Thermal information and fan control

**Call_M** · March 5th, 2011

Summary:
I cannot monitor temperature of my CPU and motherboard and I cannot control my fans. Do you have a solution or maybe similar problems? Please leave a message!

Hi,
I made myself a new system. I bought a CPU with a nice cooler, a GPU with integrated cooler and my case has 3 fans. (I want to do some over clocking in the future) With all this cooling violence I actually want to see what the temperature of my components are and also control my fans for noise reduction.

In my BIOS a can set a target temperature for my CPU and for the case fans I can only set one value. For my GPU I have no clue to control it.

In Ubuntu my fans are all running at the same speed the whole time. Even when the system goes to sleep (and I never get it out BTW). This results in a lot of noise and probably unnecessary power consumption.

So I searched a bit in the Ubuntu forum and I am not the only one with fan and temperature controlling problems. The last 3 days these topics came where active:

Ubuntu not Adjusting Fan Speed http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1631519
problem with lm-sensors and temperature http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1699121
ATI mobility radeon 5730 HD fan is running all the time, GPU is cold http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1566728
Acer Aspire 5742 i3 Intel HD - cpu fan speed http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...+speed+control
Cooling problems under Ubuntu http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1696654
dmesg: "CPU power or thermal limit exceeded" http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1672407

Non of these topics resulted in a workable solution!

What I learned from the topics are the following commands:

Code:

sensors

the command opens lm-sensors and lists the detected sensors. For me the output is:

k10temp-pci-00c3
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1: +16.6°C (high = +70.0°C)

This does not give a lot of answers.. Actually it brings me to my first questions:

Q1. Is this my soundcard or my GPU? My GPU is btw installed on a PCI-E slot.
Q2. How do I control the temperature of this component? 16 degrees is pretty cold --> is this correct?

The next command I performed was:

Code:

sudo sensors-detect

this detects sensors. (not all btw)
The eventual summary it gave was:

Driver `to-be-written':
* ISA bus, address 0x290
Chip `Nuvoton W83677HG-I Super IO Sensors' (confidence: 9)

Driver `k10temp' (autoloaded):
* Chip `AMD Family 10h thermal sensors' (confidence: 9)

Note: there is no driver for Nuvoton W83677HG-I Super IO Sensors yet.
Check http://www.lm-sensors.org/wiki/Devices for updates.

No modules to load, skipping modules configuration.

Unloading i2c-dev... OK

So there is no driver yet.. They are busy with it. But this results also give me questions:

Q3: What is a Super IO Sensor and what does it detect?
Q4: Are there alternative programs for lm-sensors that work around this problem?

So now I know that I cannot read what the sensors are detecting. But why can't I control fans??
In one topic, forum member intuited, came with a possible explanation of the problems:

Originally Posted by intuited

PS I'm guessing that the lack of support for temperature readings and fan control in Linux itself is because of the unsupported HECI and SMBus chips. When I do

Code:

$ sudo lshw | grep -A15 UNCLAIMED

I see those two controllers listed as unclaimed; I gather that this means that drivers are not available for them.

For me the command gave the following result:

*-serial UNCLAIMED
description: SMBus
product: SBx00 SMBus Controller
vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
physical id: 14
bus info: pci@0000:00:14.0
version: 41
width: 32 bits
clock: 66MHz
configuration: latency=0
*-ide
description: IDE interface
product: SB700/SB800 IDE Controller
vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
physical id: 14.1
bus info: pci@0000:00:14.1

So no drivers for SMBus and IDE. And that leads me to my final questions:

Q5: what is are SMBus and IDE controllers?
Q6: What is the fasted way to get support for these two things?

I hope someone can help me working to a solution or can give some tips. If you have/had similar problems please let me know.

My specs are:
mobo: Asrock 890GX Extreme 3
CPU: AMD Phenom II X3 720
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5770
CPU cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
Case: Cooler Master CM 690

**An Sanct** · March 5th, 2011

I'm unable to have any of the temperature read, except for the SMART HDD one...

My specs
OS: Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat
mobo: ASUS P7P55D-E
CPU: Intel I5-750
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 series (no ventilator)

**P . P . L .** · March 6th, 2011

Hi Call_M.

Quote// k10temp-pci-00c3
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1: +16.6°C (high = +70.0°C) //EQ
__________________________________________________

This temp is from your CPU core, it could be the right reading it depends.

