I’ve got a 6 month old 7040 laptop that lately has just refused to spin up the fan, leading to heating issues.
Using ectool I can set the target RPM, however it absolutely refuses to reach any RPM higher than about 250, which is nowhere near the 5000 I might set manually with fw-fanctrl disabled. While the fan is running at 250 RPM I keep hearing a clicking or rustling sound from the fan. Using ectool to set the fans to 0 shuts it down now problem and the sound disappears.
The weird part is that occasionally when booting up the system works just as expected with the fan spinning up to max if I tell it to. The rustling sound is also gone so I’m not sure if this is just some strange artifact from the fan itself when running at an extremely low, but non-zero, speed. I can’t quite figure out what triggers the ‘proper’ behavior. I was convinced yesterday that if I boot it up with all 4 expansion slots disconnected the fan will behave properly, but today that was not the case, I can’t quite nail down the trigger.
Once I’ve got the fan behaving properly the computer works great until the next cold boot. The fact that I can reboot the system with no issues leads me to believe that this is a hardware or firmware issue.
I’m currently traveling, but as soon as I get home I’ll open the laptop up check the fan. I’ve seen a couple of posts here with people having problems with the fan spinning up at all, but has anyone run into the problem of the fan hitting a ceiling of ca 250 RPM?
Which command did you use? $ sudo ectool fanduty 100 set the fan to max speed and $ sudo ectool autofanctrl set the fan to auto, AFAIK there’s no way to set the target speed in RPM
Probably hardware issue. Remove the input cover and observe the fan
Which command did you use? $ sudo ectool fanduty 100 set the fan to max speed and $ sudo ectool autofanctrl set the fan to auto, AFAIK there’s no way to set the target speed in RPM
I’ve used ectool pwmsetfanrpm 5000 for testing, but fanduty has the exact same effect.
Opening up the laptop to inspect the fan revealed two things. The first is that the fan appears to be fine, rotating the fan by hand shows that it’s not hitting anything. I recorded the problem as well to get a sample of the noise, which can be found here :https://photos.app.goo.gl/fNV7ypNeHrNet1Hv8
I noted that with the fan running at full speed (which is about 250-300 RPM in this case) and issuing the command to set the RPM to 0 causes the sound to immediately stop, but the fan itself takes a second or two to spin down, leading me to believe that there’s either some issue with the fan controller, or the motor. I’ll try to take some measurements on the fan contact with a scope tomorrow.
The fan being audible at all below 1000rpm definitely does not sound normal to me. It is possible just the tach feedback bit is broken or something and it is actually running at normal speeds. Also probably worth checking if anything on the fan gets hot, there have been some reported cases of fans “melting down”.
You were right. pwmsetfanrpm does work, although setting it to 250 makes the fan run like 2100RPM. Higher RPM works properly. You can get lower RPM (down to 1000) by fanduty 10
Looks like the fault is at its electric circuit, the friction of the fan is normal