Regarding I7 Model - Noise/Throttling

[Moonsurface]

I have an i7 and am very happy with it's performance. The fan does activate when doing very intensive processes and during some non-optimised games, but not in normal use when using One Note or IE etc. I stress tested it by using Lightroom and importing and rendering large files when I first got it the fan did come on for the process but I would expect it to as the processor was at 100% for a long time. I observed a some degree of throttling but nothing that concerned me and the device finished the task in about the same sort of time as my desktop PC does (which I found very impressive).

I did have an issue a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to note-take in a meeting and the fan kept coming on and it was getting a bit hot. It's not really loud and obtrusive, certainly no more so than any laptop fan, but I was concerned as I couldn't understand why. I kept seeing Bitdefender (my antivirus software) was taking 35% of the processor so I tried uninstalling and it gave me the option to repair the install, after I did that I had no further issues. I used it again last week for notetaking and general surfing/emails etc during a day long meeting and did not hear the fan once all day. Very happy.

 

[Snickers]

What sort of games?

Mostly been playing Elite: Dangerous (both Beta and now Pre-release)

I also have a penchant for the Call of Duty series..

There's plenty of fan noise with E but no noticeable throttling - been driving an external monitor as well.

 

[bvone21]

What sort of games?

I just bought an i7/256gb yesterday and the fan goes absolutely ballistic and the top back right gets hot in about 1 minute after starting to run "Age of Empires: Castle Siege". Totally was not expecting this...(basic 2d mobile app, runs fine on my phone and other atom tablets with no issue). I thought the concerns were for more intensive games, like if I wanted to try Starcraft or something...I get little to no fan noise in any other tasks I've tried thus far, including streaming HD video via Netflix.

Can anyone confirm if this also happens to their machines? Or might something be wrong with mine?

It just seems silly that a $99 toshiba tablet with an atom/1gb ram can run the same app with no issues and the surface turbos up to 2.3 ghz and goes nuts.

 

[Moonsurface]

I just bought an i7/256gb yesterday and the fan goes absolutely ballistic and the top back right gets hot in about 1 minute after starting to run "Age of Empires: Castle Siege". Totally was not expecting this...(basic 2d mobile app, runs fine on my phone and other atom tablets with no issue). I thought the concerns were for more intensive games, like if I wanted to try Starcraft or something...I get little to no fan noise in any other tasks I've tried thus far, including streaming HD video via Netflix.

Can anyone confirm if this also happens to their machines? Or might something be wrong with mine?

It just seems silly that a $99 toshiba tablet with an atom/1gb ram can run the same app with no issues and the surface turbos up to 2.3 ghz and goes nuts.

Yes that happens on mine too, same game. not sure it would be specific to the i7 though. To be fair my phone (lumia 930) also gets quite warm and eats battery when playing it too.

 

[bvone21]

Thank you! Someone who can related to the specific scenario.

(oh and thank you Moonsurface for the write up you made on your experience with the surface and Lightroom, that was one of the threads that put me over the hump to make the purchase. Not easy to find specific Lightroom use cases with surface in detail online. So I guess I can blame you for my lightened wallet? haha)

Anyways...it just seems like very odd behavior. I bet if I undervolted, it would run just as smoothly and with no heat...it's totally unnecessary for the CPU to run at 2.3ghz during that game. But I feel like I shouldn't have to do something like that...maybe it's just bad programming?

Has anyone run the same game with an i5 (for a a direct comparison)?

(oh, and Lumia 830 here, I think the snapdragon 400 performance concerns were unfounded, runs great! And handles the same game just fine, no heat. Camera is a bit subpar though...would have liked the 930)

 

[Moonsurface]

Thank you! Someone who can related to the specific scenario.

(oh and thank you Moonsurface for the write up you made on your experience with the surface and Lightroom, that was one of the threads that put me over the hump to make the purchase. Not easy to find specific Lightroom use cases with surface in detail online. So I guess I can blame you for my lightened wallet? haha)

Anyways...it just seems like very odd behavior. I bet if I undervolted, it would run just as smoothly and with no heat...it's totally unnecessary for the CPU to run at 2.3ghz during that game. But I feel like I shouldn't have to do something like that...maybe it's just bad programming?