Hard to say without seeing other temp readings.

If the room temp is low.

If cpu is idle & how good of a cooler you have on it.

FYI. My x6 1055T idles around 20c.

**Call_M** · March 6th, 2011

Originally Posted by Peter Leman

Hi Call_M.

Quote// k10temp-pci-00c3
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1: +16.6°C (high = +70.0°C) //EQ
__________________________________________________

This temp is from your CPU core, it could be the right reading it depends.

Hard to say without seeing other temp readings.

If the room temp is low.

If cpu is idle & how good of a cooler you have on it.

FYI. My x6 1055T idles around 20c.

Hi,

Thanks for your replay!
I am not sure about this sensor because if I check in my BIOS my CPU and mobo temp are always around 34 degrees. What I think is a bit high with a cooler that is most of the time full on.

But if it is my CPU than I only need to find our how to control it.

**cascade9** · March 6th, 2011

Serial-UNCLAIMED is not a problem. IDE, thats because the SB850 doesnt have IDE support, so IDE is provided by an addon chip. (if you have an IDE drive, its working right? and if you dont, it doesnt matter anyway)

Just listing the temps doesnt help much, as long as you arent overheating its the 'delta' (difference between the ambient temp and chipset/CPU temp) that matters more.

34C is pretty good with normal room temp (about 20-25C).

I dont know how Peter Leman is getting 20C, unless the computer lives in an icebox.

**Yellow Pasque** · March 7th, 2011

So there is no driver yet.. They are busy with it.

Unfortunately, you'll have to wait until the driver is completed before you can see all the other temps and (maybe) use the fan control. No, there is no lm-sensors alternative. Unless you can write low-level C code, you can't do anything to speed the process as a system with your particular SuperIO chip has already been donated to an lm-sensors dev.

**Call_M** · March 7th, 2011

Originally Posted by cascade9

Serial-UNCLAIMED is not a problem. IDE, thats because the SB850 doesnt have IDE support, so IDE is provided by an addon chip. (if you have an IDE drive, its working right? and if you dont, it doesnt matter anyway)

I don't have an IDE drive so yeah, nothing to worry.

Originally Posted by cascade9

Just listing the temps doesnt help much, as long as you arent overheating its the 'delta' (difference between the ambient temp and chipset/CPU temp) that matters more.

34C is pretty good with normal room temp (about 20-25C).

I dont know how Peter Leman is getting 20C, unless the computer lives in an icebox.

You are right. But im just bothered by the fact that my fans are always at the same speed. Instead it would be nice if they would only run if needed. Seems I need to wait.
But now I still do not know what k10temp-pci-00c3 sensor measures.

Originally Posted by Temüjin

Unfortunately, you'll have to wait until the driver is completed before you can see all the other temps and (maybe) use the fan control. No, there is no lm-sensors alternative. Unless you can write low-level C code, you can't do anything to speed the process as a system with your particular SuperIO chip has already been donated to an lm-sensors dev.

Seems that I have to be patience. Which is very hard for me

.

**P . P . L .** · March 8th, 2011

Originally Posted by cascade9

Serial-UNCLAIMED is not a problem. IDE, thats because the SB850 doesnt have IDE support, so IDE is provided by an addon chip. (if you have an IDE drive, its working right? and if you dont, it doesnt matter anyway)

Just listing the temps doesnt help much, as long as you arent overheating its the 'delta' (difference between the ambient temp and chipset/CPU temp) that matters more.

34C is pretty good with normal room temp (about 20-25C).

I dont know how Peter Leman is getting 20C, unless the computer lives in an icebox.

To cascade9

Well with a room temp at ~18c in the morning and all cores idling at 800mhz then why can't it be 20c?

Yes when i use it the temp goes up a bit but i have a large Zalman cooler on it.
---------------------------------------------------------

To Call_M

The BIOS can't read the cpu core temp that's why you need the k10temp module loaded and you may have to add 7 to 10c to the reading it depends on your cpu type AMD have said this.

The temp in the BIOS is from the socket under the cpu the temp doesn't change as much as the core temp from what i've seen, Like if you use cpu with a good/heavy load on it and then let it go back to idle the cores will/should cool down more then the socket or at least faster, that's why the reading in the BIOS is higher.

And if/when you get drivers for your M/B you will see the difference good luck.