This project provides a capability to control the fan of a Gigabyte Aero 14Kv8 laptop (i.e., the Aero 14 model with i7-8750H processor).
This program is based on the work of Jason Ertel at https://github.com/jertel/p37-ec who wrote a program for some older Gigabyte Laptop models.
This program monitors and controls the embedded controller (EC) on of the Laptop
The EC is responsible for auto-adjusting the fan speed, however,this functionality is not activated by default. Therefore, the fan is running all the time.
Using this program you can adjust the fan settings similarly to what is available via Gigabyte's SmartManager tool on the Windows operating system.
Additionally, there are other values that can be read and adjusted, such as the ambient light sensor, keyboard backlight setting, temperatures, as well as wifi, bluetooth, camera, touchpad, and even USB charge capabilities during sleep and hibernate.
However, the source code in this project is command-line accessible only, and users must be cautious of any modifications to the EC registers. Because this program allows any value to be written to any register it is possible to cause undesired results, with potentially physically damaging results. Therefore, do not use this program unless you accept the risks mentioned above.
Note: I also created a fan profile for nbfc (https://github.com/hirschmann/nbfc) which allows more fine-grained control and provides a nice balance between having a completely silent fan on idle but without throttling the CPU turbo which the built- in silent mode does. This makes the fan spin up when there is a bit of load but not otherwise and is, in my opinion a good compromise between silence and performance. Therefore, using nbfc might be a better alternative to the built-in fan modes of the that laptop that you can activate with this program here.
The program may have permission errors even if it is run with sudo. If this is the case then you may need to change your UEFI/Bios settings to disable any trusted computing functionality and to delete the secure boot keys (don't worry, there is an option to reset those keys to their default values should you need secure boot again in the future).
To run and view current EC values (and enable the EC fan controller):
sudo bin/p37ec-aero
Once the above command is executed you will see output similar to the following:
Usage: sudo bin/p37ec-aero [<hex-offset[.bit]> <hex-value>]
Ex: sudo bin/p37ec-aero 0x01.6 0x07
Current Embedded Controller Values:
CPU Temp [0x60]: 32 C
GPU Temp [0x61]: 0 C
MLB Temp [0x62]: 25 C
Fan0 Speed [0xFC]: 2301 RPM
Fan1 Speed [0xFE]: 2269 RPM
Fan Control Enabled [0x13.3]: 1
Fan Quiet Mode Enabled [0x08.6]: 1
Fan Gaming Mode Enabled [0x12.4]: 0
Fan Custom Mode Enabled [0x13.0]: 0
Fan0 Custom Speed Setting [0xB0]: 35%
Fan1 Custom Speed Setting [0xB1]: 35%
The hexadecimal value in the square brackets is the offset within the EC for that register. The 0x13.3 notation means bit 3 (starting at 0 from right to left) of register 0x13.
To modify an EC register (Ex: turn on quiet mode):
sudo bin/p37ec-aero 0x08.6 1
There are also sample scripts for switching between normal mode, gaming mode and silent mode. However, like this program in general, those scripts should only be used if you have the laptop model for which this program was written.
You need to be able to load module ec_sys into your Linux kernel.
The module will be loaded automatically by the program so you don't need to
load it yourself. But if you are having problems even though you run the
program as root then the reason might be that your Linux kernel was not compiled
with the ec_sys module. You can check whether the module is available on your system
by executing sudo modprobe ec_sys
(For example, on Debian Stretch this module is sadly not available whereas on the Fedora 30 it is available. Except for building your own kernel I don't know what would be a way around this if your distribution does not offer the required module.)
This project comes without any warranty If you have a different laptop model than the one for which this program is intended then first double-check the correct EC register values by observing what the Windows fan control program is writing into the EC registers. Laptop EC registers can be monitored on Windows with the program RWEverything.
Writing values into the wrong registers may damage your laptop!
There is a statically compiled binary in the bin/ folder which should work on any 64bit-based Linux kernel. This means that you don't need to compile anything.
However, if you want to compile from source then first, ensure g++ is
available on your distribution. Then compile via the following command:
g++ src/p37ec-aero.c -o p37ec-aero
There are also two trivial shell scripts to compile a statically linked
or a dynamically linked binary.
If you want to compile statically then make sure that you have
libstdc++-static and libc-static installed and use the following command:
g++ -static -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++ -o p37ec-aero src/p37ec-aero.c
This project is not affiliated with GIGA-BYTE Technology Co. Ltd.