Dell laptop fan very noisy in Ubuntu 16.04

Question

I have installed Ubuntu 16.04 on my Dell Inspiron N5110 and I like it a lot. But the problem is that the fan started to behave crazy. It is working almost always making it impossible to focus on anything I am doing. Many times when it is idle, it starts to go on and off in very short period of time (few seconds). I saw that many other users of Dell had similar problems with previous editions of Ubuntu and I tried to follow the solutions, but until now, none has worked to some significant extent. I check the temperature of the CPU and is usually 45-55 degrees Celsius, which is not too much.

So, I am asking is there any workaround to this?

Solution 1

There are few variations of N5110.

If you have one with Intel Graphic + Nvidia card, then Nvidia is heating up your laptop. Solution is to install Nvidia drivers which are offered in "Additional Drivers". I am using "version 367.57 from nvidia-367". Once installed open up "NVIDIA X server settings" application; go to "PRIME profiles" and select "Intel (Power saving mode)". Click "Quit", then Logout and Login again or just reboot. Laptop should run silently after that.

If you have one with radeon graphic card, then instructions above does not apply.

Solution 2

Have you tried the i8kutils solution?

1) Install i8ktuils:

sudo apt-get install i8kutils

2) Add i8k line into /etc/modules:

sudo nano /etc/modules

and add a new line containing just:

i8k

3) Make sure the module is loaded at startup.

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/options.conf

and add a new line containing:

options i8k force=1

4) Reboot and run the following command:

sudo modprobe i8k force=1

5) Create a configuration file (There is none in a clean system. Please, mind that prior to 12.04 the file had no .conf extension and this «feature» may get changed back in any later release):

sudo nano /etc/i8kmon.conf

Enter the following lines:

# Run as daemon, override with --daemon option
set config(daemon) 0

# Automatic fan control, override with --auto option
set config(auto) 1

# Report status on stdout, override with --verbose option
set config(verbose) 1

# Status check timeout (seconds), override with --timeout option
set config(timeout) 1

# Temperature thresholds: {fan_speeds low_ac high_ac low_batt high_batt}
set config(0) {{-1 0} -1 55 -1 55}
set config(1) {{-1 1} 55 70 55 70}
set config(3) {{-1 2} 70 128 70 128}

# For computer with 2 fans, use a variant of this instead:
# Temperature thresholds: {fan_speeds low_ac high_ac low_batt high_batt}
# set config(0) {{-1 0} -1 52 -1 65}
# set config(1) {{-1 1} 41 66 55 75}
# set config(2) {{-1 1} 55 80 65 85}
# set config(3) {{-1 2} 70 128 75 128}

6) Make sure there is /etc/default/i8kmon file and that it contains a line reading ENABLED=1

7) Make sure there is /etc/default/i8buttons file and that it contains a line reading ENABLED=1

8) If all the previous steps did not help, the versions of the «tk8.X» and «tcl8.X» libraries installed may be too old. The following commands worked for me, but I remember the 8.5 versions were installed manually by me instead of 8.4 some time ago. Hence, there may be 8.4, not the 8.5 versions in your system still:

sudo apt-get remove tk8.5 tcl8.5
sudo apt-get install tk8.6 tcl8.6
sudo apt-get install i8kutils

9) You may have to repeat editing /etc/default/i8buttons (please, see clause 7).

10) Reboot

Solution 3

Try i8kutils 1.43 from https://launchpad.net/i8kutils

The kernel module in use is dell-smm-hwmon; i8k kernel module does not exist anymore in recent kernels.

Solution 4

For me, It has been solved running the following:

sudo apt install smbios-utils
sudo smbios-thermal-ctl -v --set-thermal-mode=quiet

View more solutions

Comments

[Kasun Siyambalapitiya]

did the solution worked for you

[Kasun Siyambalapitiya]

did the solution worked for you

[sage]

When I installed (sudo apt-get install i8kutils) my fan went from screaming to silent instantly and I feared it had turned off. Fortunately, I already had psensor configured and running so I could see that my temperatures were OK and that my fan is actually at 2300RPM, which is silent compared to the 5100 RPM when it was screaming.

[NiVeR]

I have only Intel integrated graphic card.

[Nerijus Spl]

in such case refer to i8kutils solution. It worked well for me on other model Dell laptop. It just might need to adjust config.

[Tsar Bomba]

@NerijusSpl This worked on my XPS 9560. Is this disabling the nvidia gpu or just minimizing its use? What are the consequences of this setting? Thanks!

[Nerijus Spl]

if you select "Intel (Power saving mode)", then Intel integrated graphic is used and nvidia card is disabled; if you select "Nvidia" then nvidia card is enabled and used.

[Ian Colwell]

Be careful with this setting, as once I set it to "Intel" and rebooted, I wasn't even able to bring up the "NVIDIA X server settings" app anymore to change it back. When I selected "Intel", it seemed to completely disable the nvidia driver (nvidia-smi stopped working, and I couldn't even compile cuda stuff that depended on it). If you get stuck wanting to re-enable the nvidia driver run sudo prime-select nvidia and reboot.

[Zanna]

What hardware was this applicable to?

[robross0606]

Is there a way to do this with a console-only system? Would that even be the issue?