I bought a Framework 13 DIY Edition (Intel® Core™ Ultra Series 1) Ultra 7 165H, and I’m mostly satisfied with it, except a big detail : it’s VERY hot.
I’m using Ubuntu 24.4 with kernel 6.11.0-17-generic.
I recently upgraded BIOS to the latest 3.04 without any change.
When saying hot, I’m not only talking about the CPU overheating, this part seems more or less under control, the fan is doing its job keeping CPU below 105 degrees (but I suspect it still reduce the speed), and when I run on Power Saver Mode, all temperatures goes down below 70 degrees.
But what is hot is the laptop itself. It’s just impossible to touch most part of it : all the bottom, part just above the keyboard, and some part around the touchpad.
I just cannot touch it more than one second, even on Power Saver, and clearly cannot put it on my lap (not a laptop anymore :p)
My main usage is playing Factorio, which can be cpu intensive, but again, on Power Saver it’s still the same (and at a cost of big ups/fps loss).
Anyway : does anyone else experience this ? any solution/recommendation ?
I never had a laptop that hot, ever… and I’m worried of the impact on its lifetime…
Despite experiencing immediate thermal throttling and the chassis warming with my Ultra 7 155H under load, the observed temperatures, even after prolonged CPU-intensive tasks, remain within acceptable limits, excluding the screen hinge area (and after 8 hours of heavy use, the F-row is a bit too warm for my liking). I am planning on changing the paste for some PTM7950 soon though.
TL;DR: Yes, laptop get warm, but shouldn’t be the heat you’re experiencing. Can you try checking to make sure the:
CPU heatsink is properly screwed down
The fan is spinning in the right direction (Stupid I know but just check please, make sure it is spitting air out the back)
Check if the input cover isn’t missing any shielding. Reference various photos from the replacement guides.
Make sure the fan is at the right speed it should be. (I can’t quite remember how to do so in Linux, sorry) It probably should be at 100% when it gets above 90, at least.
This may sound dumb/simple, but what is the typical temperature of the laptop if you are NOT playing Factorio?
In other words, if the laptop is just sitting there (turn off sleep and hibernate), maybe playing YouTube videos nonstop, does it get hot?
If not, then likely your machine is fine; it’s just that the demands of Factorio on the iGPU are too much. I have a similar problem running various games on Ubuntu 24.04 (but a different laptop than a Framework laptop). With some games, it gets very hot–too hot to put comfortably on my lap. With other games it is fine and the games are playable, but these all tend to be less-demanding games in terms of both GPU and CPU.
Factorio could simply be too demanding. It might be worth your time to test some other games to see if the Framework can run them comfortably.
One last bit:
According the part’s page the fan can run between 1800-6800 RPM, and handle only 28W continuous, up to 60W turbo. Can you also check power usage when idle, and the average usage when playing Factorio? Also, is the paste any good (doubt it, but good to check in any case)?
6800 rpm max… yeah mine never went above 6300, that’s odd…
I don’t know how to check power usage, I’ll have to research that…
About the paste, it seemed a bit thin to me, but as the laptop came with it already mounted, and CPU doesn´t go above 105, I did not want to touch it for now. That will be my last move if nothing else is working…
For power draw, use PowerTop, you might need to install it (sudo apt install powertop). If you have quality thermal paste laying around, it won’t hurt anything to increase the amount, it would help to at least eliminate that as a possiblity.
When totally idle, CPU temp goes down to 45 degrees, and laptop frame is at the temperature I expect a normal laptop to be, hot but comfortable.
I’ll try some other different games as per your suggestion, thanks.
Okay, you might be okay in terms of the Framework laptop hardware then.
This could simply be an optimization issue with the game.
For instance, if you could somehow boot to Windows 10/11 and play Factorio on Windows, it probably would run cooler than running Factorio on LINUX.
At least, that’s my experience so far with dual-booting and running some games that are available in both OSes such as Civilization 5 or TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge. Those aren’t particularly taxing games, so the heat is still bearable under LINUX.
It must be the CPU then, creating the heat at least, but why doesn’t it get rid of the heat is the question. The only thing I can think of is somehow the heatsink/fan isn’t doing their jobs, and/or heat isn’t being transferred right, which is why it is being dumped into the chassis.
It just occurred to me, another thing you can do is go into the BIOS and change the performance mode to ‘Max Battery’ instead of the default ‘Turbo performance.’ It’s not a solution, as you are losing out on a portion of the CPU you paid for, but it might help with the heat issue temporarily. The regular performance mode might help as well.
While yes, Linux & Windows may perform differently and have different heat tolerances, @Nil’s issue still isn’t normal, and should not be considered so. If the heatsink/pipes/fans were doing their job, the touchpad shouldn’t get hot until literally dozens of hours of a blender render or something.
Understood. That said, I have seen the same thing happen with other brands of laptop running Ubuntu LINUX and games that were too demanding for them, and I’m pretty sure those laptops were not broken/damaged/malfunctioning in any way (Lenovo and Dell). They got too hot to touch, and only when playing the games. They were all typical office-work laptops with iGPUs, pretty similar in config to the Framework 13 but with older CPUs (11th gen through 13th gen Intel i5 and i7).
I did not test Blender rendering on those machines for comparison.
I am not saying Nil’s Framework 13 is not broken. It could be.
Ah, I see what you mean. The words I said about thermals I meant specifically to Framework 13 laptops, other brands sometimes cheap out & other things. (Or just have a bad design.)
Agreed. I think that thanks to shrinkflation and cost-cutting across the board, too many specific laptop models by all brands are designed to be cheap crap destined for a short lifespan.
For the thermal design cost-cutting, I suspect it has something to do with the high price of raw materials like aluminum and copper. These higher-TDW processors and GPUs should have beefier heat pipes, but if copper costs too much, the overall price of the laptop will go up too much.
This isn’t normal, when “totally idle” my CPU temp goes down to 41 degrees. Since the ambient temperature is only slightly lower than this, a difference of 4 degree when idling is significant. Even more so is that I’m using a Ryzen 7 and then Core Ultra has a slightly lower power consumption idling