Temp and Power Mgmt App?

[Ryan Whipple]

I have done everything I have found to make my SP3 run cool and efficient, but at times the fan still comes on mysteriously and when I check, the back is warm. I open task manager to look for some mysterious power-draining app or process and find nothing. Is there any sort of app that alerts to high power drain and ID's the culprit? Something like this would make troubleshooting quick without wasting a lot of battery while I try to figure out what's wrong.

I bought my SP3 with hope that it would be my new tablet but it continues to pigeonhole itself as an inconveniently-floppy laptop. Thinking of using the trade-in value of my iPad 3 for an iPad Air 2 and vectoring back to the iOS world. It's disappointing, but SP3 just isn't doing what I need it to.

 

[rquellet]

I know what you mean. A lot of times it's Windows Modules Installer Worker running an automatic update. Disable automatic updates to prevent this. Other times, Microsoft's anti virus runs when the tablet is idle - not much we can do about this.

I did run a program for a while that would ding and pop a notification when a process used a lot of CPU, but I found that annoying. I think someone needs to write a process monitoring app that pops Windows 8 notifications when desktop apps consume a lot of CPU.

 

[next_milenium]

If you are looking to do "purely" tablet things (browsing, emailing, some games, etc), then SP3 is an overkill. If that's your use case, then perhaps an iPad is a better choice.

As far as SP3 running warm with fan on, I've noticed it does that once in a while if:

1) I play games.
2) Windows does background tasks such as updating (I have mine on "check for updates but let me download and install it" setting).
3) Windows installer gets "stuck" and keeps CPU and disk usage high for a while. A re-boot usually takes care of this.

 

[bluegrass]

I'm not sure why users think they can determine what goes on in a computer just by looking at a few apps such as task manager. Computers are way too complex to try and second guess why a fan might turn on some times mysteriously. It's kind of like trying to figure out what's going on in someone's head by looking at their expression, eyes, body motions, & speech. They may give you some clues but they're not always correct. If you could evaluate every switch (bit) that changes from a 1 to 0, and were smart enough to use that information you might get closer to the answer.

In any case, it almost sounded like you were going to give up on the Surface and go back to an Apple because the fan mysteriously came on. I hope you have a lot better reasons than that for giving up on the Surface.

 

[GreyFox7]

I have done everything I have found to make my SP3 run cool and efficient, but at times the fan still comes on mysteriously and when I check, the back is warm. I open task manager to look for some mysterious power-draining app or process and find nothing. Is there any sort of app that alerts to high power drain and ID's the culprit? Something like this would make troubleshooting quick without wasting a lot of battery while I try to figure out what's wrong.

I bought my SP3 with hope that it would be my new tablet but it continues to pigeonhole itself as an inconveniently-floppy laptop. Thinking of using the trade-in value of my iPad 3 for an iPad Air 2 and vectoring back to the iOS world. It's disappointing, but SP3 just isn't doing what I need it to.

What your really saying is you want a lower power device. The ipad fits that as would an Atom based windows tablet and the Core-M will be somewhere in between, so a Core-M fanless Windows device might be your optimal device. It would be more powerful than an iPad but less powerful than a Surface. Like the Dell Venue Pro 11 or possibly the Surface Pro 3 i3. Although you didn't say which model Surface you have.

 

[hughlle]

My way of thinking is that if the fan comes on, it's on for a reason. If this alone is enough to make you consider an ipad then why did you buy a core powered fan cooled device in the first place? Of course it's not going to be silent all the time. Windows update alone will ramp things up.

None of this is news, this was a well documented fact about the sp3, or pretty much any device that is powerful enough to need a fan to cool it periodically.

You also state "at times", which sounds like it is periodical, or in other words, how the machine is designed to work. Just look at task managers memory usage, and now add up the memory being used by the processes. There is a lot more going on than task manager displays.

Inconveniently floppy laptop? I have, as have untold countless others, no issue with it as a laptop. It just sounds to me like plain don't like the thing and want to go back to apple and are trying to justify it to yourself.

Surface pro 3 works just great as a tablet, to me you're just making mountains out of molehills to justify going back to apple. Just my opinion. Ignore it at will.

Out of curiosity, what did you need it to do? Because it sounds like all you needed it to do was be quiet, which by the sound of it, it is most of the time.

 

[seyclone]

I updated my sp3 this morning - looks like about 12 items. After the update and re-boot, the SP3 was running considerably hotter than it's ever run. I ran Microsoft's Slimcleaner (free version) and now the running temperature has dropped considerably. It's now warm to the touch instead of very hot.

Anybody have an idea of what's been going on?

 

[next_milenium]

Some others in another thread reported today's update causes SP3 to run hotter. I'm going to wait before I install these updates as I don't like frying my egg on SP3.

 

[GreyFox7]

I updated my sp3 this morning - looks like about 12 items. After the update and re-boot, the SP3 was running considerably hotter than it's ever run. I ran Microsoft's Slimcleaner (free version) and now the running temperature has dropped considerably. It's now warm to the touch instead of very hot.

Anybody have an idea of what's been going on?

Several have indicated what they noticed was temporary so I'm putting my money on this months malicious software removal tool doing a deep scan for malicious software.

 

[Nicola]

Some others in another thread reported today's update causes SP3 to run hotter. I'm going to wait before I install these updates as I don't like frying my egg on SP3.

Every time there is an update big like this, people complain it has made their SP3 run hotter than ever before. If that was true, we should all be holding a piece of melted metal.

 

[GreyFox7]

Some others in another thread reported today's update causes SP3 to run hotter. I'm going to wait before I install these updates as I don't like frying my egg on SP3.

Here's an idea... start the updates then put your Surface in the freezer, you'll keep it cooler while its updating and defrost your freezer at the same time.

 

[Liam2349]

The most common culprits are Windows Defender, Windows Update and Indexing. Oh, and Chrome, and everything else Google.

Indexing will stop when your files have been indexed for super fast search speed.
Windows Update will stop if you turn off automatic updates.
Defender will stop if you run some other antivirus instead - I find AVG to work very well.
To fix Google issues, don't run their software on Windows.