Request for guidance on laptop heating issues

[addverma]

My point of contention is that the CPU frequency in real time as reported by HW Monitor or Core Temp never goes above 1017 MHz once the temperature crosses 60 degree mark. Even under heavy load. Also the bottom of my Laptop is hot to touch after 30 minutes of work. You are possibly right that Intel SpeedStep is causing the CPU to slow down. But I want to prevent that from happening. Unfortunately this being a Dell laptop they did not give an option in BIOS to fix the temperature and frequency of the Laptop.

Let us for assume that once temperature crosses a threshold the CPU is slowed down to protect itself and the machine. But once the temperature goes down the condition should be reversed. That is not happening. It is almost as if once the threshold is breached that's it, the CPU will no longer go to its highest possible Frequency.

 

[addverma]

The reason that I am so insistent on this is that I plan to convert this old laptop to a home cum media cum NAS server running Linux. And I want it to be able to sustain a particular amount of load. So I need to fix this CPU slowness and possibly the heat issue too. I believe that they are inter connected.

 

[addverma]

Please find the screen shot of HWMonitor along with Task Manager.

HWMonitor along with Windows Task Manager after 5 minutes of booting of laptop. 4 applications were opened over here, Mozilla Firefox, MS Paint, Windows Task Manager, HW Monitor 1.29



HW Monitor along with Task Manager after 10 minutes. Same set of applications opened as mentioned above.


HW Monitor along with Task Manager after 15 minutes. Same set of applications opened as mentioned above.

 

[Ketchup]

It is interesting that your CPU is staying at 79%. But it could be what Firefox is doing. If it's trying to run HTML 5 video, for example, that would explain it. The Processed tab could help you there.

As far as your temps and speed, I can tell it's not throttling. Throttling would be clocking it down more than 997 MHz, and you can see that the CPU did hit 756 MHz, which would be it's idle frequency. Throttling frequency would be 756 MHz or lower. Even though HW Monitor says core 0 is at 100%, windows task manager shows only 79%. This probably explains the 997 MHz (it's not running at full speed since it's not at full utilization, but is being used so it's not down to full idle clocks) and the fact that temps aren't getting too high either. Edit: this reminds me of how far Microsoft came with Vista in this department. With Vista on up, you knew what your power profile was doing for you. With XP, you kinda had to guess at anything beyond putting the computer to sleep and turning off the screen. Out of curiosity, what power profile are you running?

So my last question (for your computer) would be: Why does it seem to be stuck at 997 Mhz? I am going to guess the hard drive. Think about it - when this machine was built, computers weren't being given the load we are giving them today, and laptop hard drives were much slower than they are today to cut down on heat output, power draw, and cost. Not to mention it now has thousands upon thousands of hours in a hot environment (I see that yours is running at 42 C in your pic. Just checked my HD and it hasn't passed 33). Therefore, the CPU isn't getting the constant push it would if you had, say, an SSD in there.

Now, as far as changing the OS, that is totally up to you, just bear in mind that, being an old laptop, it's useful life is continuing to grow shorter. So while you might use it as a "spare" or "extra" machine, I wouldn't put it into a position where it was heavily relied upon.

 

[addverma]

Previously my laptop was set to "Portable/Laptop" power profile. I have changed it to "Home/Office Desk". I will update this thread with more details.

Using a different OS, I will try to install Pepermint Linux or Lubuntu or any other Linux OS on a pen drive and try to use that and see the behaviour of the system.

About using a SSD. I want to put 2 HDD's each with a capacity of 2TB and then make this machine into a server. I can consider a SDD too but will exceed my budget signifacntly.

 

[addverma]

Well the final update from my side. Running Linux on the machine did not help. The laptop still slowed down considerably, I could see that the speed was throttled upto some 200 Mhz for both the cores. Also Mrs was getting pretty annoyed with the laptop. Had to dispose of the laptop and get a new one. I learned a lot from the posters in this thread, with my new laptop I plan to put into practice a new regime of preventive care so that I do not land up in such a soup. Thanks a lot to all of you guys for your time and effort that you put in.

What stuck me is that for laptops we are still using an old technology to cool it down. And with the new laptops, like the fan-less ones, the heat buildup is even more acute. Maybe battery and the cooling are two items due to which we have not seen a quantum jump in laptop performance like we had seen in the decade of 1998-2007.

 

[Puffnstuff]

The other thing I do is run a laptop cooler underneath my laptop blowing cool air up into its intake fans. Before I did this it had a tendency to overheat because it didn't have enough space for the stock fans to draw it in and it has air vents on the front that are supposed to perform this function but dont'.