Radeon Temperature

Table of Contents

Overview
Configuration
Status Check

Overview

When using a laptop with ATI/AMD GPU as a mini-server, the defaults for the radeon kernel module are set to a balanced mode for typical use. However, this causes the GPU to produce slighly more heat, which then triggers the SMBIOS fan controls to cool it.

Install the lm-sensors package (depending on Linux distro, the package has different names - lm_sensors, sensors, etc.) and use the sensors command to view the temperatures and fans when implementing the below configurations.

Configuration

Reboot after adding the below.

These settings ensure DPM/ASPM (power management) are enabled when the radeon kernel module loads, and disables the TV/Audio features we don't need.

/etc/modprobe.d/radeon.conf

options radeon dpm=1 aspm=1 tv=0 audio=0

These rules activate the DPM "battery" power state and sets the Performance mode to "low" when the kernel module loads and detects the hardware.

/etc/udev/rules.d/30-radeon-pm.rules

SUBSYSTEM=="drm", DRIVERS=="radeon", ATTR{device/power_dpm_state}="battery"
SUBSYSTEM=="drm", DRIVERS=="radeon", ATTR{device/power_dpm_force_performance_level}="low"

Status Check

Helper script, nothing fancy.

radcheck.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

_MOD="radeon"
_HW="/sys/class/drm/card0"

echo -e "\nModule:   ${_MOD}"
echo -e "Hardware: ${_HW}\n"
echo -n "DPM enabled:   "; cat /sys/module/${_MOD}/parameters/dpm
echo -n "ASPM enabled:  "; cat /sys/module/${_MOD}/parameters/aspm
echo -n "TV enabled:    "; cat /sys/module/${_MOD}/parameters/tv
echo -n "Audio enabled: "; cat /sys/module/${_MOD}/parameters/audio
echo -n "DPM perfstate: "; cat ${_HW}/device/power_dpm_state
echo -n "DPM perfmode:  "; cat ${_HW}/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level
echo
sensors | egrep "(CPU|GPU|Fan):"

Index

SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-4.0
SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT