Change in fan speed vs. temperature for Ubuntu 11.04 w/nvidia proprietary driver?

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

I'm noticing something that's kind of scary.  I bit the bullet and upgraded to a PNY VCGGTX560TXPB 560 Ti graphics card.  When I first got it, it ran amazingly cool--hardly going into the 50s (Celsius) when running SL, and when not doing anything graphics intensive it wasn't much above room temperature.. I'd hear the fan come on when I was in SL, but it wasn't irritatingly noisy.

Now, it seems to be running a good bit warmer--the fan doesn't come on until it's pushing 80 degrees Celsius. I know of nothing I've intentionally done to affect the fan control. Just today I maxed my system out on RAM, in part to see whether an SL RAM leak issue would make the client suck down 15+ GB before crashing (it didn't)... but sitting here, again doing nothing graphics intensive, the exhaust from the fans at the rear (power supply and 120 mm case fan) is at room temperature as far as I can tell. If the RAM were driving up the case temperature, wouldn't  I notice it all the time?

I'm running 64-bit Ubuntu 11.04, which I keep up to date, with nVidia's proprietary driver (270.41.06)--has anyone else noticed a change in fan speed adjustment who's running current Ubuntu?

P.S. Yes, I do blow the dust out of my system periodically.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

The last Unbuntu I ran was 8.10.........it was a while ago.  I can't speak specifically about your Ubuntu OS and fan speeds but I can speak about fan speeds in general for any OS.  The fan speeds increase as the cooling need raises.........stuff start to heat up the fans spin faster to cool them.  I don't know which fan you're talking about when you say the fan gets noisier.......case fan(s), power supply fan, CPU fan, or the fans on your video card.  Maybe all the above.  But, what it does say is that your hardware is heating up.  For SL it's probably the video card fans you're hearing the most, maybe the case fans too since they are attached to the outside for exhaust and/or intake.  It might quiet them if you do a good clean up of your case..........a can of compressed air and blow everything thoroughly.  If your case fans have little nylon filters like mine, a good rinsing under luke warm water makes them like new (be sure they are dry before reinstalling in the case).  The video card fans are pretty hard to get to unless you remove the card from their slot (pretty easy to do.  Just be careful to fully seat them back when you reinstall them).

 

I think you'll find out your fans will quiet down noticibly.  It doesn't take much dust to make a video card get quite hot.

[leliel Mirihi]

I'm using Ubuntu 11.04 with an evga GTX 560 TI that I've had for around 6 months and the fan speed & temps are the same now as the day I bought it. The temperature can get as high as 80c under load and the fan will slowly speed up as it gets hotter, but rarely get too loud, when idle it's nice and quiet at around 38c. The only time the fan has ever really been that loud was on hot days during the summer, can't really blame that on the card tho.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

That seems to pretty much match what I see now, though it seems to have to really be idle (i.e. screen blanked) for 38 C; more often it hovers in the low 40s.

I had nvidia-settings running in the background so I could see the temperature and the fan %, and I kind of wonder about the fan. It sits there at 40% until the temp gets around 70C, and then goes up, I think ending up at--shucks, was it near 50%? I think so--when, while in Second Life, the rendering gets hard core and the temperature is around 80C. So I'm wondering whether the fan should ramp up somewhat before then, and I'm still puzzled about why the temperatures should be higher than they were when I first installed the card. Is  80C is 180F, and that seems awfully hot. Can I change the temperature -> fan % mapping in Liinux?

[Vladi Hazelnut]

It seems odd to me that SL is putting your video card under that much stress. Unless maybe you have shadows enabled. Normally for my system Sl just isn't that hard on my graphics card.

Rivatune does let you map your fan control, but I am not sure they have a version for linux, never looked. I tried unbunto not that long ago and wasn't all that impressed with it. I went back to windows 7 because it gave me more overal performance in sl. Unbunto gave me about same perfermance as xp and vista as far as frame rates were concerned and was a but more confusing to use as far as installing drivers and what not. Wtih windows 7 I get about double the frame rates as the other os's and its simple to use. My opinion anyway.

The only way I can get my gts 250 to run hotter than 70C is when running a benchmark.

maybe there isn't enough room in your case for proper cooling for your video card?

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Yes, I do have shadows enabled.

It may be that there are case issues; the system is in an Apevia X-QPack 2 case, which is a Micro ATX case and doesn't have a spot for a fan on the side.. I can feel the air being pulled in in front and blown out in back; the power supply intake fan is right over the graphics card, and should be pulling hot air away from it and blowing it out the back as well.