Yet another laptop running hot problem

lotuskip · 2012-06-10 07:27:35

I have an EeePC 1015PE which has been running fairly hot ever since I got it and installed Arch on it. Going through the various forum threads and wiki articles, I have managed to make things a little better, but it is still just way too hot. I have finally decided that I cannot figure this out on my own.

I've installed eeepc-linux from the AUR. System has been kept up to date, and the problems have persisted for a very long time (since pre-3.0 kernel). Relevant parts of /etc/rc.conf:

MODULES=(acpi_cpufreq asus_eee)
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng acpid laptop-mode @crond @alsa)

I haven't touched the default settings of laptop-mode-tools. All sources say I shouldn't need to.

Symptoms: core temperature (as reported by both 'sensors' and 'cat /proc/eee/temperature') is around 70°C when the laptop is pretty much idle with only a few simple programs running in X. Without X, with a single user logged into a single tty, it's around 60°C (still very high, isn't it?). This is all taking place on AC power.

The fan is running fine as far as I can tell, and ventilation should be just perfect (laptop sitting on a table, fan blowing into empty space, room is not hot). The fan also audibly reacts to higher CPU load, as expected. When I installed eeepc-fancontrol from the AUR, my system would just shutdown due to overheating, so I got rid of that.

Both 'top' and 'sudo powertop' report that no process is really using much of the CPU, which is about 98% idle.

$ watch -n 0.5 grep \"cpu MHz\" /proc/cpuinfo

indicates that the CPU frequencies indeed are being scaled, but they don't really stay at the lowest values for long periods of time, but jump to the highest values very often.

Powertop reports about 50-58 wakeups-from-idle per second (again, when the laptop is idle, running X). I haven't been able to find what a "good" value is. Is 50-ish high or low? Powertop also gives the strange line

100.0%                      Device         Audio codec hwC0D0: Realtek

in the "overview", which according to Ubuntu people is no problem, but their methods of getting rid of it haven't worked for me.

Oh, and one more thing that confuses me. The wiki said I'm supposed to add "acpi_os=Linux" to the kernel line, and I have. However, today I noticed in the output of 'dmesg' and error message by the eeepc module telling me not to... I removed it then, rebooted, and haven't noticed anything changed (except the error message went way). Should it be there or not?

Sorry for the long post. It's just that having struggled with this so long, I felt I should make it clear that I have tried stuff!

msx · 2012-06-10 08:09:36

Try running new PowerTOP 2.0 (now in Community) and use cpu-freq to set governors ONDEMAND, CONSERVATIVE or POWERSAVE as you see fit.
For further tweaking and optimization please provide an lspci to see what hardware does your computer have.

lotuskip · 2012-06-10 09:06:31

I'm already using powertop 2.0-1 from community. Apparently the only governors available are "ondemand" and "performance" (which is okay, I only want ondemand, but I'd like it to work a little better). I set

NOLM_AC_CPU_IGNORE_NICE_LOAD=1

in /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d/cpufreq.conf and restarted laptop-mode; doesn't seem to do anything.

Is it normal that the governor switches constantly between the highest and lowest frequency even when there is practically no load on the CPU? I've understood that it should hit the highest frequency only when I actually run something CPU-intensive and otherwise consistently stay in the lowest frequencies.

lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation N10 Family DMI Bridge
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation NM10 Family LPC Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH7 Family SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 02)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR8132 Fast Ethernet (rev c0)
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)

ajbader · 2012-06-11 09:07:37

lotuskip wrote:

Is it normal that the governor switches constantly between the highest and lowest frequency even when there is practically no load on the CPU? I've understood that it should hit the highest frequency only when I actually run something CPU-intensive and otherwise consistently stay in the lowest frequencies.

It shouldn't. Don't know why yours does it. I run the conservative governor on mine so that it doesn't jump too high when I am doing something that doesn't need it.

Also on my laptop, what I found that graphics tweaks significantly improved battery life and cut down on heat. With that said, I have an Intel HD 3000 chip, so it is a little different but it might work on yours.

Try to add these to your menu.lst under the Kernel line:

pcie_aspm=force i915.modeset=1 i915.semaphores=1 i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 acpi_osi=Linux

Arch Linux

#1 2012-06-10 07:27:35

Yet another laptop running hot problem

#2 2012-06-10 08:09:36

Re: Yet another laptop running hot problem

#3 2012-06-10 09:06:31

Re: Yet another laptop running hot problem

#4 2012-06-11 09:07:37

Re: Yet another laptop running hot problem

Board footer