Fan control does not work

[manic wagon]

Model: Legion Pro 5 16IRX8

Describe the issue: trying to set up a custom power profile in Legion Toolkit. Power values seem to work when monitored with HWINFO, but fan control seems unaffected.
I'm using Balanced as base profile, and I only want to modify the fan speeds for now.

No matter which values I set, fan curve seems to ignore that and stick to basic values. For example, when running Valley Benchmark, temps are around 70C in all sensors, fan is at 3400-3500 (both toolkit and HWINFO). Even if I change all fan settings to 2900, so 3400/3500 should not be active at all, fans still spin up to that value. Also, on idle, fans still spin up to 2100 RPM (at 50C) even though I set them not to spin up further than 1700 until 60-70C.

What have you tried already?: Vantage disabled from Legion Toolkit, Legion Fan Control NOT installed (I saw its not recommended for gen 8), switching profiles from Legion toolkit multiple times, restarting after customizing fan profile. I only touched power settings in Legion Toolkit, but HWINFO, Rivatuner, Afterburner are installed but only for monitoring purposes. Tried to update everything I could to the newest version, still doesnt work.

When did it start producing the issue: I only tried today but it never worked.

Did you install new drivers or software?: yes, everything to the newest, still doesnt work.

Can you provide images/videos to show us the issue: not sure how can I upload but yes I can screenshot Legion toolkit measuring 3500 RPM, while custom settings are visible to set to max 2900 RPM.

My goal is to reduce the fan speeds just a little bit, as temps are excellent on Balanced mode as-is. I tried to find something for this in Google and here on Discord but I couldn't, thanks in advance for any tips and help.

also, fans don't seem to go below 2100 rpm now (temps are about 35C), before I installed Legion Toolkit it would be even completely silent sometimes when idle

[manic wagon]

downgraded BIOS to 42 from 44, fans now properly decrease below 2100 rpm on quiet mode as before, haven't tried tinkering with custom mode yet on 42

[shy crypt]

doesnt seem like the latest BIOS was any good

ton of issues

[manic wagon]

tried custom mode again, same thing... rpm doesn't go below default values. at least the 2100rpm issue seem to be fixed now

temps are nowhere near the stated limits either, the highest possible value that HWINFO reported at all was 76C, one of the CPU cores

[inland mirage]

EC will override the minimum speed if it is deemed to low on Gen 8 and up, so even though you lower the speed the result might be exactly as you see it

there is no way around it

that is also why vantage doesn't let you drag the sliders too low, although it works on some models (I think slim 5 allows you to kill fans completely)

[manic wagon]

Oh Vantage had a hard limit but I thought Toolkit should work because I was able to move the sliders.

What is EC? Sorry I haven’t had a Windows laptop in 10 years so I’m out of the loop on some things

[inland mirage]

embedded controller

it controls low level functions of the laptop

like fans

[manic wagon]

Understood, thanks! Would you suggest to try my luck with undervolting + reducing watts to have the same performance but at a bit lower temps, so the fan would spin up less?

Is it even possible to adjust the stock balanced mode? I don’t want to use Custom because the fans have a different curve there and spin up more (avg 3500 instead of 3100)

[inland mirage]

reducing watts, sure

less power, less heat, less noise

UV won't do much - cpu/gpu will just clock higher

[manic wagon]

one last followup question, is it possible to do that but only for balanced mode? if not, then reducing the clock speed (and hopefully the temps with it), only in balanced mode?

looks like custom mode has its lowest default limits at 2900 and 3500, not 3100 and 3500 like balanced mode, I assume I would have to cripple the laptop too much to keep it under 2900rpm. 3500 is when the noise starts to bother me a bit, not a huge problem of course but if I can tailor it to my preferences then why not

balanced mode under load already runs at 3100rpm about 30% of the time so it's very close

[inland mirage]

nope