How to change Framework fan curve? Fan related thermal issues

I am sure people have seen the thermal issues with the framework. I know that my laptop gets fairly hot around the middle bottom plate, but I do not appear to be part of the cpu related thermal issues from what I can tell. Instead my issue seems to be related to fan speed, where it is like the laptop refuses to blow the fans faster.

For reference when playing something like a Youtube video or something, There is a lag time of between 30s to a minute for something like play or pause. If I am lucky it may be instant or 10-15 seconds. On Facebook, I can type normally, and it will know what I typed but it will only do one character a second update on screen. If I use FreeTube on the Framework or the messenger app on my phone, there is no issue whatsoever. I am sure that the anti add block measures that are meant to chew up battery life by putting an unnecessary processing power burden on the device is related to this specific issue since it is the most consistent marker demonstrating fan issues and how quickly it can be resolved by increasing fan speed.

I installed ectool from framework on my NixOS operating system using "fw-ectool’. When setting the fans to a higher speed, like 60% or 70% the issue described earlier goes away completely. There seems to be an issue with the fans not ramping up, like the algorithm they are using expects a cold or cool room and is meant to minimize noise.

Here is the speed before 60%:
[termg@nixos:~]$ sudo ectool pwmgetfanrpm all
Fan 0 RPM: 2421
Fan 1 RPM: 2259

Here is the speed after:
[termg@nixos:~]$ sudo ectool pwmgetfanrpm all
Fan 0 RPM: 4530
Fan 1 RPM: 4388

Obviously for whatever reason I need to basically double the speed curve so that I don’t have frankly unusable lag on my computer, however doing the ectool fanduty 60 or whatever every single time I open the laptop is not realistic either. I tried looking on how to change the fan curve, but the recommendations are typically that it does not exist or that there is software, but mostly for windows that cannot allow adjustment of fan speed manually and that the linux ectool is the only way to have manual control. What exactly do I do to make my laptop a bit more usable? I don’t want to have to make some kind of automated cron job that activates when the laptop is no longer in sleep or something.

I would recommend looking at

That’s what at least some portion of us are using to control the fans on our frameworks on linux (I use it)

If the service is paused or stopped, the fans will revert to their default behaviour.

Does that mean that if I restart the computer, put it to sleep, etc… I will need to restart it?

No since it’s a service it starts itself.
It’s more that if you choose to pause it for whatever reason the default fan behavior resumes.

So you just install it and then it’s on permanently until you pause it or uninstall it

Do you have the ability to test on another distro? Fedora perhaps?

What kernel version are you on?

Those issues sound like something else. I am currently typing, watching youtube, running a VM, and set my fanduty as “0” to test:

Fan 0 RPM: 1473
Fan 1 RPM: 1443
--sensor name -------- temperature -------- ratio (fan_off and fan_max) --
ambient_f75303@4d     316 K (= 43 C)        N/A (fan_off=0 K, fan_max=0 K)
charger_f75303@4d     319 K (= 46 C)        N/A (fan_off=0 K, fan_max=0 K)
apu_f75303@4d         315 K (= 42 C)           0% (320 K and 335 K)
cpu@4c                322 K (= 49 C)           0% (338 K and 370 K)
gpu_amb_f75303@4d     273 K (= 0 C)        N/A (fan_off=0 K, fan_max=0 K)
gpu_vr_f75303@4d      273 K (= 0 C)           0% (323 K and 347 K)
gpu_vram_f75303@4d    273 K (= 0 C)        N/A (fan_off=0 K, fan_max=0 K)
gpu_amdr23m@40        273 K (= 0 C)           0% (323 K and 353 K)

You can use ectool and ramp up your fans - at the cost of increased noise - but either you are getting some bad thermal throttling due to the LM, or something else is going on in the OS.

Just my 0.02

Definitely thermal throttling. But at the same time people with new devices have similar experiences just to a lesser degree. I can’t really tell whether it is just Sillicon valley B.S. or if it is something else. The liquid metal issue as far as I know is uneven cpu temps, but going off of the system monitor temp readings it seems fine since the fourth one everyone seems to have higher than the other 3.

I’d rather not do some crap with partitioning and whatnot, so I am not going to be messing around with that in case I screw something up. I may be familiar enough with Linux to use it daily, but I am not good enough to do command line daily.

[termg@nixos:~]$ nixos-version
24.05.7376.b134951a4c9f (Uakari)

The cpu temperatures on normal fan speed are typically at 60 degrees, and the fourth is at 70 degrees. Right now on 80% they are at 40 degrees and at times 60 degrees for the fourth but that is usually when I guess the GPU is in use. Unless I mistook how many people have the uneven ones, it should be pretty normal temperature ratios. Pretty sure the fourth one is GPU and that makes sense since it I don’t have the dGPU.

[termg@nixos:~]$ sudo ectool temps all
–sensor name -------- temperature -------- ratio (fan_off and fan_max) –
ambient_f75303@4d 314 K (= 41 C) N/A (fan_off=0 K, fan_max=0 K)
charger_f75303@4d 313 K (= 40 C) N/A (fan_off=0 K, fan_max=0 K)
apu_f75303@4d 316 K (= 43 C) 0% (320 K and 335 K)
cpu@4c 315 K (= 42 C) 0% (338 K and 370 K)
gpu_amb_f75303@4d 273 K (= 0 C) N/A (fan_off=0 K, fan_max=0 K)
gpu_vr_f75303@4d 273 K (= 0 C) 0% (323 K and 347 K)
gpu_vram_f75303@4d 273 K (= 0 C) N/A (fan_off=0 K, fan_max=0 K)
gpu_amdr23m@40 273 K (= 0 C) 0% (323 K and 353 K)

@DraconicBovine Okay. I’ll give it a shot.

I tried to install via the global instructions, but it just says execvp: No such file or directory. Tried a number of things, but going from the console it just does not work.

[termg@nixos:~/fw-fanctrl]$ ./install.sh
bash: ./install.sh: cannot execute: required file not found

Any idea what that could be referencing?

Honestly this all sounds like a bad thermal paste job. Try using a thermal pad or repaste it. Your temps seem excessive and it is likely not because the fans are not ramping up. If they were ramping up slowly the temps would still eventually drop, but you are not experiencing that. The fan is strugglinng to cool your device, and under the workload you described it shoudl not be so.

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Well, just now at work my laptop had 80 degrees on three and basically 100 degrees on the fourth. You would think the fan speed would ramp up at those kinds of temperatures since setting the speed to 70% basically doubled the fan speed. I don’t know if I do have thermal paste issues, but I know that the fans are definitely not working properly and it is annoying. The fans are not ramping up slowly. They are just not ramping up at all it seems.

Yeah, I have kinda similar issues, but instead my fans do ramp up. They aren’t helping though as my CPU (9 7940HS) hits 100 c easily when having word and chrome open. I have talked with FW support, and I’m on the list for the PTM7950 replacement. Just hope they ship soon, as the problem gets worse and worse day after day.