How to make your laptop cool and quiet

Joined
Aug 11, 2020
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58
MSI Center

Some of you may have experienced this: you are sitting in a classroom or office/meeting room, and your laptop fans suddenly starts to spin faster than usual, until everyone turns their head and looks at you.

Sudden workload may always occur due to automatic windows updates, anti-virus software, or browsers in the background, there are all kinds of possibilities.

MSI Center

In order to keep the laptop quiet, the MSI laptop built-in app, MSI Center or MSI Center Pro, under “User scenario” section, you can choose “Silent” mode which puts the fan at a lower speed.

If you want the laptop to be extremely quiet, there are an advanced trick to keep the fan noise as low as possible. However, note that this will decrease your CPU performance, but still sufficient for your daily work.

Advanced: tweaking CPU performance
One of the most effective methods is to lower the CPU temperature by adjusting the CPU frequency to a lower level. Try the following step-by-step guide.

1. Search at the start menu for “Edit power plan”
Edit power plan

2. Click “Change advanced power settings”
Change advanced power settings

3. Set “Maximum processor state” to 99%

Most of the time 99% to 97% value will just work. If not, try lower the value till it works, for example 35%.
Click apply. If it works, usually you will notice the fans become quiet.
(If the option is not shown in the setting, skip to the batch file method below.)
Maximum processor state

4. Search “Task manager” from start menu
Search Task manager from start menu

5. Check if the CPU speed is kept under the base speed. The CPU speed should be slower than the base speed even when it is at maximum loading.
CPU speed


What if the option is missing? Is there a faster way?
What if the option is missing

You can also copy and paste the following value into a text file, save it and change the filename extension to .bat, for example, Max99.bat and run it as administrator. If you are not familiar with the following step, have a friend who is familiar with computer to help you to create the batch file for you once it for all.

Powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor PROCTHROTTLEMAX 99
Powercfg -setdcvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor PROCTHROTTLEMAX 99
Powercfg -setactive scheme_current


To set the performance back to full power, set the percentage to 100%
It is highly recommended to save them as two separate file, you can simply click on the file to switch between the modes.

Powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor PROCTHROTTLEMAX 100
Powercfg -setdcvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor PROCTHROTTLEMAX 100
Powercfg -setactive scheme_current


How does it work?
If you’d like to dig deep about how it works, let’s talk about why your laptop fan speeds up. Modern laptops have a smart Intel CPU built-in and are able to adjust their own performance according to the loading, such as “Turbo boost technology”.

Turbo boost technology

“Turbo boost technology” is the modern Intel CPU automatic overclocking feature. The diagram above is a screenshot of Windows 11 task manager from MSI Stealth 15M, it stated the base speed of a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1270P CPU is 2.50 GHz. The base speed is the guaranteed CPU speed under default TDP (Thermal Design Power). When the thermal solution is able to handle the heat generated by CPU, the CPU raises its speed, for example, the diagram above shows the CPU is running at 3.44GHz.

From Intel website, the Intel® Core™ i7-1270P Processor, its Max turbo frequency can be up to 4.8GHz, but the performance will inevitably generate more heat and the fans have to speed up to increase the airflow through the heat sink to cool the CPU.

If you limit the frequency, the CPU will be running at a lower frequency but also at a cooler state and thus the laptop will automatically slow down the fan.

Silent and Quiet!
Now your laptop should be quiet than before. Note that the performance will be relatively lower than regular mode, but with the great amount of CPU core number of 12th gen Intel core processors, the system performance drop is not noticeable unless under very heavy load tasks.

When the meeting or class is finished, turn it back to full performance and enjoy the power of MSI laptop!

Check the following links for the latest MSI laptop information:
MSI Gaming Laptops
MSI Content Creation Laptops
MSI Business & Productivity Laptops
 
I prefer using ThrottleStop, I can control the CPU by disabling TURBO when on battery, even has option when just browsing internet can lower your CPU speed also.
Great little APP that controls everything as you want it to.



 
Hi, it doesn't work for me - nothing does. I am the owner of a MSI katana gf66. I did this before where it worked, but suddenly not anymore. I tried doing it again after reinstalling windows.

- setting “Maximum processor state” to 99%.
- Also deactivated "processor performance boost mode" by setting the setting to "disabled" in the power plan (same place as maximum processor state).
- Trying to find turbo boost in BIOS, but couldn't find it (nothing named turbo boost - found similar things and tried disabling).
- Disabling it in ThrottleStop.
- Picking silent mode in MSI Center (my laptop doesn't support Dragon Center).

Nothing of the above helped.

Any suggestions? Thank you.
 
Start by deleting the arc control app. I have noticed my power button always is orange. When i deleted arc control app my laptop suddenly changed the power button to white. I also noticed the fan speed got better. Normally when i opend firefox the fans goes up a bit, now they dont.
 
Start by deleting the arc control app. I have noticed my power button always is orange. When i deleted arc control app my laptop suddenly changed the power button to white.
My power button is also always orange.
I deleted Arc Control but the button is still orange.
In BIOS the setting is balanced.
In MSI Center it is hybrid.
In Windows the setting is balanced.
Did a reboot but the power button is still orange. :rolleyes:
Here is another Intel App called Intel Graphic Control or something like this. Intel Grafik-Kontrollraum in German language.
After some more investigation I believed that I have found the culprit. I use 8GadgetPack and here is a gadget called GPU Monitor. I closed it and the button turned white. I started the Gadget again and the button became red.
But just as I write this the button turned to white and stays white. Now I am a bit confused. It looks like the gadget does nothing. It shows no information.
 
