HP Pavilion dv7 temperatures - [solved]

tenspd137 · Guru Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Posts: 391

Hi all,

After googling around and not coming up with anything real conclusive, I was just wondering if what I am seeing is about right? Basically, when I run my laptop (HP Pavilion dv7, dual core i5) with the Radeon card (7690m / 2gig memory - recognized as 6700m) idle / low usage ( I am monitoring it as I write this, so I have firefox running and am using watch -n 1 sensors & watch -n 1 aticonfig --od-gettemperature) the idle temps look like this:

CPU

mocsokmike · Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2012 2:50 pm Post subject:

Physical ID 0 might mean your one and only physical CPU, there is a sensor for the whole CPU and one separate sensor for each core.
Your temperature seems too high for me, even in low usage. I don't have a similar hardware, but my home box has the following CPU temperatures at the moment:
CPU: 49.5 C
Core1: 44 C
Core2: 43 C

And it is an older AMD notebook CPU, which heats more than your i5 should. And my box is passively cooled, no fans at all.

My first guess would be hardware-related. Maybe the CPU and GPU cooling system (normally these two are connected via a heatpipe to the exhaust fan) has been assembled badly, and it is working on a low efficiency. Maybe you should take it to a service.
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tenspd137 · Guru Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Posts: 391

Hmm - thanks for the suggestions / input. I also think it is running warm. One thing I did notice is that I have my cpy_freq governor set to performance, which might be why it is generating heat even in a low use scenario. I need to experiment more with that. I also ordered one of those laptop coolers with movable fans to see if that buys me anything. I have also heard that newer kernels tend to do better with thermal issues - I am running 3.2.1, maybe time for an upgrade? I am hoping to avoid service just yet since the laptop is relatively new. I am just hoping that a small OpenGL program is supposed to make it generate heat the way it did - otherwise, something more may be going on.

Thanks!

-C

mocsokmike · Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2012 5:22 pm Post subject:

I didn't notice any temperature drop when I upgraded my kernel from 2.6.36 to 3.3.8.
My box is not a notebook, it is a Mini-ITX board with a notebook CPU, in a passively cooled case. Due to the passive cooling, I always monitor my CPU temperature

My AMD Turion64 X2 TL62 cpu has 35 W TDP. Your core i5 should have lower TDP than my CPU, and yours is actively cooled. The only thing which is different, and might count, is that my box is a server, with no GUI at all. Only postfix, apache, mysql, etc. - and with a very low load, almost zero.
My cpu_freq_governor is set to 'ondemand', but if you like I can test this machine with 'performance'. It should not cause a big difference though, I think it is just a frequency switch - with low usage, I does not matter that much.

Still, I believe your cpu temperature should not go this high.
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tenspd137 · Guru Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Posts: 391

Nahh - don't go through the trouble of testing your box, though I appreciate the offer. But you do have a pretty valis point there - if you don't have a GUI running, then your grpahics card isn't putting out much heat, which inturn means your CPU would have a lower temp. I'll see what happens when I run something without a GUI, and try playing with some of the other settings.

Thanks again!

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 10:06 pm Post subject:

It really depends on what you're running... Many of my machines I can leave in Gnome and it usually stays fairly cool. (Heck, windows machines stays in the Windows GUI and stays cool.) Anything that shows up in 'top' with nonzero cpu usage is a suspect, along with anything powertop reveals...

Even the most simple apps that show up on your screen may be misleading... really have to check how many instructions it's really using. As long as the driver/hardware supports kicking into lower power modes it should stay cool when it can... Also how many FPS is it generating?

A cheat I did to save a bit of power in Windows is to limit the FPS a GPU needs to draw (if the software supports it). Any time it's not needing to draw a frame it can save a bit of power there.
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tenspd137 · Guru Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Posts: 391

I couldn't answer the FPS question - I haven't added any FPS calculators - I sort of gave up. After a little more research, it looks like there are so many factors that I just resigned myself to accepting that the temperatures I was seeing was probably standard for my use case with my particular settings. I can always switch the discrete gpu on or off depending on what I want to do on the laptop and I bought a colling pad with fans directly under the air intakes to help pump cool(er) air in, which seems to have helped some.

Thanks for all your suggestions everyone - much appreciated!