Framework 16 - Uneven CPU thermals - Steps to test / Questions from support

A list of questions I had to answer when I opened my ticket, as well as the steps I had to follow.

I hope this could help others debug and make it easier for the support team as you could run through this checklist and only send a single email.

Note: While recording your screen make sure that everything is visible.

Example

Questions:

  1. When this issue started happening?
  2. Does the issue occurs when the laptop is connected to the charger? Or battery? Or both?
  3. Are there any hubs, docking station, printers or other devices plugged in to your laptop? If yes, kindly share us the exact model.
  4. Can you share your OS and BIOS version?
  5. Could you let us know what games you’re playing? Are they AAA titles, lower-end games, or particularly GPU or CPU-intensive games?
  6. Could you please provide us some CPU benchmarking output screenshots or video showing the temperatures and the CPU use percentiles. This way we can further determine the temperature signatures of the laptop. You may use any available benchmarking tool/program equivalent to Cinebench​/HWmonitor​ (for windows) in Linux if you’re using.

Steps before running the tests:

  • reset the BIOS to optimal defaults
    – To do this, keep pressing F2 after powering on the laptop, then press F9 to Load Optimal Defaults and F10 to Exit and Save Changes.
  • reset the Expansion Bay Shell
    – Install Expansion Bay Shell - Framework Guides

Download links for tools and/or drivers:


While running the tests please:

  • Enable the best performance in Windows.
  • Make sure that you are currently utilizing the 180w power adapter.
  • The device is fully in charge.

Extra information that you should specify:

  • SSD model and specs
  • RAM model and specs
  • BIOS information

If anyone else has some extra steps, please post them as a comment.

3 Likes

Dude,

thank you for having the script being asked.

I find this section hilarious… if using a printer causes my laptop to hit 100c and throttle… I might have the wrong laptop…

All that really should be needed is the Cinebench results showing that core X is at 100c and Core y is at 80 on a full core load… getting throttled to 3.6ghz within 15 seconds… and a score will below even the “troubled” review units.

1 Like

np. I hope it helps!

I like debugging stuff ( software engineer ), but, I gotta admit that one was odd :joy:

2 Likes

hahaha same - im a virtualization support engineer so im used to digging in logs - but that one is just silly.

Ill use this template w/my RMA request

are you seeing better temps/performance w/the new board? or not in yet?

My laptop arrived at the repair centre today :sweat_smile:.
I had to send it because I need to also have the bottom cover replaced and that’s a bit more to do and we don’t have a tutorial yet.

With a bit of luck, I’ll find out next week.

2 Likes

That is odd. Can’t run it on a linux only Laptop.
Maybe I’ll install the Phoronix Benchmark-suite on mine for testing.
But so far, I don’t feel I have thermal issues.

1 Like

Cinebench R23 actually runs great on Linux with Wine/Proton.

If you have steam, just add the cinebench exe as a non steam game, launch, profit.

1 Like

Oh, games run fine. But I rather use native tools. The Phoronix test-suite has it all built in. Why should I bother with wine & Co.?

Because Cinebench R23 runs on both windows and linux - so you can get an accurate comparison of your score/thermals across both.

And because if you want to RMA, the support team is aware of the expected results when using R23.

And lastly, it took 30 seconds to setup R23 so that I could see expected score vs actual score.

The cool thing about Linux is freedom - you have the freedom to use Phoronix - but if no one else is using it - you dont really have an accurate comparison to other F16s.

surley phoronix isn’t the only bench / stress test with native? i see prime95 has a tar file so maybe it’s a repo somewhere?

wellllll i’ve heard of much weirder things

below is the story of someone’s smart tv causing windows problems. just existing on the same network.
https://cohost.org/ghoulnoise/post/5286766-do-not-buy-hisense-t

1 Like

Quite interesting :joy:

This is quite the bug:

The root cause is the TV generates random UUIDs for UPNP network discovery every few minutes. That means it poses as a new device. This caused windows to add it to the device list (Device Association Framework, aka DAF) as a new device. This means now 1000s of devices (which is the same device) filled the device tree causing it to enumerate forever. Thus the “deadlock”.

1 Like