My laptop tends to fluctuate between 50 and 85 degrees(70 as of writing under 10% load). I’ve repasted the CPU twice, I’ve gone over my power-profiles-daemon settings twice, and I’m currently running balanced. I get that power-saver could net med a few degrees and minutes of power. Additionally to this I “only” get about 3 hours of battery life when doing “light work”, as in compiling small pieces of code, and browsing the web.
It’s been like this since I got it about 5 months ago, but I’ve only really gotten to daily drive it recently as I got back to uni after summer. There are a few other people at my uni with Frameworks, but none of theirs get this short of a battery life not run this hot.
Could my CPU simply be faulty or am I missing something painfully obvious here? I’m a bit new to Linux, and I’ve considered changing to Debian/Ubuntu just to see if those behave the same.
Any tips as to how I can figure out if this is a hardware issue or a software issue?
I’d definitely contact FW’s support team; that experience sounds atypical. I’ve been using a 7840 for close to a year now and unless I’m playing a 3D game I won’t see temps that high after repasting with PTM. Battery life is also not amazing but around twice what you’re getting if running off of a full charge. Your BIOS is also quite outdated; as of my most recent reading, this board is running on version 3.16 (pretty Stone Cold if you ask me) at current.
If not, does the Framework 13 7840U support rapl/mmio? I created my own power settings for the Core Ultra 125H and it has shaved off about 12 C off of my web browsing temp. 10% sustained load seem high though. There may be something running that shouldn’t.
Have you started up the Mint System Monitor and checked the processes (sorted by % CPU use)? It could help you find out if there’s one particular process that gobbles up all that CPU power.
Mine also used to get very hot while running very lightweight things but I have the 7640u. I’ve done a couple things to help this.
Since I’m running windows, I’m running framework control which is meant for the 16, but it works great on my 13. I just limit the tdp to 13W. If I’m going to do anything demanding then yeah I’ll edit the limit.
I swapped the thermal paste for PTM7950. I also put some underneath the heat fins, connecting the heat fins to the bottom chassis behind the feet. What’s funny is that the “hotspot” is no longer under the CPU, it’s under that spot I put the PTM. The PTM is so efficient that it brings the heat over there faster than it can heat up the chassis under the CPU.
I put electrical tape all along the bottom chassis underneath the motherboard (excluding the air intake obviously). That way it keeps the heat away from the majority of the bottom case.
All in all, now my FW13 barely gets warm to the touch unless I’m doing something somewhat demanding. I’d recommend modifying the power settings and limiting them for when you’re just doing simple things and, if you aren’t using it already, put in some PTM 7950.