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ClevoFanControl

Clevo laptop fan control utility

Modifying Hardware is risky, the author is not responsible for any damage that may occur. Please read the feature description before proceeding!

If you encounter bugs during use, feel free to open an Issue

Usage

For detailed information, see Feature Introduction Read Note before use

Windows

1. Download and extract the latest release for Windows
2. Run ClevoFanControl-gui.exe as Administrator

Linux

1. Download and extract the latest release for Linux
2. Ensure Qt6 libraries are installed, or instead, you can set environment variables to let the program locate your Qt6 .so files
3. Run cfc-launcher.sh as root

Note (Important)

• Directly running ClevoFanControl-gui as root on linux may result in a missing tray icon. Using cfc-launcher.sh, which executes unset XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP before launching the program, resolves this issue
• For high loads, switch to gamexxxx profile in the system tray to prevent overheating
• Turn on the Monitor GPU switch in the system tray when your dGPU is active or in use, otherwise GPU temperature will not be monitored, which is dangerous. See Explanation of GPU Temperature Monitoring for detailed info
• The default profiles are made for n960kp (Hasee TX8) based on the author's usage habits, so they may be not suitable for other users/models. Please read Feature Introduction and modify the profiles accordingly

Feature Introduction

System Tray

• Monitor: Display the temperature, power, fan speed signal and actual fan RPM of CPU/GPU
• Config: Manage software settings
• Profile: Select the profile to use
• Commands: Execute custom commands
• Max Speed: Set both fan speed to 100%
• Speed Limit: Set global fan speed limitation (Can be configured in Config page)
• Static Speed: Set the fan speed percentage to specific values configured in Config page, mainly used for hardware debug
• Clevo Auto: Use the default fan speed adjustment method in Clevo laptops
• Monitor GPU: enable GPU monitoring
• Exit: Exit the program, and set the fans to "Clevo Auto"

Configuration

• Currently, the multi-profile feature only supports selecting and editing existing profiles in GUI. If you want to add/remove/rename a profile, you have to edit config.json manully
• Currently, the custom command feature only supports executing commands saved in config.json, to add/remove/rename/edit a command, please edit the configuration file. The two original command entries each serves the function of limiting the GPU frequency to 1200Mhz and reseting the frequency limitation respectively
• The default normal profile is for daily use while the game4030 one is made for gaming scene with higher min fan speed

Configuration File (config.json)

• Any newer version of this software does not support automatically upgrading config file from older versions, after upgrading, you have to migrate the old config file manually: run the new version once to let it generate a new version of the default config.json, then copy the corresponding entries from the old file into the new one
• Configuration file is saved whenever tray settings are changed to avoid data loss during shutdown

Config GUI

Manual JSON file editing is recommended instead of using GUI

• Profile: Select the profile to edit. (to select which profile to use, use system tray)
• Temp-Speed mode: If the core temperature is between 2 temperature values, set the fan speed to the corresponding speed value of the lower temperature
• Max Temp mode: The fan speed will be improved by "Speed Step" if the core temperature is higher than "Speed Up Temp", and will be decreased by "Speed Step" if the temperature is lower than "Slow Down Temp". The speed won't be lower than "Min Speed". Note: this is the recommended mode to use, which reduces fan noise, but slightly affect performance. As it has lower fan speed, the motherboard heats up easily, so it's strongly recommended to set the "Min Speed" a bit higher to cool it down, especially when gaming
• Static Speed: See System Tray
• Speed Limit: See System Tray
• Fan Intervals: Time intervals (in ms) for checking core temperature and adjusting fan speed. Low values (e.g. <=100ms) may cause EC issue
• Clevo Auto: See System Tray
• Max Speed: See System Tray
• Apply button: Apply the configuration and save the config file
• OK button: Apply the configuration, save the config file and close the window

Commands Feature

• Its main purpose is to execute hardware adjusting commands as root/Administrator conveniently
• The GPU-1200 command limits nvidia GPU clock to 1200Mhz, while the GPU-rgc restores the default clock limitation

Explanation of GPU Temperature Monitoring

• Currently, nvidia-smi is used for GPU temperature detection. However, running nvidia-smi activates the GPU, causing additional power consumption, resulting in high temperature and energy waste when the dGPU is not in use (normally, nvidia GPU go to "sleep" state when idle). As determining whether the nvidia GPU is in use is hard, the temperature monitoring have to be enabled manually when you use dGPU. The Experimental GPU usage auto detection functionality is explained as follow
• GUI configuration is not supported
• Windows is not supported, but theoretically possible. Suggestions are welcome via issue
• Enabling "Monitor GPU" in tray forces GPU monitoring regardless of the auto detection settings
• Auto detection is disabled when gpuAutoDetect is set to false in config.json
• When gpuAutoDetect is set to true, the program automatically detects GPU usage by checking specific files under /sys and /dev, deciding whether to monitor GPU's temperature and power. The detection is implemented in function GpuFanController::getTemp in the source code.

Command-Line Version (ClevoFanControl-cmd)

• This version is mainly designed for some linux operating systems without GUI. This version can run without Qt6 libraries.
• For detailed usage, use --help or /? argument
• Important: Data entered in the version is sent directly to EC without safety check (e.g. max and min value). Make sure you input the correct value

Auto Start on Boot

Windows

1. Create a custom task in "Task Scheduler"
2. Under "Action", set the task to launch ClevoFanControl-gui.exe and set its containing directory as the start location
3. Set "Trigger" to activate on user login
4. Check "Run with highest privilege"

Linux

1. Edit the desktop file in the repository, modify the path according to your system
2. Copy the desktop file to XDG autostart directory (commonly ~/.config/autostart/ or /etc/xdg/autostart/)
3. Allow ClevoFanControl-gui to run as root without password in /etc/sudoers by appending NOPASSWD:[path-to-software]/ClevoFanControl-gui to [username] ALL=(ALL:ALL)

Build

• Tools: cmake, ninja, gcc, g++, qt6

1. clone the repository
2. Modify the build scripts under src/scripts/, make sure the cmake configure options are correct, then run it in the project root directory

Mechanism

• ec.zip in this repository contains all the referance resource I found

Fan Control Interface

• Windows: WinRing0 Precompiled binaries
• Linux: inb() and outb() functions

Temperature Read Interface

Interface/OS	Windows	Linux
CPU	MSR register IA32_PACKAGE_THERM_STATUS_MSR (Intel only)	/sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone
GPU	nvidia-smi -q --display=TEMPERATURE	nvidia-smi -q --display=TEMPERATURE

Power Read Interface

• CPU: MSR register MSR_PKG_ENERGY_STATUS (Intel only)
• GPU: nvidia-smi -q --display=POWER