On Sun Apr 13, 2025 at 9:15 PM BST, Eben King wrote:

I have a video card which has fans (GTX 970) on Debian Bookworm (12.10).
Unfortunately the card is broken in such a way that the fans almost
never work, and I can't afford to replace it with one that isn't broken.
Changing the GPU's internal clocks has little to no effect on
temperature (or performance, oddly enough), but changing the CPU clock
speed does. So I wrote a script that modifies that for me automatically based on the GPU temperature, and that usually works.

Not always though. I have 2-4 case fans (I forget exactly). Is there a
way to change their speed? Maybe that'd be enough. Thanks.

Possibly, depending on your mainboard. Presumably they're plugged into
that. There might be a driver for a fan controller on the board that you
can use to control them. Try the lm-sensors package to see what it can discover. Failing that, or instead, your mainboard's firmware
configuration (artist formerly known as BIOS) might offer some fan
controls.



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👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
✎ [email protected]
🔗 https://jmtd.net

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I have a video card which has fans (GTX 970) on Debian Bookworm (12.10).
Unfortunately the card is broken in such a way that the fans almost
never work, and I can't afford to replace it with one that isn't broken.
Changing the GPU's internal clocks has little to no effect on
temperature (or performance, oddly enough), but changing the CPU clock
speed does. So I wrote a script that modifies that for me automatically
based on the GPU temperature, and that usually works.

Not always though. I have 2-4 case fans (I forget exactly). Is there a
way to change their speed? Maybe that'd be enough. Thanks.

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On 4/13/25 16:18, Jonathan Dowland wrote:

On Sun Apr 13, 2025 at 9:15 PM BST, Eben King wrote:

I have a video card which has fans (GTX 970) on Debian Bookworm (12.10).
  Unfortunately the card is broken in such a way that the fans almost
never work, and I can't afford to replace it with one that isn't broken.
  Changing the GPU's internal clocks has little to no effect on
temperature (or performance, oddly enough), but changing the CPU clock
speed does.  So I wrote a script that modifies that for me automatically
based on the GPU temperature, and that usually works.

Not always though.  I have 2-4 case fans (I forget exactly).  Is there a >> way to change their speed?  Maybe that'd be enough.  Thanks.

Possibly, depending on your mainboard.

It's a Gigabyte GA-H170 Gaming 3. Several years old at this point.

Presumably they're plugged into that.

Y.

There might be a driver for a fan controller on the board that you
can use to control them. Try the lm-sensors package to see what it can discover.

It shows just temps. I assume there are other sensors there, but
lm-sensors doesn't say the right spell to use them. I ran "sudo sensors-detect" and answered y to every question, ran "sudo
/etc/init.d/kmod start", and still same. I can show you the complete
output if you want.

If I did manage to get lm-sensors to show the fans, how would I use it
to modify their behavior?

Failing that, or instead, your mainboard's firmware
configuration (artist formerly known as BIOS) might offer some fan
controls.

Sure, but I want to change it within the OS, depending on how the GPU temperature varies.

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On 4/13/25 16:52, Eben King wrote:

On 4/13/25 16:18, Jonathan Dowland wrote:

There might be a driver for a fan controller on the board that you
can use to control them. Try the lm-sensors package to see what it can
discover.

It shows just temps.  I assume there are other sensors there, but
lm-sensors doesn't say the right spell to use them.  I ran "sudo sensors-detect" and answered y to every question, ran "sudo
/etc/init.d/kmod start", and still same.  I can show you the complete
output if you want.

If I did manage to get lm-sensors to show the fans, how would I use it
to modify their behavior?

sudo modprobe it87 force_id=0x8728

then running "sensors" shows
it8728-isa-0a40
Adapter: ISA adapter
<9 voltages>
<5 fans, one of which is 0 RPM>
<3 temps>
intrusion0: ALARM

It's been put into /etc/modules.

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On Sun Apr 13, 2025 at 10:23 PM BST, Eben King wrote:

sudo modprobe it87 force_id=0x8728

then running "sensors" shows
it8728-isa-0a40
Adapter: ISA adapter
<9 voltages>
<5 fans, one of which is 0 RPM>
<3 temps>
intrusion0: ALARM

It's been put into /etc/modules.

That might be the way forward. In my case, the controller is managed by
the driver "nct6775". I have (the not-very-discoverable) sysfs location /sys/devices/platform/nct6775.656/hwmon/hwmon2 containing files to
control things; e.g. writing 1 to ./pwmN_enable (N ∈ 1-7) sets fan
"manual control mode", after which I can write the values 0-255 to
./pwmN to control the RPM. (I haven't got my fans to do quite what I
want, yet, but that's not the driver's fault.)

nct6775 is documented reasonably well <https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/hwmon/nct6775.html>, your
controller's docs aren't quite so clear but there's some mention of
writing to pwnN_enable: <https://docs.kernel.org/hwmon/it87.html>


Hope this helps,

--
Please do not CC me for listmail.

👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
✎ [email protected]
🔗 https://jmtd.net

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Jonathan Dowland wrote:

On Sun Apr 13, 2025 at 10:23 PM BST, Eben King wrote:

sudo modprobe it87 force_id=0x8728

then running "sensors" shows
it8728-isa-0a40
Adapter: ISA adapter
<9 voltages>
<5 fans, one of which is 0 RPM>
<3 temps>
intrusion0: ALARM

It's been put into /etc/modules.

That might be the way forward. In my case, the controller is managed by the driver "nct6775". I have (the not-very-discoverable) sysfs location /sys/devices/platform/nct6775.656/hwmon/hwmon2 containing files to control things; e.g. writing 1 to ./pwmN_enable (N ∈ 1-7) sets fan "manual control mode", after which I can write the values 0-255 to ./pwmN to control the
RPM. (I haven't got my fans to do quite what I want, yet, but that's not the driver's fault.)

nct6775 is documented reasonably well <https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/hwmon/nct6775.html>, your controller's docs aren't quite so clear but there's some mention of writing to pwnN_enable: <https://docs.kernel.org/hwmon/it87.html>

There's a fancontrol package which requires lm-sensors to have
found the controls.

This package contains a daemon that calculates fan speeds from temperatures
and sets the corresponding PWM outputs to the computed values. This is
useful when this feature is not provided by the BIOS or ACPI, which should
normally be the case on a laptop.

-dsr-

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On 4/14/25 04:33, Jonathan Dowland wrote:

On Sun Apr 13, 2025 at 10:23 PM BST, Eben King wrote:

sudo modprobe it87 force_id=0x8728

then running "sensors" shows
it8728-isa-0a40
Adapter: ISA adapter
<9 voltages>
<5 fans, one of which is 0 RPM>
<3 temps>
intrusion0:  ALARM

That might be the way forward. In my case, the controller is managed by
the driver "nct6775". I have (the not-very-discoverable) sysfs
location /sys/devices/platform/nct6775.656/hwmon/hwmon2 containing files
to control things; e.g. writing 1 to ./pwmN_enable (N ∈ 1-7) sets fan "manual control mode", after which I can write the values 0-255 to ./
pwmN to control the RPM. (I haven't got my fans to do quite what I want,
yet, but that's not the driver's fault.)

nct6775 is documented reasonably well <https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/ latest/hwmon/nct6775.html>, your controller's docs aren't quite so clear
but there's some mention of writing to pwnN_enable: <https:// docs.kernel.org/hwmon/it87.html>

Hope this helps,

Excellent, thank you. Yes as with yours if I do

sudo sh -c 'echo 1 >
/sys/devices/platform/it87.2624/hwmon/hwmon3/pwmN_enable'

where 1≤N≤3, then with

sudo sh -c 'echo X > /sys/devices/platform/it87.2624/hwmon/hwmon3/pwmN'

where 0≤X≤255 I can set the fan speed. It's approximately linear when X≥64. If I later do

sudo sh -c 'echo 1 >
/sys/devices/platform/it87.2624/hwmon/hwmon3/pwmN_enable'

it might return the fan to automatic control, but it definitely sets it
to maximum speed. That's weird.

You are correct, those files are hidden deep within the catacombs of /sys.

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Hello Eben :)

Le 13/04/2025 à 22:15, Eben King a écrit :

I have a video card which has fans (GTX 970) on Debian Bookworm (12.10).  Unfortunately the card is broken in such a way that the fans almost
never work, and I can't afford to replace it with one that isn't broken.  Changing the GPU's internal clocks has little to no effect on
temperature (or performance, oddly enough), but changing the CPU clock
speed does.  So I wrote a script that modifies that for me automatically based on the GPU temperature, and that usually works.

Not always though.  I have 2-4 case fans (I forget exactly).  Is there a way to change their speed?  Maybe that'd be enough.  Thanks.

when you say 'broken' is it the card fan control or the fans itselves 
that are deads ?


because, if you are good at soldering or know someone that does, you can
just disconnect the fans from the graphic card, and -possibly via an
adaptator or soldering- connect these card fans directly to a +5 or +12v
line so it are always running, your graphic card will be happier than
with only the case fans doing the airflow... at lieast that is what I
will do :)


my 2 cents,

Jeff

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