My old GT210 has served me well, but I've had a few odd freezes recently, coupled with weird graphics behaviour. It's a pity, since it's a nice, silent fan-less graphics card from way back when: https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N210SL-1GI#ov
Although some of it may be due to switching back and forth between VGA and HDMI output (between an old HP 19'' and my new fancy xp pen display) I ripped it out and replaced it with an almost as ancient GT 520 (https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N520OC-1GI#ov)
The fan isn't loud, but it's there, and it's distracting since I'm working in a home environment (Corona!).
Looking online I found these posts:
http://floppym.blogspot.com/2013/07/fan-control-with-nouveau.html
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/501517-OS-13-1-Driver-quot-nouveau-quot-Unable-to-command-fan-speed-Nvidia-6800-GS
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/thermal/nouveau_thermal
So, first to check if fan control is possible:
me@indium:~$ find /sys -name pwm1_enable find: ‘/sys/kernel/debug’: Permission denied /sys/devices/platform/it87.2624/hwmon/hwmon2/pwm1_enable /sys/devices/platform/it87.2656/hwmon/hwmon3/pwm1_enable /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.0/0000:05:00.0/hwmon/hwmon0/pwm1_enable me@indium:~$ readlink /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.0/0000:05:00.0/driver ../../../../bus/pci/drivers/nouveau
Good, and we got the hwmon number -- 0.
I then created a script called gpufan.sh:
I set the min% to 35 -- it used to be 65. And I tested my way to 45% as a good compromise between noise and temperature. By default the fan speed was >4,000 rpm. Output from sensors now:sudo sh -c "echo 1 > /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/pwm1_enable" sudo sh -c "echo 35 > /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/pwm1_min" sudo sh -c "echo 45 > /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/pwm1"
nouveau-pci-0500 Adapter: PCI adapter GPU core: +0.90 V (min = +0.90 V, max = +1.11 V) fan1: 2790 RPM temp1: +34.0°C (high = +95.0°C, hyst = +3.0°C) (crit = +105.0°C, hyst = +5.0°C) (emerg = +135.0°C, hyst = +5.0°C)
