here’s a bump I am having the same problem with several gtx 580 cards and all I currently want to do is crank up the fan speeds since when you have 3 of them next to each other they heat up everything any help would be awesome
Via a script?
Yes, you can probably use nvida-settings to change the “GPUCurrentFanSpeed” attribute. Use “nvidia-settings -q all” to see what can be adjusted and what value it’s at now, then something like
“nvidia-settings -a=[gpu:0]/GPUCurrentFanSpeed=80” in your script.
I have not tried the above, I don’t want to mess with the dynamic speeds on this machine I’m on now while it’s in the middle of a long run.
I did try that and unless you have the checkbox enabled through coolbits then that throws up an error and wont allow me to change it so even though command line you would need be able to turn on the coolbits
As a guess, it may not be CoolBits, (which I thought was only for overclocking). You may not have permission, though.
Try with sudo. If that doesn’t work, I’m out of ideas.
I would hope that was all it was but I seriously doubt it because through command line I was able to change the fan speeds on the one card with coolbits set to 4 (gives you fan control only instead of 1 for overclocking) and I was unable to change the fan speeds on any of the other cards that did not have a monitor hooked up to them. Didnt try setting up a fake monitor on them because apparently several people have tried that and according to them its no better than just hooking up a monitor to every card. I’m beginning to wonder if Nvidia didnt overlook the people that would be running cuda on the cards and they assumed that if it wasnt in sli and playing games then why would you ever want to overclock it (or in my case simply turn the fans up).
You’re not the only one wanting fan control in Linux. Looks like there’s no easy solution, especially for non-display cards.
Yeah thats what I am afraid of I wonder if Nvidia is aware that this is potentially a problem that they might want to address in the next driver do you know of any good ways to make them aware other than posting in these forums (which I doubt they read very carefully).
Is there still no solution 7 years later?
nvidia-smi.
You can set clocks, power limits, and fans speeds per GPU.
I am not aware that nvidia-smi can be used to set fan speed, and a perusal of the available options on its help page didn’t reveal any useful leads. As I recall, setting fan speed on Linux requires nvidia-settings which in turn requires an X server; I don’t know how to set fan speed on Windows at all.
What did I overlook?
You’re right and I was wrong, it doesn’t control fan speed. I misremembered. You can do the CoolBits trick and control it in nvidia-settings for display cards, but not in nvidia-smi. That would be useful especially when running a compute GPU in a server where noise is not an issue.
Best I can tell from rummaging around the internet, the Linux trick is to start an X server, configure the fan speed with nvidia-settings, then kill the X server.
I submitted an RFE.
If you’re feeling adventurous you can also flash the card BIOS with a custom fan curve. There are tools for that under Windows (NVFlash) but the change persists to Linux.
For overclocking/setting fan speed/tuning voltage under Windows you can use MSI Afterburner.
Most aftermarket cards will have optimal fan curve built-in by default but those are unsuitable for server/workstation usage due to insufficient airflow when placed next to each other unless you set up like this with PCI-e risers and custom racks.
