Laptop heating issue - going 50°C even when dealing with documents

Question

I have a hp notebook with

Intel® Core™ i3-5005U CPU @ 2.00GHz × 4
Intel® HD Graphics 5500 (Broadwell GT2)
4GB RAM

I mainly use it for reading pdfs and typing documents. But even under normal usage the laptop seems to get quite hot to be placed on my lap. I read through the forum and tried several troubleshooting steps but none of it seems to make any change. I used the sensors output here. The pwmconfig doesn't seem to work due to driver incompatibility. I can only get the cpu core temp. Below:

pch_wildcat_point-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +40.5°C  

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +27.8°C  

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0:  +44.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 0:         +44.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:         +44.0°C  (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

Sometimes the temperature goes up as high as 57-60°C and I couldn't keep it on my lap anymore. I have to set it on a table or move to an air conditioned room. Is there any problem with the drivers or power management settings? Because I just moved from windows to linux and it's been very good except for this heating issue.

Answer 1

First let me say that 50°C is very good. But it really depends on how high this temp goes under load. If it gets to 70-80°C for long periods of time, I'd be concerned. If it gets to 100°C it's time to turn off the computer before it cooks itself (it may shutdown on its own to protect itself).

Having said that, I'd still do a few things...

• install intel-microcode to make sure that your processors have the latest code (this may be already installed)

  sudo apt-get update

  sudo apt-get install intel-microcode

• check your BIOS version and then go to the HP web site and assure that you've got the latest version. If you don't, then download the latest and install it.

• remove tlp if you've installed it, and install thermald...

  sudo apt-get update

  sudo apt-get purge tlp

  sudo apt-get install thermald

• here's some info about thermald...

Thermald was buggy in early versions of 16.04. Update to 16.04.2 and it should be ok.

Thermald comes with a default configuration file at /etc/thermald/thermal-conf.xml that will control most computers, but may need to be customized for some computers. See man thermal-conf.xml for some details and examples. Once one has modified the configuration file, stop thermald and restart it:

sudo service thermald restart

After installing thermald, I'd stop the thermald process, and run it manually as sudo thermald --no-daemon to watch its actions in real time. This real time info can be used to create your own customized thermal-conf.xml file. See man thermald for more information.

sudo service thermald stop
sudo thermald --no-daemon --loglevel=debug

You can search for thermald here on Ask Ubuntu to see what previous answers there are.

A good starter reference is at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/PowerManagement/ThermalIssues