# CPU Overheating on Compaq laptop + FreeBSD 9.0-rc2



## stefanbidi (Nov 24, 2011)

Let me start out by pointing out the fact the I'm new to FreeBSD (coming from Debian and OpenSUSE), please forgive my ignorance.  I installed FreeBSD 9.0-rc2 a few weeks back as a test platform and, after having messed with CPU scaling, have been running into some overheating problems.

This is on a Compaq Presario V2000 (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...foCategory&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&product=1816342).  The laptop kept freezing up on me after a few minutes of use and I noticed it was getting very hot.  I started monitoring the cpufreq and temperature with:

```
sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq
sysctl hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature
```
And noticed dev.cpu.0.freq stayed at 100 (reaches 1600 if something is going on, but returns back to 100 when it is done), but the temperature slowly rose until the point where computer froze.  The fan did not come on at any time.

I really do not think I did anything that would cause this when I messed the CPU scaling.  On top of that, I do not know FreeBSD enough to even try to figure out what's going on.  Can any shed some light?  I've searched google and this forum but nothing relevant comes up for overheating.

Thanks


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## stefanbidi (Nov 27, 2011)

I would just like to mention that, after doing some more search and fiddling around, I have found a workaround for this issue.  Setting 
	
	



```
dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest=C2
```
 helps and the laptop no longer freezes.  Performance is somewhat affected, but at least I don't have to reboot every few minutes.  I'm not really sure what this is actually doing, but it seems to work.

I would still like to hear if anyone with more knowledge than I can shed some light on the problem.


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## paulfrottawa (Nov 27, 2011)

Here a page that I just found to explain those settings you have.

http://wiki.freebsd.org/TuningPowerConsumption


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## SR_Ind (Dec 22, 2011)

paulfrottawa said:
			
		

> Here a page that I just found to explain those settings you have.
> 
> http://wiki.freebsd.org/TuningPowerConsumption



Sorry doesn't work.

I too noticed the same issue on my Compaq laptop with FreeBSD RC2 / RC3. Temperature staying above 88 C and fan always running at full speed.

I've downgraded back to 8.2 and the laptop is very usable now. Silent fan, temperature below 45 C etc.

There is some problem with FBSD FreeBSD 9 RC builds, unfortunately I don't have the time to investigate.


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## adam_ar (Jan 9, 2012)

Hi SR_Ind,

Even my Sony Vaio VPCEB390X has CPU heating problem. Even with hardly anything running (Just GNOME, terminal) the temperature reported reaches 77C. The least I have seen is 56C. And once it reaches 77C, it doesn't come down. I HAVE to reboot. And yes, I have powerd, with adaptive flags for powerd.

This is the first time I am trying FreeBSD on it and have been thinking that my laptop is the culprit. Now after seeing posts here with overheating problem, I have started to doubt if there is something in the 9.0 build which is causing this issue.

BTW, I have the stock 9.0 RC3 installed on my notebook.


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## fnucc (Jan 9, 2012)

I don't have a solution, but it may be that RC is a problem. I'm on RC3, temperature is about 55C but processor's fan is spinning like crazy. No overheating or freezing caused by the temperature, just the fan running like I'm in Google's data center


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## stefanbidi (Jan 9, 2012)

I was not able to resolve this issue.  I no longer have the computer but plan on installing FreeBSD 9.0 on a desktop and see what happens there.


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## adam_ar (Jan 10, 2012)

My *pciconf* output shows Intel 5 series/3400 series thermal subsystem as none#.

Is the overheating because of this component not identified and driven properly by FreeBSD? I haven't tried earlier versions of FreeBSD on it. And I don't plan to.

SR_Ind and fnucc can you check if you get similar output for your *pciconf*? If yes, then I can post this issue in the developers mailing list and see if they got any idea.


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## fnucc (Jan 10, 2012)

I'll check when I got home, it will be in 10 hours or so.


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## fnucc (Jan 11, 2012)

Sorry for the delay. No, I can't confirm anything similar in pciconf.


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## mav@ (Jan 12, 2012)

On all my FreeBSD laptops and desktops high CPU temperatures and working fan tell me that CPU is doing something very actively. Even having SSDs everywhere I can remotely tell when some big cron jobs are started by the fans noise. Have you checked *top -SH* or *system -vm*? Is your system completely idle? The main power-saving technology is idle CPU. Some crazy flash player can cook your system quite fast.


