Over heating or just normal?

[_JT]

Hi folks, I have had to send my first Surface Pro 3 i7 256 back for what I thought was over heating and now the refurbished replacement I was given is doing pretty much the same, getting up to 55C and the fan kicks in and stays on with nothing running(including background tasks) other than IE and this website and CPU usage not going over 2%. I'm not talking about the whisper quiet fan you can only hear when you put your ear next to the grill. it's the next stage(s) up from that when you can hear it quite clearly from a metre away.

The only reason I'm thinking this isn't right is because a couple of days ago I was browsing away for well over an hour using chrome and IE with multiple tabs and the fan didn't kick in once with the temp staying below 55C. Perfect I thought, that last firmware update fixed it and I can really use this device as my laptop replacement as Microsoft has advertised.

Do I have another faulty device or this is just how it is, am I expecting too much for it to be quiet when doing very light tasks? When does your fan kick in?

Don't get me wrong I really like the SP3 but it's pretty embarrassing sitting in a meeting with this thing and the fan going off when it's not even doing anything.

 

[GreyFox7]

The fan on the SP3 doesn't hold a candle to the fan on my Lenovo or MBA laptops. Measured with a decibel meter at half or less than half the level of those standards. I think you're being hyper sensitive to the perception. IOW, take two sugar pills and soon you will feel right as rain.

 

[_JT]

This has crossed my mind but what makes me question it is that I know it can run silently for over an hour without the fan on or at least the slowest setting.
My Asus i3 laptop that only cost me $300 runs so much quieter doing the exact same tasks.

 

[GreyFox7]

Seriously? You are going to compare an i3 to an i7? I have nothing more to say.

 

[hughlle]

That asus laptop is probably also almost an inch thick

 

[RémiM]

The fan doesn't go off with no reason. And 55°C is 40°C below overheating.

You can do a quick research on the forum and you will see a ton of comments and analysis.

Let your fan do its job. And enjoy your SP3.

 

[theveterans]

i7 and particularly HD 5000 are the ones that generate boatloads of heat even on idle. That's why I opted for the i5-256 over the overpriced i7 since it runs cooler, gives an hour more of battery life and it's just as fast as i7 in GeekBench 3 multi-core CPU benchmarks. You should know Geekbench as it exists on any current OS available now: ios, android, windows, Linux.

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/1924529?baseline=1845544

 

[_JT]

Seriously? You are going to compare an i3 to an i7? I have nothing more to say.

Why wouldn't I compare doing the same minimal tasks on both machines?

That asus laptop is probably also almost an inch thick

Yup and over 2 years older.

i7 and particularly HD 5000 are the ones that generate boatloads of heat even on idle. That's why I opted for the i5-256 over the overpriced i7 since it runs cooler, gives an hour more of battery life and it's just as fast as i7 in GeekBench 3 multi-core CPU benchmarks.

I'll try and get it replaced with an i5 and see how that goes.

 

[_JT]

The fan doesn't go off with no reason. And 55°C is 40°C below overheating.

You can do a quick research on the forum and you will see a ton of comments and analysis.

Let your fan do its job. And enjoy your SP3.

I really wish I could enjoy it, but when it's the hottest and loudest laptop I've ever had it's making it very frustrating to work with.

 

[Felyne]

I really wish I could enjoy it, but when it's the hottest and loudest laptop I've ever had it's making it very frustrating to work with.

I don't have the i7 model, but the i5, but i have experienced the fan going off, too.
Did you already checked, if it is windows indexing what is causing it? Ctitanic collected some very helpful tipps in his thread here. Especially the indexing troubleshooting might be worth a shot.

 

[mtalinm]

can confirm, ctitanic's indexing hack makes a diff

 

[next_milenium]

I also noticed the fan going off for no apparent reason the other night. I check the task manager and even though the CPU usage was low the DISK usage was very high in the 80-90% range.

I couldn't figure out why it was doing it as I wasn't running anything at that time. Upon checking the running processes, I noticed the Windows Installer was running (even though I have the Windows update set to maual).

Thankfully, the process stopped and SP3 returned to cool and quiet state eventually (after about 1 hr). I'm glad it did but still don't know what was being installed.