Asus X571 laptop overheating & shutting down because fan speed stays too low (Linux)

[GregHX]

Hello, I am recently having the problem that my Asus X571 under certain circumstances is shutting down because critical CPU temperature is reached (99°C or 100°C).
I have already cleaned the notebook from dust thoroughly (it wasn't much).

This usually happens when the laptop is running simple tasks (low CPU usage, fan running at very low speed) for any long time and then a sudden task with intense CPU usage is starting. With a temperature monitor I can see that the temperature goes up from around 45°C to over 90°C really fast but the fan speed stays low too long, so even if the fan starts to speed up after a 5 or 10 seconds, it is too late and the shutdown process due to critical CPU temperature is initiated.

The X571 has the latest BIOS firmware 310. It does not have any fan settings in BIOS, only the MyASUS tool on Windows has an option to choose "Performance" or "Standard" fan setting. But I am using Ubuntu Linux mostly and can't use the MyASUS tool.

I think the main problem is that the fan does not speed up in time even to moderate speed when this happens. I found out that I should have fan control at /sys/devices/platform/asus-nb-wmi/hwmon/hwmonX/pwm1 and …/pwm1_enable but these do not seem to have any effect. Their default setting was 0 and 2 (automatic). Setting pwn1 to 255 (max speed) and pwm1_enable to 1 (manual) does not change the actual fan speed.

Any advice for me in getting more effect or control of the fan of the Asus X571 with Linux? Or any other solution to the problem?

[abactuon]

Do you use software to monitor and manages the CPU temperature?
For example termald.

Usually if everything worked before, a clean installation of the operating system helps.

As I understand it, the control of the coolers depends on the specific EC of the laptop (https://github.com/topics/fan-control)

Use the previous kernel ? It's linux, the OS for geeks.
Consider posting on a Linux(Ubuntu,Mint,..) board; you might get more relevant users.

Arch better Ubuntu.

[GregHX]

abactuon wrote:
Do you use software to monitor and manages the CPU temperature?
For example termald.

Thanks for the advices. I am using a graphical monitor "PSensor" to see the CPU temperature. I also checked thermald - it is running by default as a daemon in adaptive mode, but I will investigate if a better configuration of thermald might help.

But still, the lack of fan speed control might be the root problem here. Also, my Sensor utility can not display the fan speed on my Asus X571, the fan speed sensor which it detects does always show 0 RPM. So if the system can not control the fan, thermald will probably not be able to either.

[abactuon]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fan_speed_control#ASUS_laptops

[GregHX]

It seems that the problem was related to BIOS version 310. The problems started a while after I updated to version 310, which was the current version when I started this thread.
Recently I updated to Asus X571 BIOS version 311 and the overheating shutdown problem is gone!

It did not happen again since then and I also I can not trigger the shutdown by doing the same things that previously almost always caused it while the fan was not speeding up. Now it does speed up just in time.

abactuon wrote:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fan_speed_control#ASUS_laptops

Thanks, I checked this out, but could not get it to work like this. Seems that I must switch to a more recent kernel version than 5.4 which adds more support to recent ASUS hardware.