Surface temperature
The question is about an unusual surface temperatue distribution on the body of a very thin notebook. It basically asks "Is that normal?"
Misconfigured?
I took the question as describing side effects of misconfigured fan- or power saving configuration.
I tried pretty hard to find that implied problem, but finally gave up.
Is it normal
A misconfiguration would lead to an answer "No, it's not normal" - but this does not seem to be the problem.
So, let's take it literally - is it normal that the left side of the case is much warmer than right?
A relevant information is that it's a very thin notebook, the Asus VivoBook S551lb. It is relatively difficult to get heat out of a thin device.
So, let's take a look what is inside on the left side - maybe there's just something related to heat?
In this review of the S551lb there are some images of the opened device.
This image shows of the uncovered bottom side, with keyboard pointing down. We can see a copper heatpipe, ending between fan and air exhaust, and starting from a large heat spreader at the right. The component under that is probably the CPU, but could also be the graphics processor. But that's irrelevant - what we know it that it's the component that produces the most heat.
Yes, normal!
Now, the solution is easy: turning the device around, the hot component goes to the left;
Is it normal that the case is most hot near the hottest component? Yes.
Looking at the components on the right side, there is mainly a CD drive and the hdd. Both do not get hot, so it's also normal that the right side is relatively cool.
An interesting aspect is that the device has a metal body, probably made of some aluminium alloy - a good heat conductor.
When you touch the surface to tell the temparature, the metal can transport a lot of heat energy from or into your finger in a short time. That makes you feel the temperature much more pronounced compared to the same temperature on a surface of some plastics or wood with much lower heat conduction.
And that is quite relevant to the question: As far as I know, touching aluminium alloy at 60°C would hurt quite badly. So we can now assume that the actual temparature was much lower;
That means that the reason that made me expect a fan/power misconfiguration did not exist in the first place.
See also this review with nice thermal imaging pictures of the device.
sensors-detect
andsensors
? It may show the internal temprature measurements.