System Cooling Policy

My deepest apologies if this is in the wrong section.
So i recently found out the system cooling policy under the processor power management and i was wondering what the difference between active mode and passive mode?
Which mode makes my performance better?
Sorry in advance if this is a stupid question :3

 

Active would mean (I'm assuming) that the fan will essentially be always on, which will help with cooling but will be noisy and take up a small amount of energy more than passive (so a *slight* reduction in battery life).

Passive will have the fan only come on when the CPU reaches a certain threshold temperature, then turn off when it falls below that temperature or some other threshold. Not as noisy as active, sames you a *slight* amount of battery life, though you have the possibility of going over the threshold since your fan won't turn on until it reaches said temperature.

 

This is what I presume should happen in theory, but I've never found this setting to actually do anything on any laptop I've used...

 

Good question and welcome to the forum, If I set it to active or passive there is no change as to how my processor fan runs. (right now it is active but the fan for the CPU is off), if you want to test yours install HWINFO64 or HWINFO32 and check the sensors - you may have an entry for CPU and/or GPU fan RPM... I always set mine to active

 

On my Toshiba, Active meant to activly use the fan to cool the cpu. Passive would underclock the cpu to cool it. Both modes would use the secondary technique if the cpu keot heating up. I.e. if fan couldn't do it, then underclock, or vice versa. And if both methods failed, it would do a emergency shutdown, i.e. poweroff without warning. This was a few years ago, so not sure if things have changed...

 

Thanks for all the replies, however i want to know which mode allows a faster computer performance.

 

If there is a difference then Active would allow the best cooling options to keep the CPU up in speed. Not all systems are going to use the option to allow better cooling even though you set it.

 

Cooling, in any form, will only indirectly affect computer performance. The cooler a CPU or GPU, for example, the more "thermal headroom" you have to push it to the limit. If a component is extremely hot, it'll degrade quickly and/or fail, so keeping things cool is certainly important to performance, but you can't say that "10% extra cooling will definitely give you 15% better CPU performance" or anything concrete like that.

 

Agreed, especially with the newer iCore CPU's it could be that even passive cooling can tame a CPU or active under full throttle with the fans still chokes a CPU to a full throttle down under load. There are so many variables sometimes even in the same system line..............

 

Even within the same model CPU or GPU. I mean, product defects and all that...

 

As they say, All things being equal they are never the same..........................

 

As stated, Active should give you the best performance. You may also check your power settings, i.e. some systems run faster on AC than battery.