CPU fan runs continuously

Question

I have a Lenevo Ideapad 720S-13IKB (Type 81BV) with Ubuntu 20.04 in it. Note: Support page.

Even when my computer is at idle and using less than 5% of processing power and less than 1GB ram my computers fan makes loud noise and it runs every time .

My idle CPU temperature resides in the range of 40C to 45C which is medium hot. The weird thing is that the fan runs at really at high speed even when RAM being used is less than 1 Gb and processing power being used is less than 5% and it is really annoying.

Hope i can get some help with this.

@Pilot6 I am sorry.I am new to this .you don't have to be harsh. — Grep, Aug 17 '20 at 18:10
Does this answer your question? [fan constantly running on hp elitebook 8460p ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1166988/fan-constantly-running-on-hp-elitebook-8460p-ubuntu-18-04-3-lts) — karel, Aug 17 '20 at 18:35
Your BIOS is up to date. Edit your question and show me `ps auxc | grep -i therm` and `free -h` and `sudo sysctl vm.swappiness`. — heynnema, Aug 17 '20 at 18:46
Had the same problem. 18.04 -> no problems 20.04 -> fan constantly running. Machine is a Fujitsu E746... — ndbd, Jan 13 '21 at 22:29

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 12 '21 at 19:00

4

Initially my fans were running a lot too. But installing tlp worked really well for me. Fans rarely spin now and the system stays cool. Just follow: sudo apt install tlp for Ubuntu. For other distributions and OS, follow Official TLP documentation

Just FYI, my system is a Dell Inspiron 15 7572 (running Ubuntu 20.04)

answered Feb 12 '21 at 19:00

CapTen101

141
4

TLP is to save battery not to correct fan speed which runs continuously on Ubuntu – ACV Nov 14 '21 at 16:55
Actually don't you think it's kind of inter-related? TLP helps in killing/slowing-down those processes which are not being actively used by the system which ultimately decreases the load on the CPU and hence slows the fan down @ACV – CapTen101 Nov 14 '21 at 17:31
1

It happened every time when my notebook went to idle that the fan started to spin crazy. Even though I closed everything. For some reason `tlp` fixed the issue for me too. – Zoltán Süle Jan 20 '22 at 15:53
That's exactly what I was talking about! @ZoltánSüle – CapTen101 Jan 21 '22 at 09:44

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 14 '21 at 18:15

2

@CapTen101 I thought so because I am having the same problem on desktop PC. In Windows the fans are quiet, but in Ubuntu they constantly run on higher speeds for some reason. And there are no high loads in my case. So I thought that rather a bug / misconfiguration in fan speed rather than fans responding to high CPU load.

answered Nov 14 '21 at 18:15

ACV

133
5

It's the opposite for me. Even when I do decent heavy tasks, my fan noise is not that much in Ubuntu, but as soon as switch to windows? My fans go crazy (Windows 10). Recently I upgraded to Windows 11 and only since then the situation is better – CapTen101 Jan 21 '22 at 09:45

CPU fan runs continuously

2 Answers2