And run the HP hardware diagnostic tool.
On the linux side, I would check the output of this:
andyglaros@hp15s:~$ cpupower frequency-info
analyzing CPU 5:
driver: intel_pstate
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 5
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 5
energy performance preference: balance_performance
hardware limits: 400 MHz - 3.30 GHz
available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
current policy: frequency should be within 400 MHz and 3.30 GHz.
The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency: Unable to call hardware
current CPU frequency: 1.21 GHz (asserted by call to kernel)
boost state support:
Supported: yes
Active: yes
Also I use fedora for my graduation project and I cannot risk it right now
I need to note that fan noise was a thing that existed always as I can recall even on throtelling…
50C at idle is a little on the warm side …
The first thing I would check is to see if there is some debris in the cooling ports on the case (use some compressed air or a vacuum cleaner to clear). Also, if the laptop is sitting flat on the desk surface, try a cooling pad to lift/tilt it up so that more air gets under it (a chill-pad with a fan is what I use).
If you have tuned installed, set the profile to desktop or balanced and see if things cool a bit.
If you are running Gnome as your desktop interface/GUI … try the GNome shell extension “Frequency Boost Switch”. This will give you a button that you can use to toggle turbo-boost on your CPU to On/Off. Set to Off, it keeps the CPU from using the over-clocking feature of the CPU … this cools things down a bit.
Thanks but I dont use Gnome… Im a KDE User so I cannot use the extension you recommend and second, I use a common office desk thats basically wood with a smooth layer so who knows maybe its the air ventilation
This might help the fans spin up less frequently, as your CPU will not boost clocks as quickly. But it will hurt performance. The command output you posted looks reasonable to me.
@yurislnx Hey, its been a while since… I actually booted into windows installer and pressed some buttons but I didnt hear any fan noise, only a little. But fedora caused a fan noise as soon as I entered the desktop, large difference…The EUFI settings also didnt cause any noise. Note that I had the same problems on kubuntu back then as well as on windows 11 to go when I booted into a live user to install the bios update exe. Taking into account that completly disabling fan caused dangerous heat, I would perhaps need to find a guide on how to use nbfc tools on fedora and set it up carefully since mine is already a thin laptop
have you tried installing cpu-z to look at the cpu temp? From all accounts this seems like a hardware level issue and the laptop is thermal throttling which is what is causing your animation and performance issues in KDE. Personally i would check all my temps. My next step would to be to check the fan curves in your bios and set a custom more agressive fan curve if possible. If your still throttling after that depending on how old you laptop is, for instance if its a few years old you may need to open it up and reapply new thermal paste and clean it to reduce temps. Laptops tend to collect alot of junk inside after long term use that can cause cooling issues. If your not comfortable with that any decent repair shop could easily do this as well.
@blazeanator about the lag, I just fixed it cause a user already had the same issue for anyone having similar problems… And it was completely independent from thermal and a user has a complete solution on r/Fedora
Basically the system clock was wrong — the hardware RTC was set to local time (PKT) instead of UTC.
Basically I needed to do:
sudo nano /etc/chrony.conf
Add at the bottom:
makestep 1 -1
sudo systemctl restart chronyd
In order to tell chronyd to step the clock immediately on large corrections instead of slowly slewing. And it affects both i915 and xe drivers on fedora
I guess I would still install Windows to get the baseline for the expected performance for the system. And run the HP hardware diagnostic tool.