Cooling Things Down a Bit…

Hey! Today I'm going to be talking about fine-tuning the speed of your computers fans. In modern computers, the hardware inside of your computers case (or under your laptop's keyboard) can get extremely hot and can even destroy itself if not properly cooled. I've experienced this first hand when I was in high school, and it cost me a brand-new (at the time) "Athlon" CPU. Fortunately, with the help of my strong-arm'd uncle, the processor was replaced by the merchant I purchased it from because of faulty installation instructions. Then, and now, computer fans are vitally important, especially the fans that are moving air to and from your CPU (Central Processing Unit).

Fortunately the days of a processor destroying itself because of a faulty fan are coming to a close. Manufacturers such as Intel have designed their processors over the past several years to slow themselves down (which in turn cools them down) when temperatures approach a critical level. While this can certainly save us a lot of money and inconvenience, many users are experiencing significantly lower performance due to faulty fans, or unhelpful fan speeds. Other users have fans so loud they couldn’t forget about them if they wanted to. So I’m going to talk about taking control fan speeds, specifically in the Lenovo T60p (my laptop, and so continue my T60p series).

The best, and only, program to my knowledge that allows owners of Lenovo (formerly IBM) notebooks to adjust their fan speeds manually, is a wonderful utility called “ThinkPad Fan Control.” As of this writing the current version of the program 0.62, and it supports a whole host of Lenovo/IBM models, specifically ThinkPad models. It is updated fairly frequently and can be found here. It free to anyone who would like to use it, but users of the program are encouraged to donate some amount to sponsor further development and continued support of the program.
You’ll have to scroll past the list of donors at the top of the page to download the program. As you do, you’ll probably notice simplistic the website design is, and ThinkPad Fan Control is no different than its website: very simplistic. There are no fancy graphics or buttons in the programs layout, and at first glance it may seem difficult to understand or use. But be assured that the program functions flawlessly on most ThinkPad models, and for most users the setup of it will only take two or three minutes.

After downloading ThinkPad Fan Control (download link) and opening the zip archive it is packaged in simply run the setup and follow through the first few options. Before completing the installation it will give you the option of starting itself up when you start windows. If you would like to let it control your fan permanently and forget about your CPU fan (like me) this is a very good option to ensure is selected. After the installation, the program will open and you will see the window in the image on the right.

The numbered items in the “Temps” window pane are the current temperatures of your computers various components. There are several important temperatures to take note of: “cpu” is the temperature of your processor. This temperature should not approach 90 degrees Celsius, or the processor will begin to slow itself down and hence, slowing your entire computer down. A good temperature for a processor like mine (Intel Core2Duo) is between 45C – 55C if you’re surfing the internet, using a word processor, or sending grandmamma an email using Outlook. These temperatures will go up to about 65C - 85C if you are doing something intensive on your computer like burning a DVD, running a virus scan, watching high-quality video, or playing a game.

The second important item to watch for is “gpu,” which is the graphics processor of your computer. This item may not show up for you depending on your graphics hardware. If it does, the temperature will vary depending on your computer. Its temperature will go up if you are editing photos in Photoshop, rendering 3D graphics, watching a high quality movie, or playing a 3D game. This temperature should not go higher than 100C, but temperatures will vary depending on your computer’s graphics system.

The third item worth mentioning is “bat” which represents your battery. This temperature should generally stay about the same. Note your battery temperature when your computer first starts up. If you ever notice it climbing more than a about 5 degrees, disconnect your battery and call support, and explain the situation to them. Excessive heat is the number one killer of Lithium-Ion batteries.

Beneath the “Temps” window pane is the options “all” or “act.” The default selection is “act” which stands for “active” and is telling the program if you want to view all temperature readings or just those that represent devices that are actually on your computer. For most users (including myself) there is probably no reason to view the inactive temperature readings, so this option is best left set to “all.”
The second half of the programs window contains the “Fan Control” section, which is the primary purpose of the program. There are three fields which display the current state of your cooling system. The first is “State” which cryptically tells the user what state their fan is currently in. “Fan 0” is when the fan is switched off, “Fan 1” is the lowest fan speed, with “Fan 2” – “Fan 7” representing increasingly faster fan speeds. If you ever see “Fan 64” in this field, that is “Ultra” speed, only intended to be used for short periods of time when the system desperately needs cooling.

The second window pane “Switch” displays the temperature a device in your system must reach in order to trigger a change in the speed of your fan.
The third pane, “Speed” displays the current speed of your systems fan. If this box consistently displays a “0” RPM regardless of the load you place on your computer, and you never hear a noise coming from your computers fan, your computer occasionally locks up for no reason, and your temperatures in the “Temps” section are rather high, you likely have a faulty fan that needs to be replaced. Otherwise, the speeds represented in this window will vary depending on the fan’s state, but for my laptop they tend to be between 2400 – 4000 RPMs, depending on the tasks I am performing.

The bottom portion of the program is where you control your fan speed. For most users, I would strongly suggest you leave the Mode set to “Smart,” which will intelligently control your fan speed to ensure quiet operation unless needed. The BIOS mode simply returns control of your system fan back to your computers hardware (i.e. the default settings you’ve had all along). This mode is useful if you want to use ThinkPad Fan Control to monitor the temperature of your computer only. The third option, manual mode, allows you to set your own fan states (Fan 0 – Fan 7, and even Fan 64!). This is useful if you plan on playing a game or doing something intensive and you don’t want your fan changing speeds back and forth as you play. It is also useful if you have a very loud fan and you are in an environment where you need to keep quiet (like when your wife is asleep in bed next to you…)

There is one last bit to go over, ThinkPad Fan Control has a configuration file that can be changed to change the way the program operates in nearly every way. This feature is for more advanced users, but if you decide you’re up for the challenge, you can find a shortcut to the configuration file in your windows start menu. A final warning, I would advise against running your fan at “Fan 64” for long periods of time, as this is known to burn out fans very quickly. The mode is for short bursts only.

I hope this post was helpful or at least interesting. I will post again in the future and go over how to control fan speeds other laptops, Macs, and desktops. If you are really interested in having a cooler laptop, whether you have a Lenovo or not, I would suggest checking out my post on undervolting, too. Hope everyone has a good day,

Rob