# The slightest task makes my laptop fans noisy when running FreeBSD



## alamahant (Feb 19, 2020)

Hi Guys,
Just yesterday I installed FreeBSD on my laptop.
I eventually managed to overcome the uefi multiboot with other OSes(I use efibootmgr from linux to boot into FreeBSD) issue,the Xfce4 not starting issue(I was missing the drm-kmod package) and the Lightdm not starting issue (I used sddm instead).
So FINALLY now everything is working smoothly and I really like the simple almost "archetypical" feel I get when running FreeBSD.
There is only one thing that really bothers me:
The fans of my laptop become really noisy with the slightest task like for example opening a web browser etc.
I get roughly the same amount of noise as If I were compiling packages from source.
I DID eventually enable "powerd" in rc.conf and this somehow improved the situation a bit BUT not totally.
The fact remains that my FreeBSD is more noisy than it should(comparing it to my Linuxes).
I checked "top" and I couldnt identify any problematic processes both memory and cpu-wise....
I keep getting a bunch of error messages in "dmesg" about :

hdac0 command timeout on address 0

Other than that I am at loss how to troubleshoot the problem.
I would prefer if my FreeBSD didn't "struggle" so much.....
What would the respected community advise me to do?

Thanks a lot,
Andreas


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## trev (Feb 19, 2020)

I think you'll need to specify the brand and model of your laptop if you want specific advice.


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## alamahant (Feb 19, 2020)

Its an asus n551jq.
CPU is 4 core 8 thread haswell.Mem 16gig.
But I feel that it is a power-management kind of thing.
Because I do not have this issue when running other OSes.
Maybe some microcode missing or something of the sort...........


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## Mjölnir (May 25, 2020)

This is all guessing...

Make shure you can see all processes when you're not loged in as root:
`$ sysctl security.bsd.see_other_{g,u}ids
$ su -
# sysctl security.bsd.see_other_{g,u}ids=1 && exit
$ top`
Include system tasks in top with "S".
Most likely I would suspect an out-of-date X server eating CPU cycles. Update it.
2.nd chance: Broken ACPI.  Try another CPU idle handling:
`$ sysctl machdep.idle{_available,}
machdep.idle_available: spin, mwait, hlt, acpi
machdep.idle: acpi
$ su -
# sysctl machdep.idle=hlt && exit`
Update your BIOS
I've seen this (high CPU load) with the first two topics in the past, plus a misbehaving KDE task (plasma-desktop), but since you're using XfCE that could not apply.  Good luck.


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## George (May 25, 2020)

There is acpi_asus() and acpi_asus_wmi() and aibs(). But I dont know whether they offer fan control..

`sysctl -a | grep temperature` lets you monitor your cpu temperature.


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## Sivan! (Jul 10, 2022)

Mjölnir said:


> This is all guessing...
> 2.nd chance: Broken ACPI.  Try another CPU idle handling:
> `$ sysctl machdep.idle{_available,}
> machdep.idle_available: spin, mwait, hlt, acpi
> ...



I did that to control fan noise, BSD 13.1 release auto re-booted a few times repeatedly. (Now seems stable.) Is there a way to undo this?



Mjölnir said:


> Update your BIOS



Haven't done that.  dmesg shows smbios 2.4.


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## jbo (Jul 10, 2022)

Sivan! said:


> I did that to control fan noise, BSD 13.1 release auto re-booted a few times repeatedly. (Now seems stable.) Is there a way to undo this?


Assuming that you're referring to FreeBSD 13.1: This sounds weird to me. As far as I know, there is no such thing as "auto re-boot" in the base system.
The only scenario I can think of where that would happen is a kernel panic with auto-reboot enabled. You might want to check whether your system crashes/panics.


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## tyson (Jul 10, 2022)

Sivan! said:


> I did that to control fan noise, BSD 13.1 release auto re-booted a few times repeatedly. (Now seems stable.) Is there a way to undo this?
> 
> 
> 
> Haven't done that.  dmesg shows smbios 2.4.


Most of a time when your laptop reboot itself means its some hardware start to failure. Are your fans clean, also that hdac0 message isn't really telling anything good.(sound card issues ?). Maybe some software/hardware conflict when running FreeBSD ?


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## Sivan! (Jul 10, 2022)

tyson said:


> Most of a time when your laptop reboot itself means its some hardware start to failure. Are your fans clean, also that hdac0 message isn't really telling anything good.(sound card issues ?). Maybe some software/hardware conflict when running FreeBSD ?



hdac0 messages are not from my computer, not from my post.  (It rebooted a few times, but now seems stable, don't know, the reboots fixed the reboot issue !


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