19.04 Dell Precission and fan noise on thunderbolt
I am running Kubuntu 19.04 on a Dell Precision 3541. All works well as long I don't use a thunderbolt dock with usb peripherals. As soon as I authenticate these, the virtual temperature rises (acpi/Thermal_Zone/6_pch_cannonlake/Temperature) and the fan runs on 4000 rpm, turning the notebook into an aircraft.
Now I tried the certified 18.04 LTS with a live Stick - the same rise in virtual temperature (to the degree), but the fan stays of and the notebook is still cool.
I guess there must be some difference in the fan regulation between releases. I already tried shutting of the fan using i8kutils, but it's coming on again 2 seconds later.
Any ideas?
1 Answer
This is a known issue which happened with various dell business/workstation range. The thunderbolt chip doesn't have any cooling measure so the fan always spin up to cool it. Methods which work for now are under-volt CPU or apply thermal pad to the chip on the main-board of the laptop (or both).
You can find more information here or other places using google.
2
