Fan Speed in Dell Precision M4300

Hi,

I own an M4300 and would like to change the cooler management. The fan it's usually completely off and in idle (or browsing internet) quickly reaches 70 °C. Then the fan runs at about 50-70 % speed till the temperature goes down to 50 °C. Then again the fan stops.
I would like the fan to continuously run to an inaudible 20-30 % speed so that the temperature will be kept at about 55-60 °C. I want my laptop as silent as it can be.

What can I do? I've seen HP laptops can have fan speed adjusted:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-business-class-notebooks/352887-2510p-owners-lounge-33.html#post5638409
Can I do that to my Dell laptop?
My laptop has nVidia Quadro FX 360M, 1920x1200 15" display, Core 2 Duo 2.6 Ghz, 4 Gb of RAM, 500 Gb hdd, Windows 7 64 bit and A15 BIOS.

Thank you for any help.

 

Try i8kfangui? I do believe it still works with the M4300...

 

Thanks,
I've seen people have some problems with i8kfangui:
diefer.de - I8kfangui and Windows 7 x64 Solved
Is it safe to try it? Is i8kfangui the only thing that work on M4300?

 

The Debian package of i8kfan runs fine on my M6500, so I'd say it's safe to use. And I don't think there are mayor differences between the Linux and the Windows version.

Unfortunately even if I run i8kfan the BIOS still wants to control the fans which results in constant on/off cycles which is neither good for the fans nor for my nerves.

On many Dells this works to disable the BIOS fan control:
1. hold Fn + Shift and type 15324 - now the roll-LED should blink
2. hold Fn and press R - a hidden BIOS menu should appear
3. set "BIOS thermal controls" to "disabled" and leave the menu - the BIOS will stop to control the fan(s)

Unfortunately you'll have to repeat that procedure after each cold start.

 

Ok, I've installed i8kfan and disabled the bios fan control with the help of hiden bios menu. Now the temperature is kept between 60-65 °C. Yet, I haven't managed to change the fan rpm. It runs only at 2500 rpm on low speed and 5000 rpm on high speed. I went to options/advanced/fan speed divider and modified the speed but the speed remained the same 2500 rpm (I cand hear is the same), even though the State of first fan in 18kfan tells me is 1500 rpm or lower. So, to keep the temperature at about 60-65°C the fan kicks in frequently at 2500 rpm at 10-20 sec interval. Even in Manual fan control mode - no change, the same 2500 rpm, even if I seted to 1000 rpm. I wished the fan rpm were about 1500. What can I do?

 

In the hidden BIOS menu of the M6500 the fan speeds can be adjusted, which i8kfan hopefully respects. I didn't test it.
Maybe you have the same option.

 

In M4300 hidden menu I can't change the fan rpm. When the fan runs I have Fan1 PWM: 80 which I don't know what it means and 2500 rpm. When the rpm is 0 (fan off) the PWM is 0. When I changed PWM to 50 the rpm remained the same 2500.

 

Pulse-width modulation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Did you try to set PWM values between 0 and 50?

 

Yes, I did. It has no effect. I seted to 30, Enter to accept it, but when I go back to hidden menu PWM is again 80 and RPM at 2500.

 

Can you set a value above 50, preferably to 100 or any other multiple of 50?