probook 4510s / high fan speed

probook 4510s / high fan speed

  • Written by
    Walter Doekes
  • Published on

So, there have been numerous reports around the internet that the HP ProBook 4510s has fan speed issues.

In my case, the following happens:

  • Turn on the laptop: no problem.
  • Using the laptop while on AC: no problem.
  • Switch on the laptop from suspend mode without AC plugged in: problem!

The fan goes into overdrive and stays there.

It's related to the temperature measurements, somehow. According to the sensors(1) tool, it's the temp6 value that's off.

# /etc/sensors3.conf
chip "acpitz-virtual-0"
    label temp6 "the-problem"

When I fire it up from suspend mode it's supposedly very high:

the-problem:  +90.0°C  (crit = +110.0°C)

It looks a bit like problem that's mentioned here: Re: Probook 4530s fan noise : DSDT table edition ? Although that post concerns the 4530s and other models.

I also found tools to edit the HP 4530s fan runtime state — 4530s.zip — but those don't fix the problem on the HP 4510s.

Finally I found a usable workaround: CPU load!

I hacked together a little script tries to burn a lot of CPU at once, and believe it or not, the fan slows down immediately. As soon as your hear that, hit ^C to exit the script.

hp-4510s-fan-speed.py (view)

Update 2013-04-22

I've noticed that the time it takes to work varies. Once it took a full minute. Sometimes it's done in seconds.


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