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#1 2016-12-24 19:40:15

Luky
Member
From: France
Registered: 2015-02-14
Posts: 4

[SOLVED] CPU temperature rising when playing on RetroArch

My issue is the following. When I load a game in RetroArch and play it, the CPU temperature abnormally rises (up to 72°C). I say "abnormally" because even when the CPU load is near 100% when not using RetroArch, the CPU temperature doesn't rise past 65°C ; the CPU load is ~60% when playing on RetroArch. When playing the same games on standalone emulators, this temperature rise never happened.

I would like to investigate the issue but I am not sure where I should look for clues. Nothing unusual in journalctl or dmesg. Does anyone have any pointers?
Feel free to ask me for any information that could help.

Thank you in advance.

Last edited by Luky (2016-12-25 19:15:58)

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#2 2016-12-25 00:15:51

R00KIE
Forum Fellow
From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: [SOLVED] CPU temperature rising when playing on RetroArch

You'll have to provide more details about the hardware you are using.


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#3 2016-12-25 00:24:12

mpan
Member
Registered: 2012-08-01
Posts: 1,188
Website

Re: [SOLVED] CPU temperature rising when playing on RetroArch

Luky:
Neither journalctl nor dmesg provide information on a need to clean the radiator from dust. If this will not help then maybe you have too weak cooling installed to handle your processor at high loads.

This is not a software or system problem, unless you can show that the bahaviour is a regression (in which case you should report that upstream) or the program should not put lots of stress on hardware (but this isn’t the case: game emulator is certainly among applications that are expected to do exactly that).

Last edited by mpan (2016-12-25 00:26:57)


Sometimes I seem a bit harsh — don’t get offended too easily!

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#4 2016-12-25 01:34:09

Luky
Member
From: France
Registered: 2015-02-14
Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] CPU temperature rising when playing on RetroArch

@R00KIE
I'm sorry for not providing hardware info, I wasn't sure what would be relevant.

Output of lscpu:

Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                4
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-3
Thread(s) per core:    1
Core(s) per socket:    4
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 55
Model name:            Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU  N3540  @ 2.16GHz
Stepping:              8
CPU MHz:               499.677
CPU max MHz:           2665.6001
CPU min MHz:           499.8000
BogoMIPS:              4333.08
Virtualization:        VT-x
L1d cache:             24K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              1024K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-3
Flags:                 fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer rdrand lahf_lm 3dnowprefetch epb tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid tsc_adjust smep erms dtherm ida arat

Output of hwinfo --short:

cpu:                                                            
                       Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU  N3540  @ 2.16GHz, 1713 MHz
                       Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU  N3540  @ 2.16GHz, 2033 MHz
                       Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU  N3540  @ 2.16GHz, 503 MHz
                       Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU  N3540  @ 2.16GHz, 500 MHz
keyboard:
  /dev/input/event0    AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
mouse:
  /dev/input/mice      SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad
monitor:
                       LG Display LCD Monitor
graphics card:
                       Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display
sound:
                       Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series High Definition Audio Controller
storage:
                       Intel Atom Processor E3800 Series SATA AHCI Controller
network:
  wlp2s0               Intel Wireless-N 7260
  enp1s0f2             Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller
network interface:
  enp1s0f2             Ethernet network interface
  lo                   Loopback network interface
  wlp2s0               Ethernet network interface
disk:
  /dev/sda             CT120BX100SSD1
partition:
  /dev/sda1            Partition
  /dev/sda2            Partition
cdrom:
  /dev/sr0             TSSTcorp CDDVDW SU-208FB
usb controller:
                       Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series USB xHCI
bios:
                       BIOS
bridge:
                       Intel Atom Processor E3800 Series PCI Express Root Port 4
                       Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series SoC Transaction Register
                       Intel Atom Processor E3800 Series PCI Express Root Port 2
                       Intel Atom Processor E3800 Series PCI Express Root Port 3
                       Intel Atom Processor E3800 Series PCI Express Root Port 1
                       Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Power Control Unit
hub:
                       Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
                       Alcor Micro USB Hub
                       Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
memory:
                       Main Memory
bluetooth:
                       Intel Bluetooth Device
unknown:
                       FPU
                       DMA controller
                       PIC
                       Keyboard controller
                       Intel Atom Processor E3800 Series SMBus Controller
                       Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Trusted Execution Engine
                       Realtek Unclassified device
                       Serial controller
  /dev/input/event2    Acer BisonCam, NB Pro

@mpan
I will try to clean my radiator as soon as possible.
I am not saying RetroArch should not put stress on my hardware. I am saying that despite not using as much CPU as other programs, it raises the temperature higher than those other programs, and I think it's strange. (It was poorly phrased in my original post, sorry about this.) Here is an example:
When using RetroArch, 55% of CPU is used and CPU temp is 70°C.
When watching 1080p videos on YouTube, 90% of CPU is used and CPU temp is 60°C.

I will also try to investigate about previous versions of RetroArch to see if it is a regression.

Thank you both for your answers.

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#5 2016-12-25 02:46:48

V1del
Forum Moderator
Registered: 2012-10-16
Posts: 21,427

Re: [SOLVED] CPU temperature rising when playing on RetroArch

Ouch. Depending on which emulator you use this thing will definitely run that hot and that is not going to be anything out of the ordinary. Remember that most emulators are single threaded and will only occupy a single core and they will hit that single core that hard (ergo on a two core system like yours, one core is at 100% (hence the 50% cpu usage, one is maxed the other is idle, youtube can do more with the second one therefore distribute the load more evenly therefore not running the cpu as hot as a whole). As there's no "RetroArch" emulator, which emulator core do you use and which games do you play (and for comparison's sake, which standalone emulators did you use before)? Do not expect wonders from this hardware, there are emulators that will make this thing crawl.

Last edited by V1del (2016-12-25 02:57:09)

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#6 2016-12-25 13:05:14

mpan
Member
Registered: 2012-08-01
Posts: 1,188
Website

Re: [SOLVED] CPU temperature rising when playing on RetroArch

Luky wrote:

When using RetroArch, 55% of CPU is used and CPU temp is 70°C.
When watching 1080p videos on YouTube, 90% of CPU is used and CPU temp is 60°C.

What V1del said plus one more thing: CPU time usage is not CPU load. These percentages tell how much time is spent in a process compared to whole available time — not how much CPU is stressed.

While there is positive correlation between time CPU is used and its temperature, there is some jitter to that. You can run an empty loop doing nothing and using 100% of CPU time and get a small temperature rise, because that simple loop uses nearly nothing in the processor. Then you can run a complex optimization task or video encoding that will use 50% of the time (for example one core of 2-core processor), but will cause temperature go high. It will use intensively nearly all subsystems in the CPU and this will cause significant amount of power to be dissipated.


Unless the problem can be traced to a bug in software, which is causing unnecessary load, you should not consider temperature rise to be anything unusual as long as it is within your CPU’s specs. If it goes above it or is high despite moderate load then the problem is with the cooling installed.


Sometimes I seem a bit harsh — don’t get offended too easily!

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#7 2016-12-25 14:26:55

R00KIE
Forum Fellow
From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: [SOLVED] CPU temperature rising when playing on RetroArch

I would put my bet on probably the heatsink needs to be cleaned and on another thing which I would guess is the most probably cause of the "problem", this seems to be a cpu+igpu combo, obviously if you are making heavy use of graphics plus high to heavy use of the cpu things are going to get hotter. It probably doesn't help that the system wasn't designed to run with everything fully loaded for extended periods of time.


R00KIE
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#8 2016-12-25 17:52:20

Luky
Member
From: France
Registered: 2015-02-14
Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] CPU temperature rising when playing on RetroArch

Sorry for the delayed reply, I couldn't turn on my computer.

@V1del : the cores I'm using are snes9x and pcsx-R, and I was using the standalone emulators snes9x and pcsx-R as well. Thank you for the details about emulators being mostly single threaded.

@mpan : thank you for explaining the difference between CPU time and CPU load, I understand much better now.

@R00KIE : thank you for your answer.

I tried to open my laptop to clean it today but the security screw was in a very bad state. It's like I tried to forcefully unscrew it with a screwdriver that's too big, but I don't recall trying to do that. I'm stuck with a dirty computer.
Sorry for making a topic for something that trivial, and thank you very much for your answers.

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