Fan control in Windows

Honestly @henrytr every high-performance laptop that I’ve used with a high powered dGPU got way too hot to ever have on my lap. Even my old Razer Blade Pro 17" laptop made out of one giant billet of aluminum from ~2016 that I replaced with this framework got even hotter than the Framework 16 does! It would physically burn me if I touched the bottom of the laptop after it sat on a surface that wasn’t hard or didn’t allow good airflow. The only Laptops that don’t get this hot are the ones that use the iGPU primarily and throttle back both the GPU and CPU when on battery power to maximize battery life since power in = heat out. So, if you don’t want the framework to run insanely hot just run stuff on the iGPU instead of the dGPU and enable power saving mode so that CPU throttles down to like 1ghz unless it needs to go faster for some other operation. Because at full tilt this laptop needs to be able to dissipate 200+ watts of heat which is not insignificant if you think about a 100 watt resistive bulb and how hot those get and compare it to having 2 of those running inside of a little case with little fans blowing over them. I know that’s not a perfect comparison but it’s in the ballpark.

So you’re options really are as follows…
1) Run your scripts and unsigned driver that lets you run the fans at 100% to try to stay ahead of the heat build up. This will only work if you’re not putting heavy loads on for long periods of time otherwise it will still just saturate, and you’ll be back to the same unmanageable temps on your lap. But if you’re just doing shot operations these might be just perfect for you and why they should let us control fan curves in the future with either a signed driver or BIOS change.
2) Throttle your CPU and GPU through a custom power profile in Windows so that when you’re running the laptop in your lap it gives up performance for heat management. This is what most laptops do that try to give you like 10 hours of battery life for getting work done at the expense of barely being able to play a YouTube video at 30FPS :wink:
3) Have your cake and eat it too by buying one of these cooling plates that will help force fresh air up through the laptop vents on the bottom and improve cooling while adding a layer between you and the laptop itself so you don’t get burned. Then you can just run at 100% everything and not worry about it. (https://amzn.to/3TvtHKR)
4) Mod your framework laptop by adding direct powering to all the fans inside of the laptop using diodes to prevent back feeding power into the mainboard and link them to a switch on the outside of the case so you can run at 100% power all the time with a flip of a button or let the PC manage the fan speeds in the other switch state. I’m not even sure how much work this would be because I don’t know how deep the fan wiring is in the laptop but I’ve seen something similar done on desktop systems before using a module that with the flip of a switch it handed of all the fans to an external controller.
5) Talk whoever wrote the framework fan driver into getting it signed so you don’t have to run Windows 11 in test signing mode leaving your PC exposed to all the filth of the internet so you have to watch your back everytime you visit a hub site or open email while drunk. :wink:

Okay, ADHD drugs are starting to kick in now! :crazy_face: Are my ideas good yet?

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