Has anyone run the same game with an i5 (for a a direct comparison)?

(oh, and Lumia 830 here, I think the snapdragon 400 performance concerns were unfounded, runs great! And handles the same game just fine, no heat. Camera is a bit subpar though...would have liked the 930)

Yeah it's weird I don't understand why it runs so hot in that game, must be strangely optimised, despite the heat though I vastly prefer playing it on the surface.. much easier to see what's going on!
The surface runs photoshop CC with lots of layers absolutely fine and yet gets hot with that game. I also found the same with other windows store games too, even solitaire dunno why. I've never actually tried a PC desktop game on the surface though so don't know how it would fare with that.

 

[mtalinm]

my first i7 had some weird overheating behavior. took it to the MSFT store and they insisted it was fine but they swapped it when I insisted. no problems with the second machine. maybe there is some manufacturing unevenness...

 

[Moonsurface]

I don't think it's a general overheating problem as my i7 has never overheated and never had the thermometer of death, it generally stays cool apart from when playing games like this Age of Empires Windows store game or dong things I'd expect it to heat up a little, (downloading big updates and doing very processor intensive stuff) , it would be interesting as the OP says to find someone with an i5 and see if their surface gets hot also when playing this game. I do find my phone gets pretty hot too when playing the same windows store game but obviously no fan noise as it's fanless lol, so I don't think it's surface specific but it may depend on the spec of the device running it, and how well optimised the game is.

 

[drolem]

The fan int he i3, i5 and i7 Surface pro 3's is identical.

No. The i7 Surface Pro3 has a slightly different fan.

 

[bvone21]

I don't think it's a general overheating problem as my i7 has never overheated and never had the thermometer of death, it generally stays cool apart from when playing games like this Age of Empires Windows store game or dong things I'd expect it to heat up a little, (downloading big updates and doing very processor intensive stuff) , it would be interesting as the OP says to find someone with an i5 and see if their surface gets hot also when playing this game. I do find my phone gets pretty hot too when playing the same windows store game but obviously no fan noise as it's fanless lol, so I don't think it's surface specific but it may depend on the spec of the device running it, and how well optimised the game is.

This. Not worried for the device, it cools right down after closing the app. It's just uncomfortable to hold in tablet mode during these use cases as it gets THAT hot.

After a few more days of playing around with it, I may actually return the i7 for the i5. Hoping someone chimes in with first hand experience on the i5 with the same application for something to compare to. I have a feeling the excellent performance I'm seeing in Lightroom/Photoshop may end up to be near identical with the i5. And if there's an added benefit of a more comfortable tablet to hold during a casual game and a few hundred bucks in my pocket...then it may be worth it.

 

[bvone21]

my first i7 had some weird overheating behavior. took it to the MSFT store and they insisted it was fine but they swapped it when I insisted. no problems with the second machine. maybe there is some manufacturing unevenness...

Could you be more specific about the overheating behavior? Curious

 

[bvone21]

After reading through various different forum posts regarding throttling across the internet especially with the i7 Model, I'd like to ask whether the throttling issues has been resolved and what the noise is like regarding the i7 Model as after looking at videos, it appears the i7 Model's fan is noisy under normal use(browsing, word document etc). I'm currently deciding if to go with the i7 Model or not. Finding out if it still has these problems will help me with the decision.

Thanks.

After more time with the device, to answer your very specific question. For basic browsing, word documents, etc. I have no loud fan noise whatsoever. Some basic tasks where you will hear fan noise are during lengthy file transfers, application installs, software updates, etc. Anytime there is a near constant call to the CPU, the fan may pick up. For myself, it didn't trigger until 15min into a lengthy file transfer over wifi. This type of CPU usage is not what occurs in document editing, web browsing, email, etc.

Any video you see displaying this behavior either has a defective device or some other software issue behind the scenes that is not evident in the video (you don't know what they've installed that may be running in the background chewing up CPU).