HP Fan Control

Cmp_Cmndo

Cmp_Cmndo

Well-Known Member
I see a number of threads regarding fan control. Martin has already determined that my HP laptop is not supported. The desktop I'm on doesn't show any options for fan control. The sensor is a Winbond/Nuvoton W83627THF. The BIOS has no hardware control at all. Computer is Medion, but motherboard is MS-7046, modified for Medion so many BIOS options are not available. CPU Fan is shown on Sensor Display. It's an aftermarket PWM fan & the sensor does show the rpm's varying (can hear it, too). Something is controlling it, don't know what.
 
Martin

Martin

HWiNFO Author
Staff member
RE: Fan Control

Fan control was never intended to be implemented and there are no plans for a wide fan control support, there are other tools which offer advanced fan control for many generic LPCs/SIOs (like SpeedFan for example).
I implemented fan control only as a special case for few laptop models (Alienware and certain high-end HP models) because there was no other tool in the world being able to control fans there.
 
M

mididoc

Well-Known Member
RE: Fan Control

Martin said:
Fan control was never intended to be implemented and there are no plans for a wide fan control support, there are other tools which offer advanced fan control for many generic LPCs/SIOs (like SpeedFan for example).
Click to expand...

as long as the parameters cannot be stored in BIOS,
fan control makes no sense. in speed fan this works only with speedfan as autoload program running in background. nobody likes this, very unrelieable.

Additionally it may damage the system.
 
Martin

Martin

HWiNFO Author
Staff member
RE: Fan Control

Yes, it would allow to run the system out of spec and that's also one of the reasons why I haven't implemented support.
 
I

ice-tea

New Member
RE: Fan Control

Just offering my 0.02$...

Other tools like speedfan etc are incomplete at best, especially where laptops are concerned. Unfortunately, native fan control is one of the first things that go down the drain when swapping out graphic cards in a notebook. If anything, having a means to control the fans would cause the system to run within spec again rather than the other way around ;)
 
Martin

Martin

HWiNFO Author
Staff member
RE: Fan Control

In the latest Beta (build 1693) I have added fan speed monitoring for HP Probook 4530s and few others. Do you see it there now ?
 
Cmp_Cmndo

Cmp_Cmndo

Well-Known Member
RE: Fan Control

I see the reading, but it is incorrect. I run the .exe & choose "Sensor Only" & it takes a very long time for detection. Then the Warning Message appears. I choose "Continue" & it reads 963 rpm, when fan is at 0 rpm, then quit & start again & choose "Disable Sensor". Same reading. Now, if run again, no error message.

I am running the HP Fan Control as mentioned earlier. Waited until fan came on at around 3000rpm & your reading is in agreement with HPFC reading. When HPFC goes to 0, you're stuck at 963. Your max reading is 7021rpm (clearly wrong!), min reading is 963. Looks like an offset (480) & a scaling error (2x), but not all the time. Fan goes off at 50C, on at 60C. Once both are running for a while & the fan comes on, your speeds agree.

Exit HPFC & all is different. Fan speed read 3300 rpm (min, max, current). Restart HPFC, current & min are 963 max is 3300. Exit HPFC, now start HPFC again. Now fan is running continuously. Fan finally shuts off & you're stuck at 963.

Maybe this helps from the Instructions for HPFC
HPFancontol for HP ProBook 4530s and maybe others in the series.
Tested on a 4530s with integrated HD3000 GPU.

IMPORTANT!!! Disable "Fan always on while on AC power" in the BIOS.
Without this setting, HPFanControl will not be able to turn the fan off when you use the laptop with AC power.

When the program starts, it locks the CPU temp at a low value.
This enables full control of the fan and uses the GPU temp as reference for turning the fan on/off/faster/slower. The "fake" CPU temp can be set by editing HP32start=XX. (default=31 on 4530s)
Edit XX in the first line of this .ini as the temperature where the fan would turn off on its own.
To find this value on your notebook, open RW - http://jacky5488.myweb.hinet.net/download.html , go the the EC (embedded controller) and double click byte 38 to edit it. Using a dec to hex converter - http://easycalculation.com/decimal-converter.php , start writing values lower than 39C so you can find at what temp the fan turns off. When HPFanControl closes, or when the user
changes from smart or manual mode to bios mode, the program resets the real CPU temp value, by writing 00 at byte 38 and also resets the fan speed.
If on your notebook the "reset cpu temp" value is other than 00, you can change it at "HP32stop=xx".
 

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Martin

Martin

HWiNFO Author
Staff member
RE: Fan Control

Thanks for the feedback. So the 963 value should be interpreted as 0 RPM - I'll fix this in the next build. Not sure about the other problems yet...
 
Cmp_Cmndo

Cmp_Cmndo

Well-Known Member
RE: Fan Control

Since HPFC is in the Windows Startup, it is initialized & running prior to HWInfo64. I will have to disable it & see what happens. Exiting HPFC may not be the same as never running it all. 963 may only be interpreted as 0, under certain conditions.

I did verify that "Disable "Fan always on while on AC power" in the BIOS." is disabled & all my tests are while the laptop is on AC power.

Once HPFC is exited, the fan starts running almost immediately, so it is difficult to get to a 0 rpm condition without it running, even with a USB powered notebook cooler.

Since I don't know exactly the rated speed of the cpu fan, I only assume it's 3000rpm, so 3480 rpm is not out of line, but 7000 rpm is impossible. This is why my guess of 480 offset (963/2) & 2x scaling (7000/2 -480=3000)under certain conditions. At times the fan runs well under 3000rpm, since I believe it is PWM controlled.

