High temperature with Plasma 5

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi all!

I’m using Tumbleweed since many months ago, and all was fine. I updated to Plasma 5 with no problems.
But since last two updates I realize than my laptop’ fan it’s always running and the air is warm.

I installed sensors to check the temperature. With Plasma 5 as Desktop Environment (DE) the temperature reached 71º !!

https://victorhckinthefreeworld.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/plasma_temp.png

I though that maybe it was a kernel issue, but I installed another DE (Xfce) to test and the fan and temperature go Ok.

https://victorhckinthefreeworld.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/xfce_temp1.png

I check the process with top, but I didn’t find nothing extrange. The overheat it’s with a normal use (Firefox, Thunderbird, Amarok, Pidgin…) The same in Xfce, but here without problems…

How can I identify the problem? someone else had problems with this?
I read int the forums something similar (https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/507762-Overheat-crash)

Thnx a lot!

2

On 2015-06-02 15:26, victorhck wrote:

> I though that maybe it was a kernel issue, but I installed another DE
> (Xfce) to test and the fan and temperature go Ok.

This is normal.

Plasma is graphically intensive. Depending on how your graphics hardware
and driver, how efficient the combination is at rendering complex
effects, the hardware heats more or less.

Traditionally, with the opensource drivers, hardware rendering could not
be used (thinking 3D), and it was done in software, even on the main
CPU. It produces more heat, hardware rendering is more efficient.

And in any case, even if you use proprietary graphics and hardware
rendering, as plasma is more demanding, the machine gets always warmer.
How much so, depends on machine and graphic “effects”.

Thus with XFCE the machine is always cooler.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)

3

On Tue 02 Jun 2015 01:26:02 PM CDT, victorhck wrote:

Hi all!

I’m using Tumbleweed since many months ago, and all was fine. I updated
to Plasma 5 with no problems.
But since last two updates I realize than my laptop’ fan it’s always
running and the air is warm.

I installed sensors to check the temperature. With Plasma 5 as Desktop
Environment (DE) the temperature reached 71º !!

[image:
https://victorhckinthefreeworld.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/plasma_temp.png]

I though that maybe it was a kernel issue, but I installed another DE
(Xfce) to test and the fan and temperature go Ok.

[image:
https://victorhckinthefreeworld.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/xfce_temp1.png]

I check the process with top, but I didn’t find nothing extrange. The
overheat it’s with a normal use (Firefox, Thunderbird, Amarok,
Pidgin…) The same in Xfce, but here without problems…

How can I identify the problem? someone else had problems with this?
I read int the forums something similar
(Overheat crash - Hardware - openSUSE Forums)

Thnx a lot!

Hi
What CPU and GPU? What is your cpu power set to, ondemand, performance?


lscpu
/sbin/lspci -nnk|grep -A3 VGA
cpupower -c all frequency-info

All probably normal for the DE with it more busy…

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

4

Hi.

Ya bad guy making me write in English vicktorhck, XD. You could get hits on what’s happening by using Powertop. I wrote a page about it in our wiki (I mean the Spanish one, of course :þ): Powertop.

Check what processes are waking up the CPU. A process waking up the CPU too frequently prevents it entering the low power states even if the CPU is idle. In addition to check what’s happening, you can turn on some optimizations settings that may help you lower your laptop temperatures (Optimizables tab). Hope this help you someway.

Greetings.

5

Thanks for your answers…

for lscpu

Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                2
On-line CPU(s) list:   0,1
Thread(s) per core:    1
Core(s) per socket:    2
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 42
Model name:            Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU B960 @ 2.20GHz
Stepping:              7
CPU MHz:               2168.289
CPU max MHz:           2200,0000
CPU min MHz:           800,0000
BogoMIPS:              4389.82
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              2048K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0,1

for /sbin/lspci -nnk|grep -A3 VGA

VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0106] (rev 09)
        Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0649]
        Kernel driver in use: i915
        Kernel modules: i915

for cpupower -c all frequency-info

analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency: 0.97 ms.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 2.20 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 2.20 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 2.20 GHz.
  boost state support:
    Supported: no
    Active: no
    25500 MHz max turbo 4 active cores
    25500 MHz max turbo 3 active cores
    25500 MHz max turbo 2 active cores
    25500 MHz max turbo 1 active cores
analyzing CPU 1:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 1
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 1
  maximum transition latency: 0.97 ms.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 2.20 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 2.20 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 2.20 GHz.
  boost state support:
    Supported: no
    Active: no
    25500 MHz max turbo 4 active cores
    25500 MHz max turbo 3 active cores
    25500 MHz max turbo 2 active cores
    25500 MHz max turbo 1 active cores

