[Lenovo ThinkPad X220 4287] overheats a lot.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄]

Running 12.04 and usually have chromium, thunderbird, xchat, dropbox, ubuntu one and some terminals open. The system seems to run quite hot most of the time with the fan running at ~4.6K most of the day the CPU is at ~85-90 degrees.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: linux-image-3.2.0-34-generic 3.2.0-34.53
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-34.53-generic 3.2.33
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-34-generic x86_64
AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.24.
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu15
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: alan 3461 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC1: alan 3461 F.... pulseaudio
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'PCH'/'HDA Intel PCH at 0xf2620000 irq 52'
   Mixer name : 'Intel CougarPoint HDMI'
   Components : 'HDA:14f1506e,17aa21da,00100002 HDA:80862805,80860101,00100000'
   Controls : 27
   Simple ctrls : 9
Card1.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:1 'Snowball'/'BLUE MICROPHONE Blue Snowball at usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.1.3, full speed'
   Mixer name : 'USB Mixer'
   Components : 'USB0d8c:0005'
   Controls : 2
   Simple ctrls : 1
Card29.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:29 'ThinkPadEC'/'ThinkPad Console Audio Control at EC reg 0x30, fw unknown'
   Mixer name : 'ThinkPad EC (unknown)'
   Components : ''
   Controls : 1
   Simple ctrls : 1
Card29.Amixer.values:
 Simple mixer control 'Console',0
   Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined penum
   Playback channels: Mono
   Mono: Playback [on]
Date: Fri Nov 30 16:50:41 2012
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=4de844e6-b3a9-4309-bc26-739bea6b4146
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
MachineType: LENOVO 4287CTO
MarkForUpload: True
ProcFB: 0 inteldrmfb
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-34-generic root=UUID=c8438547-b9fb-46af-8012-4663c77c70e7 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
RelatedPackageVersions:
 linux-restricted-modules-3.2.0-34-generic N/A
 linux-backports-modules-3.2.0-34-generic N/A
 linux-firmware 1.79.1
SourcePackage: linux
StagingDrivers: mei
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 09/15/2011
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: 8DET52WW (1.22 )
dmi.board.asset.tag: Not Available
dmi.board.name: 4287CTO
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: Not Available
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: Not Available
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvr8DET52WW(1.22):bd09/15/2011:svnLENOVO:pn4287CTO:pvrThinkPadX220:rvnLENOVO:rn4287CTO:rvrNotAvailable:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
dmi.product.name: 4287CTO
dmi.product.version: ThinkPad X220
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This change was made by a bot.

[Colin Ian King (colin-king)]

Hi Alan,

Can you add my power management tools PPA to your machine and install the tp-thermstat tool:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:colin-king/powermanagement
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tp-thermstat

Once installed, we need to run tp-thermstat with a 10 second sample rate and save the output. Run this for a good few hours or so to capture the machine's behaviour and attach the log to the bug. Then I can analyse the log and see what is happening.

Please run tp-thermstat as follows:

sudo tp-thermstat 10 > thermstat-x230.log

Thanks!

[Colin Ian King (colin-king)]

..ah, call that thermstat-x220.log or whatever. :-)

[Colin Ian King (colin-king)]

From the initial data you passed to me it seems that compiz was really rather busy.

Also at some points I observed a lot of kswapd activity, so I suspect the drive was swapping quite a bit. It seems like you have a OCZ-VERTEX3 SSD, so I expect quite a bit of rapid I/O ops which may add to the machine's temperature a bit.

From what I can see, frequency scaling is working on the CPUs and the fan is cranked up to full speed when the CPU reaches the upper 95+ region, so the passive and active cooling is working as much as it can.

My concern is that on your machine compiz seems to be burning up a load of cycles, so I also expect the GPU was being heavily exercised.

I've been looking a various threads on the Lenovo user forum and it seems that even Windows users can push the temperature to 96-97 degrees C when fully loaded the CPUs, so I am wondering if this a feature of the i7 in these laptops.

[Olli Ries (ories)]

I see the same issue on my x220 and would be willing to give tp-thermstat a try, mind building one for Saucy?

[Christopher M. Penalver (penalvch)]

Alan Pope, as per http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/default.page? an update is available for your BIOS (1.39). If you update to this, does it change anything?

If not, could you please both specify what happened, and provide the output of the following terminal command:
sudo dmidecode -s bios-version && sudo dmidecode -s bios-release-date

Thank you for your understanding.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

Setting this to invalid because I had an engineer out to replace the fan and heatsink and it no longer overheats now. So happy to agree it's a hardware issue.

[Colin Ian King (colin-king)]

Thanks for the update Alan.