8th January 2013, 1 min read

Computer Cooling

Since using Alpenfoehn Gotthard CPU cooling has improved and the whole PC is more silent. On an otherwise idle PC, just xterm and Chrome running:

$ modprobe it87

$ iostat
avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
           1.25    0.00    0.25    0.17    0.00   98.33
<!--more-->. . .

$ sensors
k10temp-pci-00c3
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1: +0.4°C (high = +70.0°C)
              (crit = +90.0°C, hyst = +87.0°C)

fam15h_power-pci-00c4
Adapter: PCI adapter
power1: 36.10 W (crit = 124.95 W)

it8721-isa-0290
Adapter: ISA adapter
in0: +2.81 V (min = +2.41 V, max = +2.32 V) ALARM
in1: +2.80 V (min = +0.58 V, max = +2.10 V) ALARM
in2: +0.84 V (min = +0.01 V, max = +0.85 V) ALARM
+3.3V: +3.34 V (min = +2.98 V, max = +4.68 V)
in4: +0.34 V (min = +1.10 V, max = +1.34 V) ALARM
in5: +2.52 V (min = +2.77 V, max = +2.14 V) ALARM
in6: +2.30 V (min = +0.14 V, max = +1.16 V) ALARM
3VSB: +4.82 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +4.78 V) ALARM
Vbat: +3.29 V
fan1: 338 RPM (min = 12 RPM)
fan2: 0 RPM (min = 22 RPM) ALARM
fan3: 1421 RPM (min = 17 RPM)
<strong><span style="color:#2233ff;">temp1: +17.0°C (low = -111.0°C, high = +51.0°C) sensor = thermistor
temp2: +19.0°C (low = -101.0°C, high = -125.0°C) ALARM sensor = thermistor</span></strong>
temp3: -128.0°C (low = -22.0°C, high = -12.0°C) sensor = disabled
intrusion0: OK

Compare this with the temperature on an Intel i7 laptop in idle state:

acpi -V
Battery 0: Unknown, 97%
Battery 0: design capacity 8658 mAh, last full capacity 8171 mAh = 94%
Adapter 0: on-line
<strong><span style="color:#2233ff;">Thermal 0: ok, 38.0 degrees C</span></strong>
Thermal 0: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 98.0 degrees C
Cooling 0: LCD 0 of 15
Cooling 1: LCD 0 of 15
Cooling 2: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 3: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 4: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 5: Processor 0 of 10