How many how noticed fan throttling down when re-applying Power Management Profile?

It seems that depending on the version of Power Manager one is using the fan behavior can differ significantly, even when using the same Power Management profile such as 'Power Source Optimized'. I know some people have complained about some Power Manager versions due to the fan being kept at very low rpm, leading to hot ThinkPads. In my case it is the opposite.

I recently noticed that my X200 started keeping the fan on constantly at medium high rpm, even if the CPU temperature (and other temps) were very low.

By re-applying any power management profile (i.e. using Fn+F3), the fan throttles down to minimum rpm so that the fan is again silent. In other words, re-applying the profile makes power management act as it should do or normally do. This will then keep the fan silent for some minutes, after which it spins up to higher RPM again, despite low temps.

For reference, I am using Power Management Driver 1.55 and Power Manager 1.72 on my X200.

Has anyone else noticed this lately?

 

I've noticed this as well.

But I've also noticed several times when I leave my notebook on when I go to sleep at night (fan at high rpm) that when I wake up in the morning the fan has decreased to a very low rpm. So it does appear to be throttling the fan down after a long idle time I guess?

 

I have posted this issue in another thread. I have noticed this as well, btw. I then downloaded the new version v1.6 of PMD from here. And it seemed to work--at least the fan is a bit silent, but blows all the time--cold air; CPU temps are between 38-42'C.

 

Same here. Mine throttles down as well, but it takes much longer time before it does it. In the past it wouldn't even go up in RPM at those temperatures (32+ celcius).

Yes, I will give the 1.60 driver a try as well - even if the summary of changes does not indicate a functional change other than compatibility with some new models.

I can't quite figure out if the change in fan behaviour is due to Power Mangement Driver 1.55 or Power Manager 1.72 - or both. All I know is that the fan behavior has changed significantly. As opposed to yours it blows cold air out at medium RPM even at 32+ celcius and stays at relatively high RPM for a long time. In the past it would throttle down very quickly and dynamically and stay silent at lowest RPM for most of the time. But now I have to force it to spin down to lower RPM by applying the power profile again.

Will give an update later when I have installed the new driver.

 

Jabba, I have just witnessed what you have experienced. When I re-applied the PM setting (fn+F3), the fan suddenly quitened down remarkably--I can barely hear it unless i put my ear close to the vents. I have peace finally--but the behavior is concerning--let me know if you come up with a solution.

S

 

I have just installed PM Driver 1.60 and Power Manager 1.73. It'll be interesting to see if that fixes it - even if it shouldn't according to the summary of changes.

Before installing the new drivers and software, I started up the machine and ran it for about 30 minutes, with temperatures getting up 40 degrees (and idling around 32), but the fan did not go up in RPM as it had done the past couple of days. Very odd indeed. As if the computer knew that it was about to get updated and just to prove me wrong it started to act as it should

Now that the new drivers have been updated the fan has not spun up either, but obviously I don't know if it is better, as the fan behavior symptoms had not shown themselves today.

I have a suspicion even if it might not hold true. Thinking back at the past few days, I have on a daily basis been converting and saving some online movie trailers to my SSD. This activity will occupy approx 50% of CPU resources and hence lead to around 45-50 degrees. Maybe somehow this has affected the odd fan behavior - although the fan should throttle down when temps become low again.

I have a theory that for some odd reason other components such as SSD, RAM, etc might have reached higher temps and hence affecting the fan RPM. The strange thing though is that I have been converting online movie clips in the past as well, without the aggressive fan management.

I will monitor the behavior the next few days and update this thread accordingly.

 

Update: I have just stress tested my X200 with the new Power Management Driver 1.60 and Power Manager 1.73 installed. It seems to have fixed the issue.

After running a a couple of video conversions which makes the fan spin at higher RPM, it will throttle down to very low RPM shortly after the CPU load and temp has returned to low levels again. It will repeatedly do this everytime I stress it and let it idle again. So now the fan management is nice and dynamic again. No need to re-apply the power profile.

 

Hi there, I want to know a couple of things, if you may:

1. How do you monitor the fan speed in RPM? (I use my ears btw ;-) )
2. I am using CPUTemp to monitor temps--is there a better tool out there?
3. Where did you get the Power manager v1.73 from the Lenovo site? The latest version I found there was V3.12 (released jan 2010).

