CPU Throttling on 15 inch Surface Book 2 after 1709?

[Bill Dolan]

Hello all,

I just got my Surface Book 2. I got the 15 inch with 1tb. While doing all the normal updates and everything I noticed that the CPU fan was running and seems appeared to hum along pretty good. Last night before going to sleep, I upgraded it to 1709 through Windows update.

I was attempting to do some benchmarks on it this morning to see how it is performing in comparison to my old Surface Book Gen 1. I noticed that when the CPU is under full load, the processor is hitting 100C and don't drop below 96C or so and the fans never seems to fully spin up.

I attempted to do a full reset on the machine and noticed while that process was on going, I noticed that the fans were running pretty good.

After the system was back up, it still had 1709 and exhibited the same behavior.

Has anyone else noticed this sort of behavior?

 

[Bill Dolan]

This is what I see for temps while just doing windows updates.

 

[Seneleron]

A few basic things to check: Make sure you're set to best performance [left click the battery icon] and/or make sure in the power profile it wasn't set to passive cooling. You can also try "surface diagnostic toolkit" on the windows store... There's no way of knowing if the new SB2 is supported, but if so it might be able to dig something up.

 

[theveterans]

Hello all,

I just got my Surface Book 2. I got the 15 inch with 1tb. While doing all the normal updates and everything I noticed that the CPU fan was running and seems appeared to hum along pretty good. Last night before going to sleep, I upgraded it to 1709 through Windows update.

I was attempting to do some benchmarks on it this morning to see how it is performing in comparison to my old Surface Book Gen 1. I noticed that when the CPU is under full load, the processor is hitting 100C and don't drop below 96C or so and the fans never seems to fully spin up.

I attempted to do a full reset on the machine and noticed while that process was on going, I noticed that the fans were running pretty good.

After the system was back up, it still had 1709 and exhibited the same behavior.

Has anyone else noticed this sort of behavior?

Sounds like the thermal isn't working like it should. I'd run Cinebench on it for 3x and see if it throttles. If it is, I'd try to bring a USB drive with Cinebench on it, go to the nearest MS store and try running Cinebench there to check if it's just your computer or all SB 2 are affected.

 

[Bill Dolan]

Sounds like the thermal isn't working like it should. I'd run Cinebench on it for 3x and see if it throttles. If it is, I'd try to bring a USB drive with Cinebench on it, go to the nearest MS store and try running Cinebench there to check if it's just your computer or all SB 2 are affected.

That is what I am thinking too. I checked what Seneleron said about making sure it is on performance and that didn't make a difference.
MS Just put up the recovery image for this model so I am going to try that in a moment after the download finishes. Looking at about 40 minutes till download completes.
Sadly I don't have any near by MS stores. The local Best Buy said they should have one out this weekend, so I will probably stop in on Sunday to take a look at that one and see what that one does.

 

[Seneleron]

Just got fall creator's and 1709 update installed and cleaned up, loaded some Overwatch, and my fans are working as designed: they kick up to full after awhile. Definitely sounds like something specific to that unit, or something going wrong with the install.

 

[Theartiszan]

Yeah I'm thinking I might have a bad one. After trying the latest Windows insider build and then using the recovery image to downgrade back to the 1703 version the results are the same. Even under moderate CPU load it is basically pegged at greater than 95c.
What sort of temps are you getting on the CPU? Sounds like if that was running stable means it got to be less than what I'm seeing.

 

[Seneleron]

Right now I'm seeing 50-51c idling in Hwmonitor with just Edge open, though the back of the display only feels slightly warm, temps keep peeking up to the 70c range in fits and starts. Of course, I've been setting up the machine all afternoon, loading updates, programs. . . and they always seem to heat soak until they've had a good night's rest after initial setup. These are max temps after about 10 minutes of Diablo 3. I haven't gotten to Intel XTU yet. . . and hopefully temps will stay lower than this and I won't have to worry about undervolting.

D3 run @ native resolution max settings except shadows [setting was medium-smooth]

 

[Bill Dolan]

With that amount of load, the temps are only slightly lower than mine. I haven't installed any of my games yet.
Think I am going to let it upgrade to 1709 again, install Overwatch and see what it does.
My bet is with a synthetic test, your temps will probably be somewhat close to mine if the trend is the same. Although I hope that isn't the case. Give how my SB Gen1 handles temps, I must say I am a bit shocked.

 

[Seneleron]

FWIW I could see a bad paste job or a slightly misaligned heat sync pushing the 8650u over the edge. . . I've managed to get one core to 90c so far in a few simple HoTS matches [output to a 165Hz 2k monitor at native res max settings. . . actually ran REALLY well]

And just to mention it though it's slightly off topic, the reviews are NOT kidding when they say the surface dock can't output enough power to keep the battery charged under load. 3 matches and I was down to 82%. I don't know if lack of power draw had any impact on temps. . I'm not an electrical engineer.

Update: I dug up the max processor state registry entry from my old Surface Pro 4 days and decided to see what happened when you drop it to 99% [disabling turbo boost] Unsurprisingly, temps were nice and chilly. . and I went from 100-120FPS to 60ish, with dips into 47 during heavy action.

 

[Bill Dolan]

Definitely starting to think there is something wrong with mine now. I only started Diablo 3 to the character selection screen and then exited the game. The CPU hit 50% load and still getting 100C temps

 

[Seneleron]

1.396v! That's getting into the upper limits of DESKTOP CPU overclocking MAXIMUM voltage O.O

If the system is pushing voltages up that high to keep turbo clocks stable, I'm going to say that would indicate a borderline faulty CPU [again, in desktop circles we'd say it's badly binned, or "you lost the silicon lottery"]. In an application like the SB2, there's no room for that. I'd call MS ASAP