steamos needs nvidia fan controller

[stickman]

hi i've got a new gtx 970 for xms.
but i don't like the fans not coming on at 60 degrees.
i wood like something like msi afterburner in the settings.

[Sierran]

gpu's are working on higher temps then a cpu's.
both my gtx 770 are working on 60 Celsius when I play games.
When Im not playing they are aroun 45 - 50.

And why the fan starts at 60 degrees could be its optimal work temp.
there is no point for the card to cool down if it needs to get hotter to work better.

It "saves power" and keeps the pc more silent.
You can chek nvidia support or there webbsite for info. whats the optimal temp for your card.


If you still want to change fan speed, there is a way using lm-sensors in the debian terminal, but Im afriad Im not the right person to show you how.

[stickman]

hi in windows with fans on 10 percent it runs at 28 runing games at about 45 with fans at 60 percent. if i set fans at 0 temp runs at about 38 on idle . surely it will prolong the life span

[Sierran]

Well Lm-sensors is the only way I know of atm. And google an probably explain it better then me.

[dubigrasu]

You can enable Coolbits in xorg.conf

 Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    Option         "Coolbits" "12"
EndSection

and get these options in Nvidia Control Panel: http://postimg.org/gallery/3e49i4zfk/327db0a2/

[surfergeek]

i wish evga would make a precsion x version for SteamOS

[stickman]

yes well that's the sort of thing i wood like to in the options.
as i do not want to mess around with terminal commands & config files.
as i'm a bit of a pc geek & i like to control fan speeds so come on guys at steam.

[surfergeek]

I posted on EVGA's forums about making a linux version of PX. I think its not going to be up to the guys at steam but rather the dev to make an compatiple app with SDKs frmo what i read It shouldn't be to hard to dev an app for steam If you can create and compile progrmas or componets for linux just gotta use their runtime

[Long Ago [Linux]]

Does Steam OS have anything like NVIDIA X Server Settings or doesn't it use X?

With nvidia driver 337 or newer the Option "Coolbits" "12" thing in xorg.conf allows overclocking gpu and video RAM and provides a slider for fan control. In Ubuntu 14.04 I had to use xorg-edgers ppa to get a new enough nvidia version (346.22 had a minor error during kernel updates, so I am currently running 340.65). The newest normal repo version was nvidia-331 which could not do that.

[dubigrasu]

efflandt の投稿を引用：

Does Steam OS have anything like NVIDIA X Server Settings or doesn't it use X?

With nvidia driver 337 or newer the Option "Coolbits" "12" thing in xorg.conf allows overclocking gpu and video RAM and provides a slider for fan control. In Ubuntu 14.04 I had to use xorg-edgers ppa to get a new enough nvidia version (346.22 had a minor error during kernel updates, so I am currently running 340.65). The newest normal repo version was nvidia-331 which could not do that.

See my post above.
Don't know details about overclocking, but adjusting the fan was always possible with Coolbits. The value though is different for various driver versions, at one point was 6.

[Mohandevir]

Just installed a brand new Gigabyte GTX960 4gb. My fans are constantly surging up every 5 secs or so, for another 5 secs. Quite annoying!

Will coolbits solve this problem? Is there another way to do it?

Edit: I'm running SteamOS Brewmaster 2.70 with NVidia 355.00.28 (default driver)

Thanks!

[dubigrasu]

Coolbits will only give you the option to manually set the fans at a fixed value, which is a bit risky.

[Mohandevir]

I'm still searching for an alternative and I found some scripts that can be used to monitor the gpu temp and regulate the fan speed accordingly. It works with nvclock and runs via rc.local.

I'm no script pro and I would like to know if it has a chance of working and, if possible, some clearer inputs about how to make it work:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Adjust fan speed automatically.
# This version by StuJordan
# Based on Version by DarkPhoinix
# Original script by Mitch Frazier

# Location of the nvclock program.
nvclock_bin=/usr/bin/nvclock

# Target temperature for video card.
target_temp=54

# Value used to calculate the temperature range (+/- target_temp).
target_range=1

# Time to wait before re-checking.
sleep_time=5

# Minimum fan speed.
min_fanspeed=20

# Fan speed increment.
adj_fanspeed=5

if [ "$1" ]; then target_temp=$1; fi

target_temp_low=$(expr $target_temp - $target_range)
target_temp_high=$(expr $target_temp + $target_range)

while true
do
temp_val=$(echo $($nvclock_bin --info | grep -i 'GPU temperature' | cut -d ':' -f 2) | cut -d C -f 1)
# pwm_val=$(echo $($nvclock_bin --info | grep -i 'PWM' | cut -d ':' -f 2) | cut -d " " -f 1)
pwm_val=$(echo $($nvclock_bin --info | grep -i 'PWM' | cut -d ':' -f 2 | cut -d " " -f 2 | cut -d "%" -f 1 | cut -d "." -f 1))

echo "Current temp is $temp_val. Current pwm is $pwm_val"
echo "Target temp high is $target_temp_high and low is $target_temp_low"

if [ $temp_val -gt $target_temp_high ]; then
echo "Temperature too high"

# Temperature above target, see if the fan has any more juice.

if [ $pwm_val -lt 100 ]; then
echo "Increasing GPU fan speed, temperature: $temp_val"
pwm_val=$(expr $pwm_val + $adj_fanspeed)
if [ $pwm_val -gt 100 ]; then pwm_val=100; fi
$nvclock_bin -f --fanspeed $pwm_val
fi
elif [ $temp_val -lt $target_temp_low ]; then

# Temperature below target, lower the fan speed
# if we're not already at the minimum.

if [ $pwm_val -gt $min_fanspeed ]; then
echo "Decreasing GPU fan speed, temperature: $temp_val"
pwm_val=$(expr $pwm_val - $adj_fanspeed)
if [ $pwm_val -lt $min_fanspeed ]; then pwm_val=$min_fanspeed; fi
$nvclock_bin -f --fanspeed $pwm_val
fi
fi
sleep $sleep_time
done

Edit: Tried coolbits and the manual setting doesn't stick after reboot. Anyway, just like you said Dubi, it's not an ideal solution.

Thanks!

[dubigrasu]

Well, I really can't tell until I try it, but I see it uses "nvclock" and from what I remember nvclock is not working with newer cards/systems since is a a rather old abandoned app.
Maybe someone else took it over? No idea.

I also use (two nvidia-settings based) scripts to control the fan but I'll have to clean them a bit before post them.

[Mohandevir]

Thanks Dubi, you're awesome!

So nvclock is not supported anymore. I'm out of luck.
Is there another cli command that sets the gpu fan speed to build the script around?

The other solution that I found is to upgrade de GPU's BIOS, but I would have to reinstall Windows (Yuk! Yuk!) and it seems risky. Not to be done lightly.

BIOS upgrade tool:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5507#utility

BIOS:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5507#bios

It's coming from this post:
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/885022/geforce-900-series/new-gtx-960-fan-issue/

[dubigrasu]

For nvidia-settings a command example is :

nvidia-settings -a [gpu:0]/GPUFanControlState=1 -a [fan:0]/GPUTargetFanSpeed=100

You need to enable "Coolbits" for this, not sure about the -enable-fan-only value, I use "12" so I can access the clocks also.

I'm also not sure about nvclock, is just what I remember, as for a BIOS tweak (if you can do it safely) it would be a better way.
I'd like to do that to my card and get rid of the scripts and crap, but it is locked or something (last time I checked).