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## adam_ar (Jan 13, 2012)

Hi mav@,

I am getting about 56C temperature even on fresh reboot without X running. So I am sure that there is no job running which is exercising the CPU.

Whereas on my Windows 7 boot, I get temperatures as low as 30C on fresh boot. I have not tweaked windows settings.

I know I sound paranoid, but I feel it has something to do with the thermal subsystem which is not correctly identified by FreeBSD.

thanks.
-Adam


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## fnucc (Jan 13, 2012)

I'm not so worried about the temperature, 55C won't burn anything, it's just fan spinning that sounds like a wind turbine that powers the whole city. Since I'm working with FreeBSD usually at night it's really loud sound.

I've been looking at the top data and it seems that root's idle command is running like hell.


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## stefanbidi (Jan 14, 2012)

I also wanted to mention that my machine was hitting high temperatures and locking up while not doing anything after a reboot and no X (I didn't even have the X server installed on this machine).  Sometimes I would turn the laptop on, go watch some TV, come back about 1 hour later and the laptop would be halted.  Using it would only shorten the time it took before it went down.


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## dennylin93 (Jan 24, 2012)

mav@ said:
			
		

> On all my FreeBSD laptops and desktops high CPU temperatures and working fan tell me that CPU is doing something very actively. Even having SSDs everywhere I can remotely tell when some big cron jobs are started by the fans noise. Have you checked *top -SH* or *system -vm*? Is your system completely idle? The main power-saving technology is idle CPU. Some crazy flash player can cook your system quite fast.



I am using 10-CURRENT. The fan on my Asus laptop is also spinning like crazy. I have powerd on, and it's idle. Seem to remember that 8.2-RELEASE was perfectly fine.


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## SR_Ind (Jan 24, 2012)

I've downgraded back to FreeBSD 8.2. 

As posted elsewhere that I had FreeBSD 9 on my desktop (that also downgraded back to FreeBSD 8.2 due to issues with dual booting with Windows 2008) which however does not show similar symptoms. I mean the desktop running FreeBSD 9 was silent.

It is a weird combination of FreeBSD 9 and some laptop models that displays this behaviour.


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## mav@ (Jan 24, 2012)

Can somebody with the problem show [cmd=]systat -vm 1[/cmd], [cmd=]vmstat -i[/cmd] and [cmd=]uptime[/cmd] outputs in idle state? I'd like to see how idle system really is.


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## ayja (Jan 26, 2012)

I've same issue on Lenovo b560 with FreeBSD 10-CURRENT (amd64): got 
	
	



```
WARNING: system temperature too high, shutting down soon!
```
 in messages.

uptime: 
	
	



```
10:35PM  up 5 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.02, 0.19, 0.12
```

*vmstat -i*: 
	
	



```
interrupt                          total       rate
irq1: atkbd0                         735          2
irq9: acpi0                          866          3
irq16: ehci0                         488          1
irq23: ehci1                         562          2
cpu0:timer                         31281        119
irq256: hdac0                         62          0
irq258: ahci0                       1406          5
cpu1:timer                          6975         26
Total                              42375        162
```

*systat -vm 1* (quite messy sorry): 
	
