Ubuntu 18.04 fan control on a Dell XPS 9570 laptop

Some weeks ago I bought a Dell XPS 9570 laptop to run Ubuntu Linux 18.04 natively. Installing Ubuntu was done using github project that patches the default Ubuntu iso to match the hardware config of the Dell XPS pretty closely.

R2D2 Dell XPS with stickers

The only minor annoyance was the system fans slightly spinning up and down every few seconds. Too subtile to notice in a normal office environment, but more so in the silence of the home office.

After some fiddling the solution that seems to work best for me is using powertop :

sudo powertop --auto-tune

To persist the changes after reboots etc :

cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/powertop.service
[Unit]
Description=PowerTOP auto tune

[Service]
Type=idle
Environment="TERM=dumb"
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/powertop --auto-tune


[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

Optional :

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl enable powertop.service