[SOLVED] Laptop overheat and broken radeon driver

Reznor · 2014-04-14 16:02:26

I installed a clean system and then I started facing issues with laptop.
First, I couldn't even boot to tty console (on late start screen messes up and looks like a broken screen, early start stays black), so I had to add radeon.modeset=0 or nomodeset.
Laptop is K55N-DS81, A8-4500M with HD7640G graphics, it uses ARUBA (I had Gentoo and had to include microcode into kernel, but on Arch it should be provided by ati-dri?)
I did some testing, so with catalyst-test-pxp from AUR it works normally. Open source radeon driver also work but with lts kernel.
Second, laptop gets insanely hot (it reaches critical temperature really fast - 96C and of course it powers off immediately after that). I don't even do any compiling, just installing packages with pacman. Fans are running at max. It is not laptop issue, laptop is nearly new and clean.
Tests:
radeon driver about 65C in idle. It operates at 75C when doing usual tasks like browsing web.
fglrx driver about 45C in idle (when laptop was cold it was 38C!) and it can get over 60C but cools down to 50C after using pacman.
What I really want is a working radeon driver. Are there some things I can try to make it work?
I would like to try some other desktops like Gnome3, Cinnamon, etc. which are not working with fglrx.
One more thing is that I tried to switch power_profile to low, but it is almost the same as default.

Thanks in advance.

Last edited by Reznor (2014-04-15 07:24:21)

Reznor · 2014-04-15 07:24:04

I have to answer to my own question, just in case somebody needs a solution:

yaourt mesa-git
yaourt xf86-video-ati-git

So, build these two packages from git to get working radeon driver under kernel 3.14
Also add radeon.dpm=1 to bootloader kernel line (in grub add to the end of linux line, after quiet)

Brightness controls are not working, but you can change this anytime with command echo n | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/radeon_bl0/brightness
Here is n brightness level you want, you can check max and actual brightness in the same fashion
cat /sys/class/backlight/radeon_bl0/max_brightness
cat /sys/class/backlight/radeon_bl0/actual_brightness
You can also add this to your .xinitrc or write systemd startup script.

Current temperature is 54 which is really acceptable. Also, I can now use any desktop environment and don't have text glitch on shutdown caused by fglrx driver.
I am marking this thread as solved.

Last edited by Reznor (2014-04-15 07:25:14)

jwhendy · 2014-04-15 15:45:32

I get that by trial and error you tracked this down to a graphics driver issue (one would behave much differently than another), but were there any other indications? For example, what was the exactly output of the `sensors` command from lm_sensors (assuming you used that package)? I have a possibly related post that I'm trying to understand the cause of. Your post has inspired me to try with nouveau instead of the proprietary nvidia drivers (though I've tried from the runlevel 3 (prior to startx, so I don't know if the graphics driver is relevant at that point?).

Anyway, just wanted to make you aware if you had any insights. I'm particularly interested in your output of sensors. Mine looks like this:

$ sensors
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0:       +60.0°C  (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1:       +60.0°C  (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 2:       +60.0°C  (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 3:       +60.0°C  (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

I'm wondering if the overheating was showing up in reported Core # temperatures, or if you were seeing overheating on the GPU itself?

If you had high core temperatures that changed due to the graphics driver being used, that would interest me greatly, as I might investigate whether a recent nvidia driver upgrade might have something to do with this. If not and you were getting some other sensor reading above critical (like GPU), then perhaps this isn't related after all.

Thanks for any feedback!

Reznor · 2014-04-15 18:27:42

Sure thing. First here come logs with radeon.dpm=1 (dpm enabled)
acpi -V

Battery 0: Discharging, 98%, discharging at zero rate - will never fully discharge.
Battery 0: design capacity 4248 mAh, last full capacity 3706 mAh = 87%
Adapter 0: on-line
Thermal 0: ok, 39.0 degrees C
Thermal 0: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 98.0 degrees C
Thermal 0: trip point 1 switches to mode passive at temperature 96.0 degrees C
Cooling 0: LCD 60 of 94
Cooling 1: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 2: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 3: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 4: Processor 0 of 10

sensors

k10temp-pci-00c3
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +39.9°C  (high = +70.0°C)
                       (crit = +100.0°C, hyst = +99.0°C)

radeon-pci-0008
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +39.0°C  (crit = +120.0°C, hyst = +90.0°C)

asus-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
temp1:       +6280.0°C

And then I rebooted straight after this and booted without radeon.dpm=1 at the end of kernel line. I just did startxfce4, so nothing else is launched

acpi -V

Battery 0: Discharging, 98%, discharging at zero rate - will never fully discharge.
Battery 0: design capacity 4248 mAh, last full capacity 3707 mAh = 87%
Adapter 0: on-line
Thermal 0: ok, 46.0 degrees C
Thermal 0: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 98.0 degrees C
Thermal 0: trip point 1 switches to mode passive at temperature 96.0 degrees C
Cooling 0: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 1: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 2: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 3: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 4: LCD 60 of 94

sensors

k10temp-pci-00c3
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +46.4°C  (high = +70.0°C)
                       (crit = +100.0°C, hyst = +99.0°C)

radeon-pci-0008
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +46.0°C  (crit = +120.0°C, hyst = +90.0°C)

asus-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
temp1:       +6280.0°C

I don't know about noveau, but in my case I have checked if my card is properly supported by radeon driver, so it seems now that ARUBA should work with microcode.
My GPU seems to be built in CPU, because in hybrid setup I would have two 7xxx card, I guess.

One more thing. It is not still perfect. It gets really hot when watching youtube, around 86C, but still does not reach deadline, where it will simply power off.
I just installed wine and winetricks, it got to 60C then jumped down to 51C

Last edited by Reznor (2014-04-15 18:34:07)

Arch Linux

#1 2014-04-14 16:02:26

[SOLVED] Laptop overheat and broken radeon driver

#2 2014-04-15 07:24:04

Re: [SOLVED] Laptop overheat and broken radeon driver

#3 2014-04-15 15:45:32

Re: [SOLVED] Laptop overheat and broken radeon driver

#4 2014-04-15 18:27:42

Re: [SOLVED] Laptop overheat and broken radeon driver

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