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I'm trying to run a large computation on my Dell Inspiron 620 desktop, making the CPU generate a lot of heat. Unfortunately, the resulting fan noise can be quite frightening, especially at night!

It turns out that this computer has exactly two speeds for the CPU fan - low (~500 RPM), and very loud (~3000 RPM). I've been playing with fancontrol trying to make the fan noise more bearable. I wrote this bash one-liner to work around this limitation: 

while true; do echo 191 > /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon1/pwm1; sleep 0.35; echo 192 > /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon1/pwm1; sleep 0.36; done

Running this script seems to make the fan spin at an appropriate speed. Is it safe to run this script for extended periods of time, switching the PWM value between "slow" and "fast" 3 times per second? Will it wear out the fan motor or other components? Are there other, less hacky ways to make the fan run at a speed that sufficiently cools the CPU without waking me up at night?

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    Get a watercooler like the corsair h100 it is quiet, and is a complete kit.
    – cybernard
    Jul 16, 2016 at 3:53
  • I have the 120mm chassis fan in my home server plugged into the +5V line instead of the +12V line
    – Jasen
    Jul 16, 2016 at 4:07
  • have you tried speedfan? if it works for your hardware, it is quite useful for monitoring temperatures, speeds, and power.
    – Frank Thomas
    Jul 16, 2016 at 5:24
  • @FrankThomas SpeedFan cannot control the fans in my computer (I've tried) and I primarily use Linux, which SpeedFan does not run on.
    – Andrew Sun
    Jul 16, 2016 at 5:27
  • Are you going to be using it at night or not?
    – bb216b3acfd8f72cbc8f899d4d6963
    Jul 17, 2016 at 12:01

1 Answer 1

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The fan has one moving part there is no wear mechanism related to changing its speed.

getting an intermediate speed by this trick seems likely to be benign or even beneficial in every scenario I can think of.

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