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How Changing This One Setting Keeps My Laptop Cool
Is your laptop running loud and overheating? Before taking it apart, there is an easier solution: adjust your laptop fan curves. Adjusting the fan curve can make an enormous difference in how your laptop performs and cools; best of all, it's a simple fix.
How to Adjust Fan Curves for Optimal Performance
It's no surprise that high-performance PC internals like CPU, GPU, and even your RAM or storage run hot when under load. At a certain temperature, this heat reduces the performance of your device—known as thermal throttling.
There are ways to reduce and prevent thermal throttling and maintain system performance; setting up a custom fan curve for your CPU or GPU is one of the best options.
How you can change your laptop's fan curves varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, as they tend to have utilities with different interfaces. On an HP Omen laptop like mine, you'll find these settings under the Performance Control tab of the Omen Gaming Hub.
There are third-party tools like MSI Afterburner and Fan Control to control your GPU and CPU fan curves, but these aren't guaranteed to work with every laptop.
That said, the basic principle of setting up a fan curve remains the same across most laptops. All you need to do is match your fan's RPM to the temperature of your CPU or GPU. So, the hotter your CPU or GPU gets, the faster the fan spins and vice-versa.
For example, on my HP Omen Transcend 14, the CPU fans start at 40 percent speed at 122°F, slowly rising with the CPU temperature until they hit full speed at 176°F. My GPU fan curve is a bit more linear, and hence, the fans kick in faster as the GPU heats up quickly when running demanding games.
If I were facing thermal throttling issues, I would make the fans kick in faster as the temperature rises. However, if I can keep temperatures in check without pushing the fans to their full speed, I get a quieter laptop even under load.
Adjusting Fan Curves for Loudness
If your manual fan settings make your laptop sound like a jet engine when it's doing nothing, chances are you're using a fan speed that's way too high for a given load. If you're sitting in class, a library, or anywhere your laptop cannot be too loud while doing basic tasks, try decreasing the fan speed as the CPU or GPU temperature rises.
You must be careful not to overheat your device, but the only way to keep the fans down and not hurt your system is to avoid running resource-intensive tasks. If you want to keep your laptop silent even under heavy loads, you'll have to deal with the excess heat that your cooling system won't be able to handle due to slow fan speeds, which result in thermal throttling.
To keep your laptop as quiet as possible, regardless of whether it's under stress or not, your best option is to try and find the lowest fan speed you can get away with without thermal throttling your CPU, GPU, or both as the temperatures rise. Don't worry if the laptop gets a little hot to the touch. As long as you're not experiencing extreme temperatures (higher than 194°F) and there is no thermal throttling, you'll be fine (though cooler is better, obviously).
Adjusting your laptop's fan curve might involve some trial and error, but the end result ensures that your fans are used properly to give your laptop the most performance possible while also making it quieter than the manufacturer's default fan configuration.
Semiconductors perform best within a specific thermal range. If you always keep your fans at max speed, you risk wearing them out faster. And if you keep them too low, your laptop will thermal throttle before it hits its maximum potential. Adjusting your fan curve properly ensures your CPU and GPU run in that sweet spot.