	



```
[1;25r[m[4l[H[2J[6Cusers    Load

Mem:KB    REAL[3;27HVIRTUAL[3;57HVN PAGER   SWAP PAGER[4;9HTot   Share[6CTot    Share    Free[4;57Hin   out     in   out
Act[5;48Hcount
All[6;48Hpages
Proc:[7;66HInterrupts
  r   p   d   s   w   Csw  Trp  Sys  Int  Sof  Flt[8;59Hcow[8;71Htotal[9;59Hzfod
ozfod
  . %Sys    . %Intr   . %User   . %Nice   . %Idle[11;58H%ozfod
|    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |[7Cdaefr
[5Dprcfr[14;44Hdtbuf[14;59Htotfr
Namei     Name-cache   Dir-cache[15;44Hdesvn[15;59Hreact
   Calls    hits   %    hits   %[16;44Hnumvn[16;59Hpdwak[17;44Hfrevn[17;59Hpdpgs
[5Dintrn
Disks  ada0   cd0 pass0 pass1[19;59Hwire
KB/t[20;59Hact
tps[21;59Hinact
MB/s[22;59Hcache
%busy[23;59Hfree
buf[19;30H[H    1[1;22H0.10  0.25  0.13[1;56HJan 26 22:34[5;7H22784    4396   358668     4912 1675876
[40D102280    5200 1074161k    11256[8;67H921[9;14H18[7C381 1048 3461[7C159 1048   1048[9;71Hatkbd0 1[10;71Hacpi0 9
25.0[7C0.0[6C12.5[7C0.0[6C62.5[11;71Hehci0 16[12;71Hehci1 23
=============>>>>>>[13;68H95 cpu0:timer[14;42H9[14;71Hhdac0 256[15;37H108207[15;71Hahci0 258[16;40H482[16;67H826 cpu1:timer[17;8H8[7C8 100[17;41H22[19;52H113252
[50D0.00  0.00  0.00  0.00[20;53H12728[21;11H0     0     0     0[21;53H10008
[50D0.00  0.00  0.00  0.00[22;56H12[23;11H0     0     0     0[23;51H1675864
[5D17056[17;33H
[8B[1;24H09[5;10H92[5;44H64[6;11H8[8;67H150[9;23H287    8  115    9   99    4      2[10;69H8
 0.8[11;14H4[6C 0.0[11;41H98.8

+                  [13;67H117[14;57H8[15;69H1
 24
[62D3[7C3[19;57H6[20;10H5[20;56H36[21;11H1[23;56H52
88[17;33H
[8B[5;9H828[5;44H28[6;9H324[8;68H15[9;24H52   13  113    2   95    9[6C9[9;69H2
 
 0.4[11;24H4

>[13;69H3[14;57H [15;69H 
  [20;10H0[20;56H40[21;11H0[21;56H40

16[17;33H
[8B[8;69H9[9;24H65    5  118    5   97     [6C [9;69H5[11;24H8[11;44H4[13;69H4[17;33H
[8B[25;1H
[?1l>
```


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## ayja (Jan 27, 2012)

I must correct that I experience overheating problems. During it, system restarts computer automatically, no freezing issues, just very high temperature 88 C.


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## ZmAY (Mar 4, 2012)

I am also experiencing same problem, CPU temp goes to 88 degrees which causes automatical shut down. Using 9.0 on my HP laptop. Fan is spinning all the time, very loud. On WIN 7 no such problems.


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## ademarco (Mar 7, 2012)

*Overheats*

I also have experienced the overheating issue strictly localized to the 9.0 release.  Going from the 7X-8X releases where *I* never did see this problem occur, also to add I used the older releases on this very same laptop.  

My Laptop (Compaq Presario CQ56, terrible piece of equipment) runs at a constant 90 degrees C, and if my dog lays to close to my vent the laptop overheats and shuts itself down without fail (even without the dog sometimes if *I'm* not very careful).  I have to seriously watch my actions, make sure I don"t leave the machine on, and sometimes turn it off and take a smoke break from coding just for a cooldown period.

I*'*m hoping a solution can be found since I truly do not feel like undoing all the time I spent compiling all my software (gnome took 17 hours on this piece of junk to build).  I also have, in an attempt to solve the issue, installed powerd (which seemed to help a little), and recently added the adaptive flags to my /etc/rc.conf file which seem to have completely slowed down my system worse than it already was.  I*'*d rather have it slow than overheating though, as well as *I'm* worried about doing permanent damage to my AMD processor with it running at 90C all the time.  It already suffers from being low grade equipment so I hate pushing it like this.

Let me know if I can provide any information to assist in the investigation of this issue.


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## zennybsd (Mar 17, 2012)

*Similar problem with different laptop*

I am also facing a similar problem with *a* different laptop (Toshiba) installed with 9-RELEASE except not autobooting. 

However, the temperature is reportedly at least 10-15 degrees above that of other OSs. My related post is at http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=30522 if somebody is interested. Thanks!


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## jopeto (Jun 30, 2012)

*Samsung RV520 overheating*

Just jumping in the mix:

I just installed 9 STABLE + KMS + NEW_XORG on a Pentium B950 computer with Intel HD Graphics (http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=32996) and while installing other packages the temperature went up to about 75 degrees. Unfortunately both the power and LAN jacks are right on top of the fan grid, so it started smelling like burning rubber. Unfortunately I guess that means that I'm going to have to give up FreeBSD on this laptop, until KMS works reliably, since I can't get my widescreen resolution without it.


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