NUC11PAHi7 - temperature / fan control issues with system shutdown

[Matt_K]

Hello together,

I just received my brandnew NUC11PAHi7 and facing several problems with the system.

Windows 10 Pro is installed with all drivers from the "Intel Drivers and Support Assistant" Tool and the latest bios update.

2x16 GB DDR4 3200 Kingston HyperX and Samsung 970 EVO NVME SSD is installed.

The NUC is only working correctly in the pre-defined Bios fan settings balanced, cool and quiet. But between quiet and balanced there is no difference in fan speed, about 2150 rpm is the mininum fan speed which is very noticeable to hear. Fan Off was activated but was never working because lowest temp was 32°C from the CPU package (21°C room temp, 30% humidity, located in the Black Forest in Germany).

Due to the NUC is operating directly in front of me I wanted to reduce the noise a bit and tried the following settings from @n_scott_pearson.:

Fan Off disabled
68°C, 20%, 4% for processor temperature sensor
58°C, 20%, 4% for motherboard temperature sensor

With these settings the fan noise was much quieter but the system was shutting down due to temperature issue at an test with webglsamples.org. So I started HWiNFO64 to monitor what was going on.

I modified the the Bios settings from Scott to following values:

Fan off disabled
65°C, 20%, 5% for processor temperature sensor
58°C, 20%, 5% for motherboard temperature sensor

Another test run with the "aquarium" from webglsamples.org lead into another system shutdown. I discovered that the fan was not speed up correctly and the speed was shutting down to nearly zero which was causing the system shut down / crash.

I can't think that this is normal for such an device, that the cooling fan is only working in the pre-defined bios profiles which are too noisy in general but not with custom settings. Also the minumum temperature of the CPU seems high in idle or with light workload like typing this post.

Maybe someone can help me with this issue or can confirm that the NUC is maybe defective and the unit have to be returned / exchanged for a proper working one.

Thank you much in advance for your help.

[n_scott_pearson]

It would appear that my advice (which was meant for a completely different NUC model) has exposed a bug in the BIOS and/or the EC firmware. I was able to reproduce this myself...

...S

[Matt_K]

Thanks for the feedback Scott.

After re-flashing / updating the firmware / bios with the latest update I tried again other custom values with 25% fan duty with the same effect. The fan speed is not changing compared to the CPU temperature which lead into an system shutdown due to overheating.

To be honest, this is not related to your values you adviced for another NUC. In general your fan settings would make also sense for the 11th gen NUC like for 10 or 9th generation for example due to the smart settings.

So you think this can only be fixed with a new Bios update, that custom cooling values will work beside the out of the box profiles?

It's a bit annoying that such a "premium" product is not capable to operate with the out of the box provided adjustment options or the senseless quiet mode which is way beyond being quiet.

[n_scott_pearson]

What can I say? This is a brand new product and users haven't validated it fully yet. I blame Microsoft; they started this let-the-users-debug-it craze years ago with Windows 98. We have gotten used to them shipping a product with 60,000 outstanding sightings in their database.

Seriously, though, bugs are going to sneak through from time to time. They will get a fix for this to us in the fullness of time.

...S

[Ronny_G_Intel]

Hi Matt_K,

We just released BIOS 0040 that fixes the following issue described on the BIOS release notes:

• Fixed issue where fan speed was not changing compared to the CPU temperature which leads to a system shutdown due to overheating.

Can you please update your system BIOS to version 0040 and report back?

Here is the url for download:  https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/30510

I hope this helps,

Ronny G

[Matt_K]

Hello Ronny,

sorry a test is not possible, the system was resold via ebay and replaced with an Deskmini X300 from ASRock.

Matt

[Ronny_G_Intel]

Hi Matt,

I am sorry to hear that you had the product replaced by a different brand and I hope that you give our products another chance in the future.

Thanks for the update.

Ronny G

[David_G_Intel]

Were you able to check the previous post?  

Let us know if you still need assistance.    

Best regards,  

David G.  

Intel Customer Support Technician  

[David_G_Intel]

We have not heard back from you, so we will close this thread. If you need any additional information, please submit a new question as this thread will no longer be monitored.  

Best regards,  

David G. 

Intel Customer Support Technician  

[lEdge]

Can you write down exactly what these percentage numbers mean exactly. How ever everything is displayed in the bios. I'm confused what labels you are getting wrong. It just seems like you are shutting down the fan at the 65 c mark. Or you are just not getting the proper fan speed when needed.
From what I can guess there is the fan temperature mark, the minimum for the fan to start spinning and the stepping for the fan to increase speed for each degree.
Let's say the fan is spinning at 20 percent at 65 degrees. You only have a 15 degree window to fit in the other 80 percent fan RPMs. It does sound like the speed stepping should be at 5 percent at 75 degree maximum. But, even then it's not enough. I had the same problem myself with high temperature marks and fan ques. I can only recommend that the fan stepping should be 11. So it's almost the same 65C, 20, 11.