Cooling and Fan Controls in Intel® NUC Products with Visual BIOS
This document covers cooling and fan control options in the Visual BIOS Setup for Intel® NUC products (NUC generations 5 to 6).
| Note | This article only applies to Intel® NUC Kits, Mini-PCs, and Boards. If you have another type of system, please contact the manufacturer's support for more information. |
Follow these steps to view or change system fan control settings:
- Press F2 during start to enter BIOS Setup.
- Select Advanced
- Select Cooling
- Update fan options, as needed
- Press F10 to exit BIOS Setup.
System fan control settings in BIOS can be changed to meet the needs of your system usage model. Available settings can vary, depending on Intel NUC model. See the table below for fan control definitions.
| Option | Description |
| Fan Control Mode | Fixed: Allows the fan speed to be set at a fixed speed and never change. Options are from 20 to 100 percent in 10 percent increments. |
| Minimum Temperature (°C) | Fan speed increases if the processor temperature exceeds this value. The value is calculated by Tcontrol minus a fixed value. |
| Minimum Duty cycle (%) | This parameter specifies the minimum duty cycle that outputs to the fan. |
| Duty cycle increment (%/°C) | Fan speed increases by this percentage for each degree over the minimum temperature. |
Cool, Balanced, and Quiet Settings
The table shows an example of the temperature and duty cycle settings for preset configurations:
| Option | Cool | Balanced | Quiet |
| Minimum Temperature (°C) | 65 | 65 | 65 |
| Minimum Duty Cycle (%) | 35 | 35 | 35 |
| Duty Cycle Increment (%/°C) | 3 | 2 | 1 |
Preset values are for a normal desktop working environment. These settings help minimize fan noise while keeping the system properly cooled in a normal working environment. The default settings may be modified in future BIOS revisions as Intel continues to fine-tune them to get the best tradeoff between cooling and fan acoustics. You may need to change the fan control settings if your usage model includes any of the following instances:
- Sustained file transfers for a long period
- Stress testing
- Benchmarking
- Sustained processor usage of 75 percent or higher, for a long period
Other Fan Control Settings
| Option | Description |
| Fan Usage | This parameter is always set for System fan control and there are no other options. |
| Control Mode | This parameter specifies whether the fan will be controlled automatically or manually. In Automatic (Auto) control mode, the fan speed will vary automatically based on thermal conditions and configuration. The Minimum Duty Cycle, Maximum Duty Cycle, Primary Temperature Input, and Secondary Temperature Input parameters are used to specify the configuration for this mode. In Manual control mode, the fan spins at a fixed speed. The Manual Duty Cycle parameter is used to control this. |
| Duty cycle increment (%/°C) | Fan speed increases by this percentage for each degree over the minimum temperature. |
| Manual Duty Cycle (%) | This parameter is only visible when the Control Mode is set to Manual. It specifies the duty cycle that the temperature is to operate at. Warning: while configured for manual control, no circumstance will result in this manual duty cycle being overridden. It's your responsibility to ensure that the setting use doesn't allow the system to overheat |
| Maximum Duty cycle (%) | This parameter specifies the maximum duty cycle that outputs to the System fan during normal operation. If the temperature of an associated sensor rises above the threshold specified in its All-On Temperature parameter, the duty cycle will be overridden to 100%, regardless of the setting of the Maximum Duty Cycle parameter. |
| Minimum Duty cycle (%) | This parameter specifies the minimum duty cycle that will be output to the fan. |
| Primary Temperature Input | This parameter specifies which temperature sensor will be the primary source for decision-making on fan speed control. The user can choose any one of the four temperature sensors supported. The default and typical choice is the Processor temperature. Primary Temperature Input choices:
|
| Secondary Temperature Input | This parameter specifies which temperature sensor will be the secondary source for decision-making on fan speed control. You can choose any one of the four temperature sensors (other than the one chosen to be the Primary Temperature Input). Or, you can choose None. Secondary Temperature Input choices:
|
| Under-Speed Threshold (ROM) | This parameter specifies the threshold below which the fan speed sensor reports an unhealthy status. |
| Related topic |
| BIOS Settings Glossary |