Hi,
I’m using Fedora 31 for several months now and I’m observing the following problems for about a week now:
On my Thinkpad X1 Extreme the system fan is running constantly although the CPU has a temperature of 33-37 °C.
I already set the BIOS back to default settings and set the CPU Power Manager setting to “Quiet”.
The fan still runs.
The problem is: I’m not sure.
I also received a BIOS update last week and installed it. Maybe it is the BIOS, maybe the kernel.
Currently I’m considering to remove the CMOS battery to perform a reset to factory.
I’m also trying to get “thinkfan” working but have difficulties with the configuration.
After the installation
Have you tried lm-sensors which should be able to detect your hardware automaticly and adjust itself. Install lm-sensors and run sensors-detect as root and answer the questions with yes or no, if that does not work try the link bellow.
And about the bios update, dont update unless you have some kind of problem that the bios update will fix, otherwise leave it alone because you can brick your PC.
I uninstalled thinkfan and switched back to lm-sensors now.
sensors-detect worked and the fan is currently running at ~ 2.000 rpm like before installing thinkfan and never goes below this value.
“pwmconfig” tells me
Manual control mode not supported, skipping hwmon4/pwm1.
There are no usable PWM outputs.
fancontrol-gui btw. did not start after installation (following the Fedora 31 installation guide on the github page)
Best solution up to now:
Although my X1 Extreme is a Gen 2 model I installed thinkfan again like it is recommended in the Arch Wiki article for the Gen 1 model.
The right fan is now quiet, the left fan is still running. I will try to install the 2nd fan control patch next…
I would suggest you boot the oldest (and maybe the second-to-oldest) kernel from the GRUB boot menu to see wether the problem persists. That would be an important thing to determine before downgrading the BIOS firmware or tinkering with the CMOS battery…
pwmconfig won’t work because your laptop fans don’t support PWM (pulse width modulation).
Can you start fancontrol-gui from the Terminal and report the output, this will give you more details why it’s not starting.
I know you said you had an Intel UHD 630 integrated GPU, but do you have and aditional GPU like AMD or NVIDIA, which may also cause problems because of the GPU drivers?
And with sensors-detect both fans slowed down or just the first one?
I tried to install fancontrol-gui like described on the github page but fail to start it. During build the process shows missing runtime libraries but succeeds in building the program.
When I start fancontrol-gui nothing is shown The system protocol shows "Error loading QML file.\n24: module \"org.kde.kirigami\" version 2.3 is not installed
Does this mean I have to install a full KDE desktop for using this?
Ah, ok
The drivers are the ones from the nonfree repo. GPU. It took me some time to circumvent the automatic installation of nouveau but everything works now. I can switch back and forth between Intel and Nvidia.
Did the Fedora Magazine article solved your problem or not?
You will need to install kirigami not the full KDE desktop but if the fans are fine than you don’t need it, they will be automaticly adjusted as the temperature changes.
I did not use the Fedora Magazine to install the Nvidia GPU drivers. I found other articles and installed the driver successfully. Do you think the drivers cause the CPU fans to work improperly?
“dnf install kirigami” does not install additional packages as kf5-kirigami is already installed. fancontrol-gui does not work as it claims that kde-kirigami has to be installed
the fans do not work properly. With lm-sensors and the solutions we discussed up to now the left and right fan run constantly, at least at > 2000 rpm even if the cpu temp is at 34°C and the CPU speed is limited to 0.8 GHz
the right fan works as desired only when I install thinkfan (as described in the Arch Wiki Article for Thinkpad X1 Gen1 and Gen2) but the left fan runs constantly even then
Arch Wiki says the only solution for this is to disconnect it from the mainboard or to patch thinkpad_acpi. I tried this but obviously did not make all necessary adjustments to get it working with Fedora.
No the GPU drivers would only cause the GPU fan to work improperly not the CPU fan.
kirigami did not install because you need version 2.3 and only version 1.1.0-12 is in the Fedora 31 repos.
If they both go ~2000 RPM than that is fine because the CPU temp is 34 and i guess the GPU temp. is somewhere in that mark so i don’t see anything wrong with the temp or fans, which means that the drivers are working fine and the temp. is kept where it should be.
When you say that the CPU speed is limited, do you mean the CPU speed stays there even if you run something that’s CPU intensive or that’s the speed at idle or low CPU usage?
I would guess that the right fan is the CPU fan, but that fan should run fine even with lm-sensors installed and disconecting the fan is not a good idea, that would only lead to overheating.
Also found an article about installation and configuration on Thinkpad laptops
After installing kirigami 2 the fancontrol-gui started now. I managed to stop the right fan below 45 °C .
The X1 Extreme has some kind of heat pipe with 2 fans (left side, right side) so the both are responsible for cooling down CPU and GPU.
Only alternative (Arch Wiki) appears to be using and patching thinkpad_acpi.
I will stick to the current solution (fancontrol-gui). Maybe Lenovo will provide a more customized solution in the future when they sell Thinkpads with preinstalled Fedora:
