Are there any plans to feature gradual fan speed (if it hasn't been already)?

I have read the following passage in a review of Purism Librem 13 v3 by notebookcheck:

Fan noise is black or white. Either the system is completely silent, or the fan is fully engaged. Under light to normal loads (word processing, light web browsing), the fan stays off and the system is quiet. Once the CPU comes under moderate stress (spreadsheet work, streaming HD video), however, the fan kicks in and quickly ramps up to its maximum speed to keep things cool before tapering off slightly. Noise under load peaks at 45 dB(A) before falling to 37-40 dB(A). At full blast, the fan is whiny and grating. There is no noticeable coil whine from the system.

I am wondering are there any plans to address the issue. I find the sudden and unexpected noise coming from the notebook distractive, and I admit, that the presence of the gradual fan speed is a major factor when I decide what notebook to buy for work.

Since you control the BIOS, I believe throttling the fans can be an easy thing to address. If not in the current hardware, then in the next, when you add a $0.10 PWM fan motor driver to the motherboard.

If you happen to own an ASUS notebook, take their fan management as a reference.

It’s always a bit problematic to compare workloads for such tests so I will not try to argue against the outcome that Notebookcheck observed. I belief they experienced it but indeed I wonder why.

I am using a L13 for almost two years now, first a v2 and for about 3/4 of a year a v3. None of the two ever did what Notebookcheck describes. Almost all of the time the fan is actually off and stays off until I put the machine under significant load. I usually have a couple of browser windows open (with many open tabs in each), my email client (Evolution), several other application (like LibreOffice, Inkscape, Gimp etc.) and only notice the fan lightly spinning up when doing CPU intense tasks - playing video usually is not one of these (though you have to be a bit careful about the codec and player being used, decoding fullHD video with some full software-only codec at high bitrates can indeed stress the CPU a lot).

The only time I get the fan to full speed is when I compile larger software projects, like a Linux kernel build using all four cores (yes, Hyperthreading, some would argue these are just two cores…).

And yes, the fan is indeed controlled by a PWM and spins up gradually.

Cheers
nicole

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@nicole.faerber
are we able to set the fan curve of the PWM CPU fan ? what is the minimum speed that the pwm fan can be set to spin without a complete halt ? 300/400/500/600/700 rpm ?
the MSI uefi bios also allows the user to select the specific acceleration and deceleration in miliseconds of the fan. for example how long the pwm motor waits for the temperature of the CPU to rise before gradually increasing the rpm acording to the temperature profile set by the user.
also how many poles does the pwm motor of the cpu poses ? is it a 3 pole type or 4 pole type ? the 4 poles are more quiet and last longer.

My experience has been similar to that of Nicole; occasionally I’ll hear the fans, but usually only if I’m compiling a lot of stuff. Last time I heard my fans was when I was compiling stuff for my router, it’s usually silent. It’s worth keeping in mind statistics; not every unit is going to be perfect, the occasional fan might be bad and could just need to be replaced.

I run an iMac 3.1GHz Core i5, and I’ve never hear a fan. Why does there need to be a fan? I’m sure there is a good reason, but for years I ran annoying “fanned” Windows machines and was so happy finding Mac silent. This point alone could be a deal-breaker for me getting a Purism machine.

I don’t found way to control fan directly, but you can control it with temperature limit (thermal throttling). I always use 65 C limit and sometimes even 55 C limit, when i use my laptop in quiet public place.
Most of time my fan not moving, but while i render something in Blender, it can create noise, if you don’t use thermal throttling.

This article useful too, because it contain systemd service to setup thermal limit automatically.
But be careful: thermal limit reset after sleep. I found this bug recently.

You realize that you are complaining about fanned Windows machines, and Windows has nothing to do with it*? That would be like buying a car and complaining it is slow because you have small tires, when in fact the engine is even smaller. If you want a fan-less computer you have to buy one designed to be fan-less, like your iMac.

Computers can be designed to be fan-less, and this is usually accomplished by the case/enclosure acting as a heat sink and cooling being accomplished by the ambient environment. Ever felt the back of your iMac after prolonged use?

The fan rarely comes on with my L13v3 except under CPU intensive loads. 95% of my use cases there is no fan noise, and the device is completely quite.

However, if you don’t like fan noise, make sure you are attributing the right elements to what is causing it, or you might erroneously buy another computer and be disappointed you hear a fan.

    • In fact Windows has some of the best thermal management out of necessity since Windows runs on so many different pieces of hardware.