[SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

fm · 2012-01-04 21:21:22

Hi everybody,

I just want to ask a question about "standard" CPU temperatures because my laptop (a Dell Vostro 3700) is permanently hot with the fans on even when I am not doing anything special.
I have CPU freq scaling active with the conservative governor, and I use Gnome Shell 3.2 with an nVidia using the nouveau driver.

Here are "stable" temperatures while writing this post:

# sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +72.5°C  (crit = +103.0°C)

nouveau-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +78.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +110.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +73.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:       +73.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

And this is the output of mpstat

# mpstat -P ALL
Linux 3.1.6-1-ARCH (fm) 	01/04/2012 	_x86_64_	(4 CPU)

10:16:50 PM  CPU    %usr   %nice    %sys %iowait    %irq   %soft  %steal  %guest   %idle
10:16:50 PM  all    1.59    0.18    0.54    0.02    0.00    0.02    0.00    0.00   97.65
10:16:50 PM    0    1.88    0.15    0.72    0.02    0.00    0.01    0.00    0.00   97.22
10:16:50 PM    1    1.64    0.21    0.40    0.02    0.00    0.01    0.00    0.00   97.73
10:16:50 PM    2    1.47    0.15    0.67    0.02    0.00    0.06    0.00    0.00   97.64
10:16:50 PM    3    1.36    0.20    0.39    0.02    0.00    0.01    0.00    0.00   98.01

The fan, of course, is full speed (very annoying)

I think that these temperatures are quite high, but I don't know what's really causing all this heating because my laptop is basically idle.

Any suggestion?

Thanks.

P.S.: Running Linux fm 3.1.6-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Dec 22 09:11:48 CET 2011 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 430 @ 2.27GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

Last edited by fm (2012-01-06 09:32:01)

Shadowmeph · 2012-01-04 21:28:24

not sure about the programming stuff but I would maybe pull the cover and check for dust . my old laptop I had was the same and that is what I did and it seemed to fix most of the fan noise I also nver put my laptop of soft surfaces

fm · 2012-01-04 21:46:08

Thanks, this is definitely a good suggestion

However it's not the fan noise that troubles me, but the fact that it is ON all the time on a *idle* computer (with 75 degrees celsius on all the subsystems)

Thanks

Last edited by fm (2012-01-04 21:46:29)

alexkarro · 2012-01-04 22:05:59

Best to open up the laptop, clean the heatsink from dust. If you still have issues you might consider getting a better cooling solution (heatsink, paste, fan). Laptops never have great cooling so it's a bit troublesome. My old laptop had an AMD Turion CPU and the temps were around 60 idling.

ANOKNUSA · 2012-01-04 22:59:09

The temperature may be due not to cpu activity, but to that of the gpu. Often, installing the proprietary driver enables gpu throttling and reduce heat (this was my experience in the past with ATI, anyway).

alphaniner · 2012-01-04 22:59:46

If you want to remove Linux from the equation, check temps in the BIOS Settings.

nathan28 · 2012-01-05 15:17:08

+1 to trying the proprietary GPU drivers. My uneducated suspicion is that you have an integrated GPU and a discrete GPU fighting over the display. With Nvidia you may want to look into Bumblebee.

Also clean out the case, vents and fan. If the machine is old (4-5 years) you may want to apply new thermal compound.

fm · 2012-01-05 16:17:37

nathan28 wrote:

+1 to trying the proprietary GPU drivers. My uneducated suspicion is that you have an integrated GPU and a discrete GPU fighting over the display. With Nvidia you may want to look into Bumblebee.
Also clean out the case, vents and fan. If the machine is old (4-5 years) you may want to apply new thermal compound.

I also used the nVidia proprietary drivers but I had to switch to nouveau because I was having windows redrawing issues.
Temperatures were almost the same, though with nouveau I feel they are a little bit higher (anyway I am always talking about temps around 75C for an idle situation under X with gnome-shell)

My laptop is quite recent (a Dell Vostro 3700), bought it less than one year ago. I will look for dust in the case.

What I can do indeed with the proprietary driver is to check GPU load to see if something is heavily using it even though CPUs are idling.

I'll try to collect some statistics to better track the problem down

Thanks.

