CPU Fan strange behaviour

Discussion in 'UDOO X86' started by tojo2503, Aug 3, 2017.

  1. tojo2503

    tojo2503 New Member

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    Hi there,

    I've got the "official" CPU fan from Udoo. It works okay (even though a litte louder than I expected at 50%). But when it turns on it does not run at the same speed all the time. It rather accelerates (maybe to 75% or 100%) for a very short time, and then goes down to 50% for like 3-4 seconds. Then it goes up to 100% for like half a second and back to 50% for 3-4 seconds.
    Is this beaviour known and expected? I updated to firmware 1.0.2 and reset the Bios Settings to default, no difference.

    AC1 is 55°C with 50% fan speed.
    AC0 is 75°C (should be 100% then).
    Passive Cooling Temp, Hot Temp and Critical Temp are above these.
    System is Ubuntu 16.04.2 with Kernel 4.10 but that should not matter...

    Can anyone help out or confirm this?

    Thanks a lot!
     
  2. Markus Laire

    Markus Laire Active Member

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    Initial full speed is expected - some fans might not start with lower voltage, so initially fan should get full voltage which is then lowered.

    But I don't know why speed would vary a lot after that.
     
  3. jesse coppens

    jesse coppens New Member

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    is there like an other cpu fan or other cpu heatsink or cpu cooler that i can buy like take curren cpu heatsink/fan off and place an other one for better cooling/more silend
     
  4. waltervl

    waltervl UDOOer

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    I can confirm this behaviour also with firmware 1.0.3

    Looks like the fan is too effective and will drop the temperature very quickly. So quickly that the FAN controller cannot follow.
    In my case with almost full CPU load (80-90%) the temperature drops in a few seconds below the treshold when the fan switches on on 50% rpm.
     
    Fuzzyroll and Markus Laire like this.
  5. waltervl

    waltervl UDOOer

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    I did some more testing:
    Fan not aimed at CPU so not cooling: same strange behaviour (variable speed) at 50% or 75% fan speed setting in bios. At 100% it is running fine.

    So it is not what I assumed a lazy fan controller but a not well functioning fan (pwm) controller. As long as the fan is turning at 50 or 75% it is varying its speed in intervals of a few seconds. Very annoying. Constant sound is ok, changing not.
    @Laura Can this be fixed in the next firmware update?
     
    Last edited: Sep 5, 2017
  6. G3WGV

    G3WGV UDOOer

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    The fan on my Ultra does exactly the same thing and it is definitely the PWM controller that is doing it. It doesn't bother me too much as I have a quiet fan and the board is inside a box but it's definitely happening.
     
  7. tojo2503

    tojo2503 New Member

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    OK so this seems to be a problem for some of us... I opened a ticket and I hope it'll be fixed. The official fan is not really silent and even though it's in a box I can hear it. This is really annoying...
     
  8. G3WGV

    G3WGV UDOOer

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  9. tojo2503

    tojo2503 New Member

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    Is it compatible to the connections on the board or is an adapter needed? I'd still prefer the official Udoo fan to work properly, at 50% it's almost silent but the spinups to 100% are annoying.
     
  10. G3WGV

    G3WGV UDOOer

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    It comes with bare wire ends so I had to also get the plug shell and pre-wired pins then do a bit of soldering. Not difficult but not a simple plug-in option I'm afraid. I went that route because of early reports that the Udoo fan was noisy.
     
  11. waltervl

    waltervl UDOOer

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  12. G3WGV

    G3WGV UDOOer

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    Sorry to dredge up an old thread but did this strange fan behaviour get any attention?
     
  13. tojo2503

    tojo2503 New Member

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    Nothing new... really annoying that Udoo does not seem to care at all. The last message in my support ticket was:

    „Hi again,
    Yes, that behavior seems common on all boards.
    The Firmware R&D engineers are thinking about it, in the meanwhile I'd suggest to try tweaking the values in the BIOS Power Configuration choosing a low temp value for 50% speed and a higher value for 100% to reduce the peaks.

    BR„

    Yeah... what a great „Workaround“. The support ticket was even marked as resolved. :-/
    It looks like the x86 does not get any attention after our money was collected. I reopened the ticket but I don’t expect anything productive.
     
  14. G3WGV

    G3WGV UDOOer

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    Thanks for the information, Tojo. Perhaps the R&D guys will have a sudden epiphany and a new firmware version will emerge.
     
  15. tojo2503

    tojo2503 New Member

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    Ok, there is a new firmware, but the changelog doesn’t say anything about the PWM... have you checked it or can anyone confirm that the bug is fixed?
    I can only test it at the weekend.
     
  16. tojo2503

    tojo2503 New Member

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    The bug is not fixed in firmware 1.04. The fan (original from the Udoo shop) still spins up to 100% every 3-4 seconds.
    Really annoying, no replies here, no replies in my ticket... seems Udoo is dead.
     
  17. tojo2503

    tojo2503 New Member

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    Time to get this on top again.
    Really interesting how Udoo is dealing with a bug they recognized almost a year ago. A really bad „workaround“ and then nothing at all. Neither here nor in the ticket.
    I ask myself if I expected too much when I thought that the Udoo and the official Udoo fan would work together properly...
     
  18. G3WGV

    G3WGV UDOOer

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    Sad to say it looks like the Udoo guys are busy playing with shiny new things and are not really bothered about supporting their existing products.
     
  19. tojo2503

    tojo2503 New Member

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    Sure that is the reason... support doesn’t generate short-term money. Unfortunately the only possibility for a customer is to ignore new products. Most likely that’s what I’ll do even though the Bolt looks interesting.
     
  20. G3WGV

    G3WGV UDOOer

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    My situation exactly.
     

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