BIOS issue controlling GPU fan speed

[Leadfoot44]

HP Envy All-in-One 32-a1080a

There is still a problem with the latest Firmware F.22 controlling the GPU fan speed. While the CPU fan will throttle up and run at full speed when the temperatures get very high in the 80’s to 90’s. The Intel I7-10700 CPU is rated up to a maximum temperature of 100 degrees Celsius.

The Nvidia GPU RTX 2800 Super with Max-Q is rated up to a maximum of 89 degrees Celsius. Despite the temperatures getting to the maximum of 89 degrees, the fan still remains on idle speed and does not throttle up to maximum speed.

However, the fans are working correctly, if I run the diagnostics at boot up, both fans (GPU & CPU) will step through their speeds until they are running at full speed and then report they are working correctly.

Therefore, the problem seems to be with the BIOS not correctly handling the GPU fan temperatures. It maybe that it is operating on the same temperature thresholds as the CPU, which is not correct as they have different temperature ratings.

You can certainly hear the fans when they are running at full speed and can feel the air being blown through the top vents. I have seen the GPU temperature at 87/88 degrees with no change in the fan speed.

The graphics driver is the newest one available from HP. NVIDIA RTX Studio Graphics Driver 27.21.14.6093 Rev.A

Microsoft also forced a later Nvidia driver through their windows updates, but I have rolled back to the current driver from HP, as it made no difference to the fan issue.

HP needs to look into the fan control with the GPU, so serious over heating issues can be avoided with this desktop model.

Are there any HP engineers on this board who can look in to this issue?

[hh321]

As a stop-gap solution, you could manually control the fan with 3rd party software such as MSI afterburner which allows you to set a fan curve that customizes how much the fan spins based on what temps your GPU is at. 

[Leadfoot44]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply, unfortunately MSI Afterburner and every other app (incl. speedfan) I have tried, cannot recognize the fans on this machine. MSI can monitor the temperatures but none can show or control the fan speeds on this motherboard.

Therefore, I have no workarounds, it needs to be fixed at the BIOS level.

[hh321]

I feel your pain, I was able to control the GPU but all those programs could not help me control the CPU fan.

[Leadfoot44]

One puzzling thing, I have observed when running the fan diagnostics at boot up.

There are two different categories for the fan tests. One is the Fan speed test, which manually steps through the speeds of each fan and you can select the GPU, CPU or both in these tests. It is straight forward and you can hear the fans running as they throttle up, as well as feel the air being blown out of the vents on top of the computer. Facing the front of the computer, the left side is the GPU vents and the right side is the CPU.

The other test is the Thermal fan speed test. You cannot select individual tests for the processors, there is just one test for both fans. There is no documentation on how it works so I can only guess what is going on in this test.

It would appear that it is putting a load on the processors, so the temperatures will rise to their high limits and the fans will speed to their respective threshold settings. However, although I can hear the noise of the fan(s) running at high speed; if I hold my hand over the vents at the top of the computer, only the CPU side is blowing out air at full speed. The GPU side is still at low (idle) speed.

When completing this test, it also reports it has passed. This does not seem correct and to me indicates there is a problem with their test procedure and possible fan threshold settings for the GPU.