Dell Fan Management — Software for controlling the Dell laptop fan speed

[Aaron44126]

3 hours ago, DietmarP said:

1. when I start my 3 years old Dell Inspiron 7590 the fans are running after a few minutes, but when I start Dell Fan Management in Automatic operation mode, they stop for a while. What does Dell Fan Management change?

2. Using Dell Power Manager (or Dell Fan Management), the thermal settings won't match. Quiet and Performance thermal setting seems to be same, and the fans are spinning at max.

 

1. At startup, Dell Fan Management sets the configuration to whatever it was last time that you had it open, and it issues commands to the EC accordingly, even if those match what the EC is already set to.  When doing this, the EC fan behavior is "reset" and that will sometimes cause it to turn off the fans for a while.  You can also sometimes replicate this by changing the thermal mode in Dell's own tools (balanced to quiet and then immediately back to balanced, or something like that).

 

2. This isn't a surprise.  Dell's fan tables don't necessarily make sense in all systems.  I don't think that they put as much time into tuning these as they should.  In my Precision 7560 I have observed that "Quiet" often runs the fans higher than "Balanced" for an idle workload, but I use it anyway because "Balanced" is more sensitive to changes in CPU load, and "Quiet" also runs the fans at a lower speed under an "intense" workload.

[DietmarP]

That explains it. Many thanks for the quick reply. Yes, switching between Optimized and Cool sometimes, when the temperature is below 60°C, turns the fans off. 

FYI: I have asked the question in the Dell community in January, no answer up to now.

https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/inspiron/inspiron-7590-thermal-settings-mismatch/65b3c607a51f722bfe80a4b0

 

PS: I was playing around with "consistency" mode, but that setting allows 0, 3200, and 4900 rpm, not the "silent" 2200 rpm that the manual mode allows.

Edited February 6 by DietmarP
PS added

[Aaron44126]

6 hours ago, DietmarP said:

PS: I was playing around with "consistency" mode, but that setting allows 0, 3200, and 4900 rpm, not the "silent" 2200 rpm that the manual mode allows.

 

Consistency mode is there to allow you to select an RPM that the EC normally picks and "lock it in", if the EC sometimes picks something other than the manual choices that you would prefer.

 

For instance, on my M6700, the manual "medium" set it to around 2200 RPM, but the EC in "automatic" would sometimes set the fans to around 1900 RPM which I would prefer.  So I would put the RPM threshold at 2000 RPM.  When the EC selected 1900 RPM, EC fan control would be disabled without actually changing the speed, so it would be locked at 1900 RPM.

[DietmarP]

Interesting. As stated above, on my 7590 EC normally selects 3200 RPM and that will be locked in by the consistency mode.

 

Stupid idea: Now, Dell Fan Management sets (resets) the current settings at startup. What if the "reset" will be done every minute? That would keep the fans off if not needed.

[Aaron44126]

4 hours ago, DietmarP said:

Stupid idea: Now, Dell Fan Management sets (resets) the current settings at startup. What if the "reset" will be done every minute? That would keep the fans off if not needed.

 

You could achieve this with Task Scheduler and see what happens.  DellFanManagement.exe supports command line parameters so you can tell it to enable EC fan control, disable EC fan control, set a specific speed, and so on.  (Run it from the terminal with a junk parameter like -? to see what the options are.)  Running DellFanManagement.exe from Task Scheduler requires you to use the checkbox for "run with highest privileges" so that it can load the BZH driver.

 

You should not run DellFanManagement from the command line while the GUI app is running.  Running it from the command line will cause it to do its job and then unload the BZH driver while closing, which would then make the GUI app unable to issue any EC commands.

 

You can also try using SpeedFan which allows you to set more complex fan behaviors based on temperatures.  You could have it keep the fans off until the CPU reaches a certain temperature, for example.  The requirements for using SpeedFan are:

• You have to check a box in SpeedFan config to enable Dell fan support.
• You have to have automatic EC fan control turned off, or SpeedFan's fan changes will keep getting overridden by the EC.  (DellFanManagement can do this, from the GUI or from the command line.)

Note also that while SpeedFan supports granular fan curves, when used on a Dell laptop you will still be limited to just three fan speeds ("off" / "medium" / "high"), so really you can just set the fan curves to 0% / 50% / 100%.

[DietmarP]

Thanks a lot for your answer. I see 4 fan speeds on my Dell, 0, 2200, 3200, and 4900. EC supports the RPMs in bold.

I will check what I can do with the Task Scheduler. To be honest, I am looking for a "set and forget" solution but I see a risk in switching EC off. I always must keep an eye on the temperature. 

[Aaron44126]

9 hours ago, DietmarP said:

Interesting. As stated above, on my 7590 EC normally selects 3200 RPM and that will be locked in by the consistency mode.

 

29 minutes ago, DietmarP said:

Thanks a lot for your answer. I see 4 fan speeds on my Dell, 0, 2200, 3200, and 4900.

 

Yeah, there is where consistency mode could come into play.  It might not be the behavior that you are looking for, but you could set the RPM threshold to 2500, and it should lock you in at the 2200 speed (when the EC selects it).  It will "unlock" the speed and allow the fans to rev up if one of the temperatures exceeds the upper temperature threshold.  I would normally set the upper temperature threshold pretty high, like 95 °C, so the fans only spun up when it was really necessary.

 

I mostly implemented this because I hated the on again / off again behavior of the fans in the M6700.  It makes a very obvious sound when the fans power on after being off.  This way, the fans can be locked at a low speed but never turn off.

[DietmarP]

I am sorry, there is a misunderstanding.

EC will not set 2200 RPM, only manual mode medium is able to set that fan speed. Consistency mode will lock in 3200 RPM (see screenshot above from today).

[Aaron44126]

14 minutes ago, DietmarP said:

I am sorry, there is a misunderstanding.

EC will not set 2200 RPM, only manual mode medium is able to set that fan speed. Consistency mode will lock in 3200 RPM (see screenshot above from today).

 

OK, I guess I interpreted your post above wrong.

 

The M6700 (what I built this for) had probably five or six different speed levels that the EC would select in automatic mode, and one of them was above "0" but below what "manual medium" would produce.  It also had one higher than what "manual high" would produce so I ended up switching EC back to automatic mode when I was running intense workloads.

[DietmarP]

Finally, I am using HWiNFO64. The app supports 0, 2200, and 4900 RPM. I have set the spin-down to 45 sec and a sound alarm for >= 85°C and I show an icon with the actual temperature in the tray which is typically around 60°C on AC and 50°C on battery. Peaks around 80°C only when I start several apps like Chrome and Photos or Outlook. At no time above 85°C. Turbo mode switched off, of course.

[spiderhans]

Hi @Aaron44126,

Could you please reupload release 3.0?

Thanks beforehand.

[raptorddd]

On 3/14/2024 at 3:00 AM, spiderhans said:

Hi @Aaron44126,

Could you please reupload release 3.0?

Thanks beforehand.

i tried to download but asks for one drive account does that mean its not available.?