Controlling Clevo fans

[Ishayin]

Has anyone found a good way of providing more manual control over the fans in Clevo laptops? E.g. has anyone managed to set up an NBFC profile for any of them before?

https://github.com/hirschmann/nbfc

https://github.com/hirschmann/nbfc/wiki/How-to-create-a-NBFC-config

 

I would like to be able to set my fans off / as low as possible for just a short few minute bursts at a time while doing sensitive audio recording. The best way I can find currently is using the Custom fan speed profile in Control Center, though I find it to be a bit buggy (sometimes I cannot get the settings menu for it to close down again) and the highest fan start temperature it allows is 70 °C.

 

[User]

Is this compatible with your machine? - https://github.com/djsubtronic/ClevoFanControl

I have not actually used it, but Starred a while back with some interest.

[luisxd]

I use RLECViewer for custom fan curves.

[Ishayin]

On 9/7/2022 at 5:03 PM, User said:

Is this compatible with your machine? - https://github.com/djsubtronic/ClevoFanControl

I have not actually used it, but Starred a while back with some interest.

 

This is a great find thank you – I've just been trying it out now and it works!  (on my P751ZM)

 

 

The manual curve settings are saved in userfancurve.cfg which is just a text file with a list of the fan settings in order. This makes it simple to edit directly as an alternative to the GUI (e.g. I just draw in the settings for the CPU, and then copy and paste them to replicate them for the GPU directly in the file). It also means you can easily transfer settings elsewhere, or save different manual configurations and just swap out which one is used by renaming the file extension (though it would be handy if you could call these up in a quicker fashion).

 

Also, despite what it says in the Readme, it does seem to hand over control again on exit rather than setting fans to 100% as stated there. It doesn't revert back to the last used setting in ControlCenter, but I think it's instead going back to "Automatic" in that, or some similar underlying system default. You need to toggle the settings back and forth again in ControlCenter to be sure it is back how you would like things there. I might even consider using ClevoFanControl as the default controller.

 

There are a few little glitches but all minor:

• Editing either manual fan curve will give that curve control over the relevant fan no matter which profile is selected.
• The "Clevo Default" profile doesn't display the fan duty, and will simply display however they were last set by the previous profile.
• The context menu option for "About" does nothing.

A few other points to note:

• NTPort library appeared to install fine for me without any error. I didn't try running the program without doing this first.
• The curves are not really curves in effect, but simply steps without any interpolation in between them (so would be more accurately displayed as a bar chart). The setting at any given temperature will be applied the same for the 5 degree interval from that temperature, up until the point where the next setting kicks in (e.g. the 40°C setting is applied from 40–44°C, 45°C setting from 45–49°C and so on).
• It first opens to just the system tray icon, and need to open the GUI window from there. Hitting the "X" to close at top right of window will leave it running in the background in the system tray, while hitting the "Exit" button will actually close it down and let go of control, same as exiting from the system tray context menu.
• I couldn't figure out what the "GPU Batt. Monitor" setting is supposed to do. Any ideas?

 

I found there is also a similar program available from Obsidian which looks slightly fancier, but costs €40  €30:

https://code.obsidian-pc.com/clevo-software/fan-control/

 

I also came across this, but apparently it can only control one fan:

https://marqis.github.io/BtoFanControl/

 

On 9/7/2022 at 5:19 PM, luisxd said:

I use RLECViewer for custom fan curves.

 

Thanks for that too! There does seem to be some suspicion around this:

https://github.com/zuyan9/RLECViewer/issues/4
I would have said it was mostly likely just false positives, though the comment about something trying to change UAC policy settings is a little worrying. It also advises to uninstall Clevo Control Center first which I'd rather keep. Anyway, there apparently was an old thread for it on NBR at :
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/rlecviewer-custom-clevo-fan-control.818858/
So I don't know if anyone can locate that in the backup at nbrchive.net. And apparently this is the original source for it:
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/4872453181

[Tenoroon]

I can't get the NTPort driver to install properly, has anyone else had the same issue?

[runix18]

16 hours ago, Tenoroon said:

I can't get the NTPort driver to install properly, has anyone else had the same issue?

It did not instal properly for me also, but even so, the app was running as intended.

[Tenoroon]

10 hours ago, runix18 said:

It did not instal properly for me also, but even so, the app was running as intended.

I should have edited my post, I found the problem out. I had to uninstall CCC and some other weird drivers and it works now. I'm going to reinstall CCC to see if that will work.

[Ishayin]

On 9/15/2022 at 1:33 PM, Tenoroon said:

I can't get the NTPort driver to install properly, has anyone else had the same issue?

 

On 9/16/2022 at 5:50 AM, runix18 said:

It did not instal properly for me also, but even so, the app was running as intended.

 

Note from the Github page in case it is of relevance:

 

Important Notes

• ...
• NTPort library might give you an error message during the installation, but this can be ignored as the driver will still be installed

 

[Tenoroon]

I've noticed that Clevo Fan Control doesn't spin my 2nd GPU fan on my P870. Is there a hidden setting or another program that will allow me to control all 3 fans?

[Ishayin]

On 2/25/2023 at 9:59 PM, Tenoroon said:

I've noticed that Clevo Fan Control doesn't spin my 2nd GPU fan on my P870. Is there a hidden setting or another program that will allow me to control all 3 fans?

 

I guess not unfortunately if that means you have three fans in total:

 

Important Notes

• 2 fans supported at the moment

There is also an open issue about this here:

https://github.com/djsubtronic/ClevoFanControl/issues/2

 

You could try chasing up on that. Though the project hasn't had any updates for a while so maybe it needs someone else to pick it up in the future (fingers crossed!)

[1610ftw]

After several crashes suffered by using the worthless Clevo Control Center I had to again search for something different to control fans.

 

So I have in the last weeks tested RLEC Viewer and Clevo Fan Control and I have settled on Clevo Fan Control:

 

 

At first RLEC viewer seemed to have some advantages as it also supports three fans but I only need support for two and for me it has an annoying glitch where at least in my Clevo X170KM-G the fans go briefly down to zero when they ramp down from one temperature bracket speed to another. They would for example ramp down from the 60° to the 55° bracket and there was always an annoying clicking sound in between when the fans turned off and then on again.

 

So for a two fan chassis I would definitely recommend Clevo Fan Control and use RLECViewer only if needed for Clevos with three fans as the third fan is not recognized by Clevo Fan Control in its current state.

 

So far Clevo Fan Control also seems to work reliably and I always turn it on manually on powering up, same as Throttlestop. I have the program and my CPU and GPU temps (via Throttlestop) in the corner of my task bar to be able to check temps if needed (CPU power only as I am not much of a heavy GPU user):

 

 

From left to right is:

temp Nvidia GPU

power uptake CPU

temp CPU

Fan Control symbol

 

I also like the option to quickly ramp up fans to max or 50% if needed or to give control back to the Clevo Default, all via right click on the fan control signal.