Last edited by fm (2012-01-05 16:20:41)

cppkhartna · 2012-01-05 16:38:18

Have you read this topic: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=125954 ?
The suggested solution has worked for me, and, as far as I can see, you also have Intel core i processor, though not Sandy Bridge, I suppose.

fm · 2012-01-05 22:38:44

cppkhartna wrote:

Have you read this topic: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=125954 ?
The suggested solution has worked for me, and, as far as I can see, you also have Intel core i processor, though not Sandy Bridge, I suppose.

Thanks for the info. It seems it worked. Now my temperature readings are:

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +63.5°C  (crit = +103.0°C)

nouveau-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +68.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +110.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +62.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:       +64.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

Which are almost 10°C less than previously.

In my opinion they're still too hot, but at least my fan is not turning full speed

Thanks for your help.

fm · 2012-01-05 22:56:07

fm wrote:

cppkhartna wrote:
Have you read this topic: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=125954 ?
The suggested solution has worked for me, and, as far as I can see, you also have Intel core i processor, though not Sandy Bridge, I suppose.
Thanks for the info. It seems it worked. Now my temperature readings are:

Well... After I played a 8 min video on youtube I got

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +74.5°C  (crit = +103.0°C)

nouveau-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +78.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +110.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +73.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:       +75.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

Still suboptimal, but at least, even with these temps the fan is not spinning like before.

Thanks.

cppkhartna · 2012-01-05 23:17:46

fm wrote:

Well... After I played a 8 min video on youtube I got
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +74.5°C  (crit = +103.0°C)

nouveau-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +78.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +110.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +73.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:       +75.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Still suboptimal, but at least, even with these temps the fan is not spinning like before.
Thanks.

My temperatures are similar to yours in both cases - sometimes flash player makes my laptop extremely hot.

fm · 2012-01-06 09:31:16

cppkhartna wrote:

My temperatures are similar to yours in both cases - sometimes flash player makes my laptop extremely hot.

Ok, that makes me feel "better" so I can stop searching for temperature optimization.

Just to wrap up this topic, I "solved" the issue by adding these parameters to the kernel:

pcie_aspm=force
i915.i915_enable_rc6=1
i915.i915_enable_fbc=1
i915.lvds_downclock=1
power_save=3
acpi_osi=Linux

It's a merge between this topic https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=125954 and this article http://blog.ericmalloy.net/2011/11/linu … core-i5i7/

The last one also provides some interesting tweaks to do on laptops (through the /sys filesystem) in order to decrease power consumption.

Thanks everybody for your help.

samuvuo · 2012-01-06 10:22:19

fm wrote:

Just to wrap up this topic, I "solved" the issue by adding these parameters to the kernel:

Just curious: what are the temperatures now? Sensors output after the "fix" would be nice.

fm · 2012-01-06 13:42:15

samuvuo wrote:

fm wrote:
Just to wrap up this topic, I "solved" the issue by adding these parameters to the kernel:
Just curious: what are the temperatures now? Sensors output after the "fix" would be nice.

It's in the previous posts:

Before (idle)

# sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +72.5°C  (crit = +103.0°C)

nouveau-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +78.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +110.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +73.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:       +73.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

After (idle)

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +63.5°C  (crit = +103.0°C)

nouveau-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +68.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +110.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +62.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:       +64.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

After (after playing 8 min youtube video)

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +74.5°C  (crit = +103.0°C)

nouveau-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +78.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +110.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +73.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:       +75.0°C  (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

Fan spinning is better (less noisy) after specifying the kernel parameters.

Thanks

Last edited by fm (2012-01-06 13:43:05)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-01-04 21:21:22

[SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#2 2012-01-04 21:28:24

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#3 2012-01-04 21:46:08

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#4 2012-01-04 22:05:59

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#5 2012-01-04 22:59:09

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#6 2012-01-04 22:59:46

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#7 2012-01-05 15:17:08

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#8 2012-01-05 16:17:37

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#9 2012-01-05 16:38:18

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#10 2012-01-05 22:38:44

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#11 2012-01-05 22:56:07

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#12 2012-01-05 23:17:46

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#13 2012-01-06 09:31:16

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#14 2012-01-06 10:22:19

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

#15 2012-01-06 13:42:15

Re: [SOLVED] Question about CPU temperature

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