Many thanks,
S

 

1.
Fan speed RPM can be measured using the TPfancontol app. I am sure there are some other apps as well which include RPM measuring. However in this particular case, I did not use that. So it was not an exact measurement, but rather I know my ThinkPads so well that I can hear when it is at the different RPM levels.

2.
I use Core Temp, which I find excellent due to small memory footprint and dual core measurement. There are a truck load of CPU temp software out there and most are quite accurate.

3.
Power Manager 1.73 is the latest version for Windows XP.

 

Update: i uninstalled the previous installation of PMD v1.6 and PM v3.0--rebooted and installed PMD v1.6 again--rebooted; install newer version of PM v3.12 for Windows 7 X64. and rebooted. Now everything is running silently. I did not have to re-apply the power settings on boot up.
Well i hope this works.
Jabba, thanks so much for the pointers.

S

 

Just wanted to say that I followed this procedure on my Win 7 pro 64 bit X200 and things are now running silently. Power Manager Driver v1.6 and Power Manager v3.12 (newest versions for Win 7 64 bit). Thanks 'smiley_lauf' and others.

I use CoreTemp to measure temperatures.

 

You see the thing is--if the CPU is under heavy load, then things turn loud--and stay like that even when the CPU is not under stress. I dual booted with XP just to test it, and I must say, the machine so much quiter under XP than it is under W7 Ult x64 running the same stress testing (I ran youtube flash). I also tried vista, and the same thing as W7 I am afraid. So it seems like X200 is better of running XP than the newer windows--not sure why?? Ubuntu does not even honor the CPU freq scaling thing--so fan is on all the time (+3500RPM).

Anyway, I am glad it worked for you.

S

 

I use TPfancontrol for all of my cooling management. The stock ACPI control lets the whole system climb into the high 40's low 50's till the fan actually kicks in, which is a little warm for idle work IMO, and especially for the GPU to be heating up quickly, so i use fan level 2 for light work usually, and i can keep both the CPU and GPU at the high 30's low 40's, usually at fan level 2 the temp stays solid at 42C for both CPU and GPU, maybe not the GPU since HWmonitor always gives me readings 10C higher than TPfancontrol, making me think i have a cool running G86 core, but this was not the case.

 

@TKB: ok, I have a question for you. What setting have you set for your thinkpad under .ini file. iow, what profile to set for TP x200 P8700 2.53GHz?
Level 1=?
Level 2=?
..and so on.

Thanks
S

 

Guys, what temperatures are your X200s idling at with the latest power manager and drivers installed?

 

P.S I do not use .ini to make plans for the fan speed, if you want to know, for me doing light work and even just watching movies on YouTube, fan level 2 keeps everything cool for me, just set it and forget it for the X200, the P8700 is about the same as mine just the size (45nm) is the only diff. Yeah if you are doing light work just select that "Manual" dot selection thingy, whatever it's called, and type in 2 (0-7), and just so you know, 64 will make the fan go to it's (what i call) critical temperature cooling speed, which is extremely noisy and gets up to 4 grand RPM i think (in my T61p).

If you do worry that you'll forget about changing the fan speed and do something CPU intensive, don't, even on manual setting the "Smart" fan setting will kick in when the critical temp is reached (79C for me), and increase fan speed for you should you forget.

 

On my X200 P8600, my idling temps are as they have always been regardless of Power Management Driver or Power Manager version:

- 31-33 degrees celcius
- Ambient temp 22 degrees

At ambient temps around 20 degrees, it will idle at 28-31.

Note that idle temps are measured after at least 10 minutes of idling.

 

Thanks. Mine are about the same.

 

Hi I am back from a training session in East Africa!

Some feedback--I am afraid the problem still persists--I the only way to stop the fan from blowing and making a noise is to follow jabajaba's first post instructions--it seems even in XP and Vista this issue has not been been resolved. The fan slows down and keeps quit for a second or so, and then restarts its spinning and audible hum.
My specs:
ThinkPad X200 P8700
Win Vista SP2 32-bit
PMG 3.12
PMD 1.6

idle fan speed Level 2-3 on TPFanControl
Idle Temp 41'C

 

I must admit the x64 bit of windows do not work that well wrt to fan control issues compared to the x86 version; the XP I was referring to was a x86. I have reinstalled x86 Windows 7 and the PMD and PM are doing their trick well. Core temps at Level=1 <2000RPM) are sitting around 42'C on idle--go up to 44"C under slight stress.

Go figure. Who would have thunk this?
S