Did some more tests. I closed all of the different GPU gadgets and started FurMark. When you start Furmark the power button turns red. You close it, the button gets white.
I did this 10 times. Always the same .This is how it should be.
I opened all the GPU gadgets, started FurMark and let run a Stress Test. The interesting thing on FurMark is that you can minimize the Stress Test window but the test still runs.
So I could watch what all this gadgets. Because most of them are out of date (some of them come from Windows 7) the result was that most of them not worked as expected.
But I got what I wanted. A gadget which monitors the temperature of the NVIDIA card. The name of the gadget is .:NVIDIA GPU temp:. .
This thread was really helpful.
Special thanks to
MichelN86 who pointed me in the right direction.
 

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I just got an MSI Raider GE68HX and I've been playing with most of these different apps and options and none of them have worked very well for me. That is one of the criticisms of MSI laptops - they're loud. And with the "silent" settings, I agree - the fans still run about 2300-3000 RPM all the time, even on silent mode. Even when the CPU temp is only about 53 degrees. That's no good.

With the newer versions of MSI Center, you can select Extreme Performance, then click on the gear icon to get into the settings. Then you can customize the fan profiles to actually make the laptop really quiet. These settings slow the fan speed down to about 1,000 RPM when the CPU is mostly in idle mode - and then will speed up under load but the trigger is set much higher.

You can easily select "Auto" if you don't need it to be as quiet.

1707094503586.png
 
I don't understand what are the most left sliders though.

Anyways, yes, this is the only way for me to make the laptop quiet. Not really the best way, this MSI Center is a bit weird.
 
I have done that - the defaults for the laptop are to always run the fans at 2300 RPM or higher...I've never seen it drop below that speed, which is still noticeable in a quiet room. Setting those sliders (leftmost sliders set the fan speed at lower temperatures) means I can drop the fans to about 2000 RPM, which are basically silent, but the idle temperature than goes up to 55-62 degrees even without running anything, just a browser. Using the AI setting, it drops a bit to about 52-58 but the fans are running at about 3000 RPM which is very noticeable. I just wonder if it is safe for the processor to run at 62 - 65 all the time at idle if you want to quiet down the fans. Honestly, I wish I didn't have an i9 processor in this laptop...an i7 would have been fine and probably a lot cooler/quieter.
 
I agree. To be honest, I would've done great with AMD too. A cousin of mine has an AMD CPU that is more or less powerful like i7. I swear, it makes zero noise, zero, and temperatures are great. This big.LITTLE arch in 13th gen doesn't convince me at all.

Anyways, any °C below 80 is good when in idle with CPUs, so 62-65 should be OK, but of course we want to stay as cooler as possible. I even managed to undervolt a bit, but can't do much. If I do too much, I get BSOD after a few hours of usage. But in general I don't see a big improvement.
 
Hi, it doesn't work for me - nothing does. I am the owner of a MSI katana gf66. I did this before where it worked, but suddenly not anymore. I tried doing it again after reinstalling windows.

- setting “Maximum processor state” to 99%.
- Also deactivated "processor performance boost mode" by setting the setting to "disabled" in the power plan (same place as maximum processor state).
- Trying to find turbo boost in BIOS, but couldn't find it (nothing named turbo boost - found similar things and tried disabling).
- Disabling it in ThrottleStop.
- Picking silent mode in MSI Center (my laptop doesn't support Dragon Center).

Nothing of the above helped.

Any suggestions? Thank you.
Try set to 95% or even less, like 50 even 40%
 
I’ve adjusted my laptop’s fan settings, but the default keeps them running at 2300 RPM, which is noticeable in a quiet room. Lowering the fans to 2000 RPM makes them nearly silent but raises the idle temperature to 55-62°C. Using the AI setting reduces the temp to 52-58°C but ramps up the fans to 3000 RPM, which is very loud. I'm worried about the processor running at 62-65°C constantly at idle for quieter fans. I wish I’d chosen an i7 instead of an i9—it would likely be cooler and quieter.
 
One of my issues was that the dGPU (4070) was never shutting down. The orange light was on all the time and the dGPU clock speed was maxed out almost all the time, even when it was idle, which increases overall internal temperature and caused the fans to run much louder. The second GPU fan would come on just sitting idle in Windows. After weeks of looking for solutions to this problem, I finally gave in and did a factory reset. That's the first time I've ever seen the power light go white in Hybrid mode. Finally. I slowly added all the software back in, doing Windows updates one at a time until I noticed that sometimes running nVidia's GeForce Experience would cause it to stay enabled (light was orange) - but only if I opened it, not if it just sat in the background. The one that makes it come on every time - iCue software. WTF? iCue has NOTHING to do with the dGPU! So I uninstalled it - don't need it for anything but changing the lighting on my mouse. What terrible software.

Anyway, now I stay in hybrid mode, the light turns white, the dGPU slows down and shuts off a minute or two after I boot up. I've even seen the fans shut off completely when the CPU temp gets down to under about 42 C. When the fans do come on, they're never less than about 2300 RPM - strange MSI can't make them run at 2000 or lower. If you build your own custom fan curve, you can get it down to about 1900 RPM, which is truly silent and still keeps the CPU cool enough. But that took weeks of work - when MSI could do this automatically a whole lot easier than I can!
 
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