# Controlling NVidia Geforce fan speed

## manuels

Hi,

I have a nvidia geforce graphic card (FX 5600 Ultra) and it is quite noisy.

So I wanna reduce the fan speed of this card because I don't need full performence.

does anybody know a tool to do so?

Thanks for hints

Manuel

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## frostschutz

If the nvidia-settings tool (emerge nvidia-settings) can't do it, then you're probably out of luck.

The fan of my NVIDIA GF4 Ti4200 was noisy as well - I removed the cooler and replaced it with a Zalman heatpipe thingy. Now I can run it nearly noiseless at full power. The cooler itself is completely noiseless, but gets too hot without ventilation in the computer case itself, which again needs a (very silent) fan. Don't know if Zalman offers such a thing for your model as well, but it's worth a try.

Another option would be to use water cooling. My next machine will either use real passive cooling or water cooling - I'm so sick of computer noise.

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## manuels

ok, thanks for your help!

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## w00ter

Also, nvclock can do it. I am not sure if your card is supported yet, otherwise check the cvs version of it. 

I am going to try the cvs later today with my Nvidia 6600GT AGP card. 0.7-r1 didn't support this card.

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## manuels

nope, it tried the newest cvs version, but fanspeed control is not supported for my card.

thanks anyway.

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## w00ter

With the latest CVS version of nvclock my fan control works just fine. I could set it to 50 % which means I cant hear the thing anymore.

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## Naib

 *w00ter wrote:*   

> With the latest CVS version of nvclock my fan control works just fine. I could set it to 50 % which means I cant hear the thing 
> 
> anymore.

 

Well if you cant hear anything anymore it doesn't matter if the fan runs at full speed then

lolol  :Very Happy: 

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## gurke

hi, im using nvclock to adjust the fan speed. this works fine, but i really miss a little program, that does this automatically by temerature. does anyone know of such a thing?

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## PaulBredbury

I've created a wiki entry containing a Python script to automatically adjust the speed of Nvidia video card fans.

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## <3

Only nvidia cards 6xxx or newer support fan control.

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## ahubu

 *PaulBredbury wrote:*   

> I've created a wiki entry containing a Python script to automatically adjust the speed of Nvidia video card fans.

 

HERO!  :Smile: 

That is a great script. I could not get the asusfan utility to work, but this one seems to work brilliantly on my Asus 6800GT (v9999gt/td 256mb). I always thought that nvclock was for overclockers only so I didn't go near it, and then I saw that I could actually control stuff with it other than core/gpu speeds...

Greatness, happy silenced boy here (that fan was driving me nuts).

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## ranma37

I can't get the script to work.

It just set the fan speed to 75 then stopped there.

```

$ ./nvidiafanspeed

Video card daemon error: -- General info --

Card:       nVidia Geforce 6800 Ultra

Architecture:    NV40 A1

PCI id:    0xf9

GPU clock:    351.000 MHz

Bustype:    PCI-Express

-- Pipeline info --

Pixel units: 16 (1111b)

Vertex units: 6 (111111b)

HW masked units: None

SW masked units: None

-- Memory info --

Amount:    256 MB

Type:       256 bit DDR

Clock:       1002.375 MHz

-- Sensor info --

Sensor: Maxim MAX6659

Board temperature: 43C

GPU temperature: 57C

Fanspeed: 75.0%

-- VideoBios information --

Version: 05.40.02.26.00

Signon message: ASUS EN6800GT VGA BIOS Version 5.40.02.26.AS05

Performance level 0: gpu 350MHz/memory 1000MHz/1.30V

VID mask: 3

Voltage level 0: 1.10V, VID: 0

Voltage level 1: 1.30V, VID: 2

Voltage level 2: 1.40V, VID: 1

```

It will be wonderful if we can get a ebuild.   :Wink:  [/code]

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## PaulBredbury

 *ranma37 wrote:*   

> Fanspeed: 75.0%

 

I'd expect it to show "PWM duty cycle: n.n%". Oh well, I've fixed the script to support both - give it a try  :Smile: 

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## Cintra

 *manuels wrote:*   

> Hi,
> 
> I have a nvidia geforce graphic card (FX 5600 Ultra) and it is quite noisy.
> 
> So I wanna reduce the fan speed of this card because I don't need full performence.
> ...

 

I thought my Ti 4200 was too noisy, so I swapped it out for an FX 5200 with passive cooling. That helped a bit, mostly by showing it was the cpu fan making most of the noise. So I invested in an 'Arctic Freezer' see http://www.arctic-cooling.com/cpu2.php?idx=34&disc= - the Arctic fan runs at a nice quiet 2100 rpm, and keeps everything cooler by about 5 degrees C!  

Currently my cpu is 43 C running at 2406 Mhz, with one fan at the back of the cab running at half speed. 

Makes things liveable  :Wink: 

Oh yes and I run 

```
echo "ondemand" >> /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
```

 which drops my cpu down to as low as 301 Mhz!

Mvh

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## ranma37

 *PaulBredbury wrote:*   

> I'd expect it to show "PWM duty cycle: n.n%". Oh well, I've fixed the script to support both - give it a try 

 

Thanks, it works!

I noticed you fixed it in only a few minutes.

I love this forum.   :Wink: 

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## brazso

I configured the script named nvidiafanspeed based on the mentioned wiki page, thanks for the author(s). Starting this script manually from shell works like a charm. However placing into local.start I cannot use it. It seems that '&' after the command does not work in local.start. Perhaps the subshell is not started, I do not know. Is there anybody who can launch nvidiafanspeed python script from /etc/conf.d/local.start?

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