Does the Pentium M Processor indirectly control fan speed (laptop)

The processor (Pentium or whatever) only does what it is told by the people who wrote the BIOS code, and the BIOS does what it thinks is best based on the information it thinks it is getting from the temperature sensors, etc. Seems unlikely that they would run what is essentially the CPU fan based on heat information from the hard drive, but maybe it is designed to provide cooling to both?

Is this really a serious problem? What do Fujitsu say? If they have already replaced the mobo/CPU I'd assume that you would either have to live with it or sell/trade it if it really bugs you.

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (Sanjay Punjab) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:

On my Acer TravelMate 800 (Pentium-M) I noticed that fan activity depends not on CPU temperature but on CPU activity/load. For example, using scanner on USB raises CPU load during scan, and that kicks fan on immediately. This is stupid design from manufacturer, but I learned to live with it.

Alexei

Well, actually CPU temperature depends on CPU activity/load. Especially in a portable environment where pieces are slowed/shut down when not in use to preserve battery life.

Not clear why this seems "stupid" to you? Would you rather that it run at full speed/power all the time? Suck the battery life for nothing? Run the fan all the time? Why?

I see the same effect in my big tower machine at home that I use for editing video. As soon as I start rendering DV, I can hear the CPU fan speed increase. When it slows back down, I know it is done.

"Richard Crowley" wrote in news:100t4hadcv0b061 @corp.supernews.com:

It does, but not directly. Short rare spikes of high activity do not raise temperature enough that turning fan on should be required. Yet, TM800 turns on fan each and every time.

See above.

Alexei

Period. And it makes no sense to run the fan more than necessary. Do you and your friend use the laptop identically? Do you run the same programs, always having it resting on a hard surface so that vents are not randomly blocked, say, by sitting in your lap? How attentive is your friend to his computer? Does his "No, my computer never does that" really mean it happens in situations where there are enough distractions that he would never notice? Sit the two computers side by side and perform a controlled experiment, if his computer really

*is* identical (same GHz, same memory, same disk)? No, you already said the disk drives are different, and yes, disk operation can affect the fan.

Nice of Fujitsu to replace all that stuff. No big surprise that it didn't change anything. Find something else to worry about.

RM

Seems unlikely

I owned a Toshiba laptop, and a BKPW Note Pro like this, its a "feature" that keeps the processor at the same temperature while maximising battery life (reducing the fan speed during low CPU usage, and increasing it when the CPU is being thrashed, such as a lot of

3D).

You might try looking in the BIOS for anything like "Fan mode settings" or similar, sometimes they give you the option of turning off the demand based fan speed.

-A

Howdy!

raise

So it should wait to turn it on? The fan control logic doesn't know how long your task will run - and it could easily be a design criteria to keep the temp down as low as possible concurrent with decent battery life.

Doesn't sound so bad to me,honestly.

RwP

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"Ralph Wade Phillips" wrote in news:400f55a0_2@127.0.0.1:

It should turn on when temperature reaches certain level. To prove my point let's see a different situation - medium CPU load for a long time raises temperature significantly (much higher than after that short spike of load), yet fan does not turn on. Is that a good design? No way.

The idea is to keep temperature down, so that should be a controlled parameter. You do not control engine temperature and cooling by measuring how fast the car goes, you do it with a thermal sensor.

Alexei

It sounds like that is exactly what it is trying to do.

That was the "state of the art" solution from 100 years ago. Computers (and even vehicles!) are much more sophisticated than that these days. They can anticipate need, and even "learn" usage patterns. The machines are getting smarter than us whether we like it or not! :-)

"Richard Crowley" wrote in news:100vs57445lvs98 @corp.supernews.com:

This reminds me of Microsoft Word, which sometimes keeps capitalising some words whether I like it or not :-) I get really frustrated when I'm forced to go back and change letter case to what it should be (what I originally entered). "Smartness" have both good and bad sides.

Unfortunatly with some laptops, when you enter BIOS, you only have a choice to let it control fan in a "smart" way or have fan always on. What I want is a choice to control fan in "normal" way, i.e. depending on CPU temperature (well, maybe add ambient temperature influence there).

Alexei

Mostly negative IMO. The newer versions of Windows seem to be HARD WIRED to paste WITH formatting and it is driving me completely up the wall. I am forced to go through a menu item just to get plain old-fashioned "dumb" paste. And sometimes the option isn't available at all! 8-{