[ltp] IBM R51: The always on fan problem

[Hunter Fuller]

On  25 Apr 2006, at 4:12 PM, Laurent Gilson wrote:

> Hello
>
>> I am new to this ML. I found it when I was looking for a solution  
>> to my IBM R51 on which I installed fedora cr 4 and whose fan  
>> is ... well... always on.
>
> There are several problems with the R51 that may cause the fan- 
> always-on problem:
>
> The first (and unsolvable) one is the CeleronM. It creates far more  
> heat while idleing and triggers the fan a lot. Use a PentiumM.
1) No. The Pentium M in my R51 does the same thing.
2) D'you really think someone would go buy another  machine just  
because you said that? =)
>
> Severeal others are related to the radeon-gfx. If it's running in  
> stock configuration it triggers the fan after 10min. But using the  
> os radeon-driver and enabling dyn. clock solves that one. (In the  
> past dyn. clock didn't work for the R51, it caused crashes. That is  
> resolved now)
>
> The next common one is speedstep: Without loading the speedstep  
> modules for the PentiumM the CPU always runs at the max. frequency.  
> In turn it gets very hot and triggers the fan. (You need to setup a  
> governor for this to work).
>
> Apart from the frequency all CPUs can enter sleep-stats (called C1,  
> C2,...C8, C1 = almost no power saving, C8 = a lot of power saving)  
> to save power. If you enable/load the Xserver extentsion GLX the  
> CPU can no longer enter stats below C1. So far i don't know why.  
> With all after drivers loaded it reaches C3. With a bit hacking you  
> can get C4 (IMHO not worth it).
On mine with GLX on and off I get the same results.
>
> Next problem is the WLAN-card. In default configuration it get's  
> hot quite fast. If you enable "Power Management" (see iwconfig) it  
> consumes a lot less energy.
Huh? The WLAN card triggering the fan?! My touchpad doesn't feel hot  
(and it's directly under the touchpad).
>
> If you want more: undervolt the cpu.
Ew! I'd rather run Windows than risk my hardware. And I don't like  
Windows much.
>
> cu
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