If I can get HPFC to work in "Manual Mode", I might get more accurate data. Manual Mode can be a bit risky, because the Corei3 can heat up pretty fast, if no fan at all. My 4530s 1 year warranty is expired this week. IIRC, this is why you don't want to implement fan control?
 
Martin

Martin

HWiNFO Author
Staff member
RE: Fan Control

963 RPM when recalculate back to the EC values gives 0xFF, so I suppose that might mean fan off.
Let me know if you have more info.. Maybe the 7000 RPM was an EC reading fault because of a conflict between HPFC and HWiNFO running concurrently.
 
Cmp_Cmndo

Cmp_Cmndo

Well-Known Member
RE: Fan Control

This is odd. Started laptop, cpu fan starts as soon as power is applied. When HPFC is loaded, fan stops because cpu temp is only 40C. Turn off HPFC, load HWInfo, max, min, current all 3000rpm. Restart HPFC, fan turns off, current & min read 963, max reads 3000. All of a sudden, max reads 5342 rpm & fan is still off. Right now, rpm reads 963, 963, 5342 & cpu temp is 52C. Reset Min/Max, all read 963, with fan off & temp at 52C.

Waiting for temp to rise to 60C so fan turns on...might take 20 minutes or so.

Fan still off & max went to 22341 rpm. (no typo!!). Reset Min/Max, back to 963.
Temp hit 60C, fan fan came on for 3 sec, temp went to 53C. Saw current & min briefly change. Not fast enough to remember current & min. Fan off.
Current---Min---Max
963---963---3321

60C briefly
current = 2761 rpm, then 963 rpm

Only takes a few seconds of fan to go from 60 to 50 & a few minutes back to 60, so fan duty cycle is very low.

Fan is off & max reads 245760 rpm (LOL). What is going on with that? Must be a conflict. Need to automatically lock Max if Current is 0, if that is possible.
 
Cmp_Cmndo

Cmp_Cmndo

Well-Known Member
RE: Fan Control

HWiNFO64 v4.01-1695 Beta has corrected most of the speed readings, i.e. 963 is now 0. After fan has gone to 0 rpm, Max will change. Immediately after fan speed=0 rpm , max will read 3000 rpm. Suddenly it jumped to 4096 rpm. Reset Min/Max sets all to 0 rpm. & is now holding. Fan came on & all reading were correct & the Current the same as HPFC. Fan went off, current & min went to 0 rpm Max at 3110 & holding. Fan came on a 2nd time, all is working fine. After fan off for about 5 minutes, Max jumped to 245760 rpm. Fan came on again, & max will never change unless manually reset.

Martin:
1. Can you automatically lock Max value if Current is 0? Unlock when Current is not 0?
2. Two recent threads are named "Fan Control". Can you rename this one "HP Fan Control"?
 
Martin

Martin

HWiNFO Author
Staff member
I'm sorry, but it's not possible to do such lock, because I can only determine that fan is off based on the speed reported. And this speed seem sometimes to be read incorrect. Might this be because you're running HPFC and HWiNFO concurrently?
 
Cmp_Cmndo

Cmp_Cmndo

Well-Known Member
Yes, HPFC and HWiNFO are running concurrently.
No, the Current speed is always reported correctly & in perfect agreement with HPFC reported speed. HPFC only reports Current rpm. HWInfo Max only rises to some crazy value when the fan is off, not when it is on. The cause is unclear to me. Lock the Max value when the Current value goes to 0 rpm. When Current value goes above 0 rpm, unlock Max value.

As to why only the Max value is affected when the fan is off must have something to do with your programming. You might figure it out & not have to lock the value, in the meantime, lock & unlock the value at the appropriate times.

My 30 years experience as a hardware controls engineer says this will work. Besides, it's still Beta.

Thanks for all your hard work, your dedication is amazing. HWInfo is the best!!
 
Martin

Martin

HWiNFO Author
Staff member
Thanks :)
But the min and max values in HWiNFO depend on the current value. Every value read from a sensor (and displayed) is compared against actual min and max values already taken. If it's lower than min or higher than max, then this is taken as the respective new min/max value.
That means, if you see a 'crazy' min or max value, then this value must have been measured and displayed as current value for a while.
Just watch the values displayed for a while and you should catch it ;) Or better and easier - enable the logging feature and this should be captured in the log.
 
Cmp_Cmndo

Cmp_Cmndo

Well-Known Member
It's now functioning completely differently from yesterday. When started, Sensor Warning message appears every time. It shows HP EC, but all columns are blank. After 3-4 times of exiting & starting, it finally started to display. I can't see the window when I start typing, so it could change & I wouldn't catch it. Have enabled, "show in tray" for this 1 item only. It's now refusing to display any values at all, now just disable sensor.

Today it only functions properly if HWInfo is loaded prior to HPFC. Have yet to see a "crazy" value.

I'm afraid the conflict between HPFC & HWInfo renders HWInfo useless for fan monitoring. Since HPFC only turns the fan on when necessary, it has a greater functionality for me.

UPDATE:
It started working properly again after deleting Microsoft Office 2010 Starter. This seems to be a very stubborn program to uninstall, MS even has a special Fix for deletion. Several services were deleted & registry was scrubbed. Am using Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

I don't think the conflict was with HPFC but with MS Office Starter 2010, specifically, MS Office Click to Run. Everything seems to be running normally, now.
 
Martin

Martin

HWiNFO Author
Staff member
I don't think there can be any such kind of interaction between MS Office and HWiNFO. I'd rather say that it was just a coincidence. Give it some more time and you'll see...
The EC sensor has always been a problematic one and that's also the reason why you get the warning.
I'm sorry, but there's not much I can do about this, it happens because of how the access to this sensor has been designed...
 
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