26

I have pretty decent laptop and should be more than enough for running Ubuntu for browsing and watching movies, but Ubuntu seems to be getting much hotter than it should, compared to Win 7. I'm on Ubuntu 12.10.

I have Asus N53SV. CPU: Intel® Core i7-2630QM RAM: 6GB DDR3 GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M

Here's picture of XSensor when I have only Firefox open, it should be around 40C so that's 20C more than usual.

XSensor

hingev
  • 6,596
Vasar
  • 271
  • Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Is this an Nvidia Optimus enabled machine? Are you running Bumblebee or not? – gertvdijk Jan 24 '13 at 14:46
  • Thanks! Yes, it does have Nvidia Optimus enabled and no I'm not running Bumblebee. Should I try it? – Vasar Jan 24 '13 at 16:24
  • Depends on what you want to accomplish, but in the current state it is probably running two GPUs as it has no knowledge about the hybrid functionality (as far as I understand). Personally, I would just disable the Nvidia card completely in the system BIOS (if possible), as I'm not running games and the Intel HD Graphics is quite capable of doing video acceleration and simple desktop effects. – gertvdijk Jan 24 '13 at 16:27
  • I use Photoshop and might play games sometimes on Win7 so I don't really want to disable my Nvidia GPU altogether. – Vasar Jan 24 '13 at 16:31
  • 1
    I think these temperatures are not excessive high. How high is the CPU load? Are the measurements at 40 degrees on the same machine? – Seth Jan 24 '13 at 17:47
  • A possibility: Maybe Windows isn't more efficient, but just has a lower threshold for running the fan. – Brent Bradburn Jun 02 '16 at 18:27

3 Answers3

13

Since you have an Optimus-enabled laptop, you'll want to install Bumblebee.

Without Bumblebee, you are most likely using the integrated graphics chipset, while your dedicated graphics card is powered on, which will generate more heat and consume more power.

Moreover, the problem is generally worse when using the open source nVidia driver.

In a nutshell, Bumblebee disables that GPU and allows you to work in a low-power state. It also allows you to use your GPU whenever you need more graphics power.

Windows does this too, automatically, which is why you don't run into the same problem under Windows.

--

Before installing Bumblebee, remove any graphics drivers you might have installed.

After that, installation of Bumblebee and the proprietary nVidia driver can be done with the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia linux-headers-generic

After that, reboot, and your laptop will use the low-power integrated graphics chipset and leave your dedicated GPU powered off.

You can always start an application that requires your full GPU power by running it "with bumblebee":

optirun your-application

--

Should you run into trouble after the installation, the following page might help you: https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/Troubleshooting

Eti
  • 741
  • I did that, it seems to have helped a bit, don't really know yet. I'll report back tomorrow. Thank you very much for all the replies! – Vasar Jan 24 '13 at 21:41
  • Temperature is still the same after installing Bumblebee. I know the temperature isn't that high, but I know for a fact that it can run a lot cooler. So does anyone have any ideas what else could it be? Thank you! :) – Vasar Jan 25 '13 at 17:23
  • Maybe you have one or more processes that keep consuming CPU power? You probably already did something similar, but if not, run the top command and see if nothing is running in the background that could generate that heat. From my personal experiences, the CPU and GPU are the primary causes of laptop overheating issues... – Eti Jan 25 '13 at 17:35
  • 2
    Well I disabled the Firefox crash plugin, what ever it's called it seemed to be eating a lot of CPU. I switched over to Chrome altogether, now it's running on 50C. Though the temperature still is bit higher than on Windows. I used Windows for a day and it was running at around 40C, but the temperature went up after switching back to Linux around and bit over 50-55C. I guess I'll just have to accept it. – Vasar Jan 28 '13 at 06:54
  • 1
    I just had this same issue and firefox was using 99.1% of the CPU! – jax Mar 07 '15 at 04:08
  • 1
    Thanks a lot... It helped me reducing my GPU temperature from 54 C to 16 C. – Ali_Waris Sep 28 '17 at 19:52
10

My laptop had the same problem after a reinstall. In my case it turned out that somehow the cpufrequtils package wasn't installed and my processor were running amok.

**Update:**

Also cleaning the fan from dust reduced its temp by another 10 degrees or so.

PS: Just installing cpufrequtils does nothing, nor is it installed by default. After the installation, the user get two tools - cpufre-info, to get info about frequencies and governors, and cpufreq-set to manage these parameters.

mikewhatever
  • 32,638
Wolfer
  • 2,174
0

I had the same problem with Ubuntu. I have Intel I7 10th gen, 12gb sdram, GEforce GTX 400 with MaxQ and 6gb vram. My laptop ran incredibly hot. I started with default linux video driver, tried the Nvidia drivers from Linux repository, then tried dedicated driver from Nvidia. None of that solved my problem. I took Ubuntu off and switched to Fedora and it works fine in Fedora with the Nvidia driver from Linux system.

JerrySti
  • 9
  • 1
    Good answer, @JerrySti, bit it would be more useful IMO if you added the versions of Ubuntu and Fedora, so others can consider if your situation applies to them. – pbhj Mar 12 '22 at 19:38