[SOLVED] Asus Vivobook power limit and fancontrol issue [FIXED]

[smidh]

I am using a laptop with a i913900H as a home server and I just tried to do some software encoding tests (using handbrake) on the ubuntu 24.04 VM.
I felt like they where taking a bit long even tho they where software only and the laptop fans aren't ramping up.

Checked cpuinfo and powerstat
and discovered the cpu is only going at 1-2Ghz tops and the laptop wont draw more than 15W, I have my cpu governor on the host system set to 'performance' and can confirm it boosts to 4.8 under an all core load on the host system but wont exceed 25W draw (should be at least 40W, max is 60W) and is only hitting 60c and the fans dont ramp so its not thermal throttling.
In the VM there is no governor setting but im guessing thats because its a VM, I also have Ubuntu set to 'balanced'.

Is this expected behavior? It's very nice to have a totally silent system but it would be nice to let it go full bore.

 

[smidh]

Oh also, I have the bios set correctly, there are no limiters and the power setting is on performance.

 

[MON@H]

I'd try 22.04.4 LTS to see if there's any difference.

 

[BobhWasatch]

Maybe there is a TDP setting in the machine's BIOS. That's pretty common on laptops.

 

[smidh]

You can see on the right my CPU power usage. Turns out it boosts fine until it hits 70c and then jumps back down to 15W and maintains 60c.

I ran fancontrol and found i have no config file, tried running pwmconfig but it tells me /usr/sbin/pwmconfig: There are no pwm-capable sensor modules installed. Im currently trying to figure out how to fix my fancontrol since that seems to be the issue, ill post it I find anything.

Im using a Asus Vivobook i913900H and there are no bios settings for fan control or power limits for reference. fairly sure I had the fans working when I set up proxmox months ago and it deffinitly worked when i had it running native 22.04 Ubuntu but we'll see.

 

[smidh]

Not boosting as high as id hoped but I've sort of fixed it.
I used this https://askubuntu.com/questions/1254364/how-to-control-fans-on-an-asus-laptop to find out where the controls for my fans are manually and then ran
cd /sys/devices/platform/asus-nb-wmi/hwmon/hwmon5/;
nano pwm1_enable
Set value from 2 to 0 which enables 'turbo' mode, now my fans are going crazy even at idle.

In the post an answer also has commands for settings the fan performance modes which should tell the BOIS to get its shit together and give me the power i want.

alias fan-turbo='cd /sys/devices/platform/asus-nb-wmi; sudo sh -c "echo 1 >> fan_boost_mode"; sudo sh -c "echo 1 >> throttle_thermal_policy"; source ~/.bashrc; cd ~;'
alias fan-performance='cd /sys/devices/platform/asus-nb-wmi; sudo sh -c "echo 0 >> fan_boost_mode"; sudo sh -c "echo 0 >> throttle_thermal_policy"; source ~/.bashrc; cd ~;'

alias fan-silent='cd /sys/devices/platform/asus-nb-wmi; sudo sh -c "echo 2 >> fan_boost_mode"; sudo sh -c "echo 2 >> throttle_thermal_policy"; source ~/.bashrc; cd ~;'

The paths are all wrong for my device but I should just have to tweak them a bit to get a basic fan curve going, or at the very least i can simply enable turbo mode when I want to manually start some encodes.

FYI for anyone that comes across this, this wiki is very helpful even if it is for arch

 

[smidh]

Followup, I cant find any of the other fan mode paths so i just messed about with pwm1_enable.
Weirdly when I set it back to a value of 2, the fans slowed from 5400rpm to 3600rpm and power draw ended up about the same, after stopping my encode the fans slowly fell off and the CPU maintained 50c @ 2-3W.

Restarting the load sent the fans ramping up again and everything is running fine??

Seems like some kind of hang or false value on the pwm1_enable file must have caused the weird behavior? Setting it as 0 and then back to 2 fixed everthing.

 

[smidh]

I'd try 22.04.4 LTS to see if there's any difference.

the shots i've posted today are all 22.04 and I also tried 20.04 just FYI