This is the output for Top command

   1 root      20   0  184,7m   5,5m 0,000 0,147   0:02.45 S systemd                                                                                                    
  432 root      20   0   34,4m   5,3m 0,000 0,141   0:00.37 S  `- systemd-journal                                                                                        
  463 root      20   0   47,2m   4,0m 0,000 0,105   0:00.16 S  `- systemd-udevd                                                                                          
  555 root      20   0   11,7m   4,5m 0,000 0,118   0:01.88 S  `- haveged                                                                                                
  678 root      20   0  333,4m   8,5m 0,000 0,225   0:00.04 S  `- ModemManager                                                                                           
  681 root      20   0   27,2m   3,3m 0,000 0,087   0:00.00 S  `- mcelog                                                                                                 
  682 message+  20   0   47,1m   4,8m 0,000 0,126   0:02.29 S  `- dbus-daemon                                                                                            
  692 root      20   0   19,0m   3,6m 0,000 0,097   0:00.01 S  `- bluetoothd                                                                                             
  693 root      20   0   30,2m   6,3m 0,000 0,167   0:00.27 S  `- wpa_supplicant                                                                                         
  702 root      20   0  339,2m   4,0m 0,000 0,107   0:00.03 S  `- rsyslogd                                                                                               
  707 polkitd   20   0  510,2m  20,0m 0,000 0,532   0:00.67 S  `- polkitd                                                                                                
  712 nscd      20   0  849,6m   2,7m 0,000 0,070   0:00.84 S  `- nscd                                                                                                   
  725 root      20   0   21,7m   2,6m 0,000 0,070   0:00.06 S  `- systemd-logind

Hey jcsl I’ll checkout Powertop! :wink:

6

One spanish forum user gave me an advice: disabled the widgets in desktop.

I had a pair of widgets for monitoring RAM usage and network. I removed them from my desktop, and temperature since then is stable at 47º !! rotfl!

So, I think that this post can be closed with a solved tag!!

PS: Here’s the link to thread in spanish forum: http://www.forosuse.org/forosuse/showthread.php?t=32639
PS2: Plasma /~ sweet /~

7

It was worrisome that both CPUs were working at the hardware limit of 2.20 GHz. But top did not show anything running that I don’t have running except rsyslogd. So perhaps that is the executive file of the widget you closed.

8

On 2015-06-06 21:06, susedevfan wrote:
>
> It was worrisome that both CPUs were working at the hardware limit of
> 2.20 GHz. But top did not show anything running that I don’t have
> running except rsyslogd. So perhaps that is the executive file of the
> widget you closed.

If you see rsyslogd running at a high cpu load, you have a problem.
That’s the daemon that writes classical log files, and it usually needs
very little CPU even on old machines. If it is busy, it means that some
thing is writing a huge lot of log entries, probably filling the disk up
to capacity.

Then there is a secondary problem. If the load is so high that the cpu
runs at high speed and full load for a long time, either the cooling
assembly is designed to evacuate all that heat, or something in software
has to kick in and force low speed on the cpu till it cools down. IMO,
both things should be true.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.

(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))

9

Hi victorhck!
I had already noticed this problem, and posted about this here a few days ago.
See this thread.

Since nobody replied, I thought I was the only one having the problem.

This is NOT something normal with desktop widgets however. I have had desktop widgets running to monitor CPU and RAM for ages before upgrading to plasma 5. There was no problem with KDE4.
So I would not say the problem is solved, this is just a workaround.

Bye
Cris

10

Cris70 donned his tin foil hat and penned:

>
>
> victorhck;2713871 Wrote:
>> One spanish forum user gave me an advice: disabled the widgets in
>> desktop.
>>
>> I had a pair of widgets for monitoring RAM usage and network. I removed
>> them from my desktop, and temperature since then is stable at 47º !!
>> rotfl!
>>
>> So, I think that this post can be closed with a solved tag!!
>>
>> PS: Here’s the link to thread in spanish forum:
>> http://www.forosuse.org/forosuse/showthread.php?t=32639
>> PS2: Plasma /~ sweet /~
>
> Hi victorhck!
> I had already noticed this problem, and posted about this here a few
> days ago.
> See ‘this thread’ (http://tinyurl.com/npnfr94).
>
> Since nobody replied, I thought I was the only one having the problem.
>
> This is NOT something normal with desktop widgets however. I have had
> desktop widgets running to monitor CPU and RAM for ages before upgrading
> to plasma 5. There was no problem with KDE4.
> So I would not say the problem is solved, this is just a workaround.
>
> Bye
> Cris
>
>

You are not the only ones.

I just managed to get Tumbleweed installed ( long story in another thread
later )
I noticed 4 cores going haywire, one at 100% nearly all others running at
load even when nothing but a network monitor and cpu monitor ) so bad I had
problems even to get online.

Now bear in mind this is a new install from a fresh DVD image I D/L`d
yesterday (latest snap)

It is so bad that I cannot even update. This is on a tosh lappy that is 4
core intel, intel graphics. works flawless on 13.2 and I mean flawless.

Will put my findings to record in a bit, just got home gotta have some
“food”.

Catch ya later.

–
Mark
Nullus in verba
Caveat emptor
Nil illigitimi carborundum

11

On 2015-06-08 19:10, Baskitcaise wrote:
> It is so bad that I cannot even update.

You probably can in text mode. Or in another graphical desktop.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.

(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))

12

Yep , maybe this is another point of view. But I realized that I don’t check that widgets so often (really, I only see that widgets when I’m going to poweroff the laptop, and close all the windows…
So I think that for me are no very useful, so I disabled… I have not try to put again in desktop to test…

13

It is a known problem:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=345696

Cris