Re: Fan control (and power-saving in general) on Dell Inspiron Studio 153x
Le Tuesday 3 April 2012 16:09:14, Joe Emenaker a écrit :
> So, I multi-boot my Dell Inspiron Studio 1537 with Windows 7, Debian,
> and Backtrack (which is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian)...
>
> Windows 7 gets the best battery life out of all of them. I've tried to
> get better fan control and sensor data in Debian, but, as I recall, the
> prober from lm-sensors never seems to find a way to control my fans,
> etc. And, on Backtrack, the fans are on pretty high constantly. As a
> result, my battery life is noticeably worse with Debian and Backtrack.
>
> Can anyone share any secrets or tips they have with getting better fan
> control or cpu-throttling or battery life on this line of Dell Inspiron
> Studio's (the 153x, series)?
As mentioned before, it is better to have too much fan work than not enough...
As long as the hardware is correctly handled by Linux, if the fans are on it
means that there is heat to evacuate. Hence, I suggest the following
directions:
- Check that the hardware is correctly configured
=> Check if there are any BIOS update & check if there are any option to tweak
(for instance, things like "Fan always on");
=> Make sure that the cooling hardware is clean (no dust).
- Check that the hardware is supported by your OS
=> Make sure that all the acpi stuff is installed and that it "recognized" the
elements (fan, thermal zone, etc. ).
- Configure appropriately the OS:
=> make sure that scaling is enabled and that the correct governor is on;
=> Check your kernel version. There are some power consumption regressions
into some kernel versions. I suggest using 2.6.34 or 3.3 versions
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_kernel_regress2&num=1
=> Check that the power management of the video card is on and efficient (For
instance, it looks like the AMD proprietary drivers have a much better power
management than the free drivers). On my notebook, it makes a tremendous
difference.
Good luck,
Gurvan
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