Dell XPS 15 9570 - How to control the fans?
I found a solution to my own problem.
To see the fans with lm_sensors
Add dell-smm-hwmon
to modules:
sudo su
echo "options dell-smm-hwmon restricted=0 force=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/dell-smm-hwmon.conf
echo "dell-smm-hwmon" > /etc/modules
exit
sudo update-initramfs -u
Reboot, and the fans should be visible with:
sensors
dell_smm-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
fan1: 0 RPM
fan2: 0 RPM
To take over control of your fans
Then follow this guide to install i8kutils
:
sudo apt install i8kutils
sudo su
echo "i8k" > /etc/modules
echo "options i8k force=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/i8k.conf
exit
Reboot:
sudo modprobe i8k force=1
Configure i8kutils
:
sudo -H gedit /etc/i8kmon.conf
Finally, disable Dell BIOS Fan Control with this program by TomFreudenberg to let i8kutils
take over.
git clone https://github.com/TomFreudenberg/dell-bios-fan-control.git
cd dell-bios-fan-control
make
sudo dell-bios-fan-control 0
Simply i8kmon
service will be started and will control your fans. You can also disable i8kmon
to try ik8fan
to manually control your fans (not recommended as you might turn off your fans and they will never be started putting your CPU and GPU danger!).
i8kfan 2 2
A less intrusive method to get less temperature (and therefore no fans are required) is using powertop.
cat /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:01\:00.0/power/control # (on?. That is bad)
sudo powertop --auto-tune
cat /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:01\:00.0/power/control # (auto?. That is good)
In order to get the changes permanently, see How do I make Powertop changes permanent? . However, in the help of TLP it is said that 'attempting to apply powertop's --auto-tune settings on each boot will conflict with TLP'. By now, it is working fine for me (XPS 15 9570, bios 1.5).