Arch Linux

stormhaden

Member

Registered: 2013-10-02

Posts: 6

Are these temperatures normal for a laptop?

Recently I reworked my Awesome WM configuration a bit and added some indicators one of which is a CPU temperature indicator. Every since I've done it I'm wondering whether there's something wrong with my laptop because the temperatures seem rather high.

My ambient room temperature is ~20°C, my laptop idles around ~50°C and when faced with rather stressing tasks (such as compiling a kernel using all cores (~95% CPU load) it jumps up to ~85°C (rather close to the limits (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)). I made sure that the indicator is working alright since that was my first suspect.

The laptop in cause is a Dell Insprion N7010 with a first generation Intel i5 CPU and as far as I remember, I only took it apart once in order to clean it off dust. Any thoughts?

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Are these temperatures normal for a laptop?

Blow out the dust again.

And undervolt your CPU, if possible.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,480

Website

Re: Are these temperatures normal for a laptop?

Temps can vary a lot based on hardware.  But that does seem high for that system.

I know my intel-atom netbook runs a *lot* hotter even on idle than my core2 laptop under a good load.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: Are these temperatures normal for a laptop?

I wouldn't trust the range specified by lm-sensors (assuming you are using lm-sensors). For example, for my computer, it shows:

(low  = -127.0°C, high = +127.0°C)

which is not true.

You should always check the temperature limits on the manufacturer's site.