Surface Pro 2 gets warm whilst playing Project Spark

[Nick K]

So I've had my SP2 for just over a week and today I fired it up and installed the Project Spark Beta, within 3 minutes I heard the fans pick up speed which my Surface has never done before, and when I felt the back it was warm although not to an alarming level or anything. I was just surprised that a game like Project Spark caused that much heat and fan activity, I am aware however that this could just be the norm and that I am just finding it odd as up until now my SP2 has always run cool and quiet but I thought I'd come here just for clarification.

Also can anyone recommend a program to monitor CPU temps and fan levels and tell me the max temp I should let it run at? I'm one of those people who likes to be aware of high far I am from the danger zone.

Thanks

 

[EthanDavis]

My experience playing RuneScape in high detail is similar...

 

[DragonGamer]

You can watch temps and also do stresstests for example with this tool: Intel® Extreme Tuning Utility (Intel® XTU)
Guess this warmth is just normal on such a more advanced game and the fans also have a purpose of course. If MS had thought they were not needed they were not built in, lol.
I don't think you have to worry too much about temperatures though.
Doing various stresstests has shown that the CPU/GPU starts downthrotling at ~80°C. That's a rather secure temperature since Intel theoretically allows temps over 90°C. If the temps would approach the 90°C you could start to worry, but I doubt the SP 2 allows that. Instead the power is reduced and your game/software might work slower. The Temps usually are stabilized after very few minutes so usually you can say the game either works or not. You don't have to worry about temps later if it works for a while...

By the way, it's just the graphic unit which causes those temps since Intel doesn't seem to be able to produce a proper graphic card/unit...
Causing only a full CPU load keeps the temps at ~73°C and even allows an almost full turbo boost and the fans don't spin up high.
If you do a 100% graphic load test though (with 0-2% CPU), the temps quickly rise to the 80°C margin...

 

[the_new_normal]

So I've had my SP2 for just over a week and today I fired it up and installed the Project Spark Beta, within 3 minutes I heard the fans pick up speed which my Surface has never done before, and when I felt the back it was warm although not to an alarming level or anything. I was just surprised that a game like Project Spark caused that much heat and fan activity, I am aware however that this could just be the norm and that I am just finding it odd as up until now my SP2 has always run cool and quiet but I thought I'd come here just for clarification.

Also can anyone recommend a program to monitor CPU temps and fan levels and tell me the max temp I should let it run at? I'm one of those people who likes to be aware of high far I am from the danger zone.

Thanks

CoreTemp and GPU-Z are my preferred monitoring programs. I don't remember if they give a fan speed readout (don't have my SP2 with me atm).

 

[Philtastic]

I've done some stress testing and have found that 100% CPU usage as well as a combo of 100% CPU + GPU usage will raise the temperature to a max of roughly 80 degrees Celcius where the SP2 will throttle its clock speeds to maintain 80 degrees. This will often be the case with video games since you are seriously pushing the capabilities of your hardware. So what you're seeing is normal. Don't worry about it. Just have a great time playing full PC games on a tablet: I know I am!

EDIT: I've been testing with HeavyLoad (HeavyLoad - Free Stress Test Tool for Your PC), using CoreTemp for CPU temperatures and Task Manager for CPU clock speed (CPU-Z might be more accurate but I think this would suffice).