The Lenovo X300 has a really annoying fan running at high speeds already at low (40°C) CPU temperatures. The lm-sensors package comes with a fancontrol daemon which does user space fan regulation. Just put this in your /etc/fancontrol:

INTERVAL=10
FCTEMPS=hwmon0/device/pwm1=hwmon0/device/temp1_input
FCFANS= hwmon0/device/pwm1=hwmon0/device/fan1_input
MINTEMP=hwmon0/device/pwm1=60
MAXTEMP=hwmon0/device/pwm1=70
MINSTART=hwmon0/device/pwm1=32
MINSTOP=hwmon0/device/pwm1=32
MINPWM=hwmon0/device/pwm1=32
MAXPWM=hwmon0/device/pwm1=128

This will give you 1800 rpm for CPU temperatures > 50°C and 5500 rpm for temperatures above 70°C. As the fan is barely noticeable at 1800 rpm and 70°C is only reached by running two processes at 100% CPU load for more than 5 minutes (even at 30°C ambient temperature), this will give you a nearly totally silent laptop. A pwm value of 255 sounds like a jet starting (8000 rpm)...

posted at 12:14 | path: /unix | permanent link to this entry