Comment 91 for bug 751689

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Krzysztof WyszyƄski (goomior) wrote : Re: ThinkPads overheat due to slow fans when on 'auto'

Something has changed in the newest Ubuntu 12.04 kernel. Now it is possible to set up "Thermal Management" to "Balanced" when on A/C power in BIOS without making Ubuntu unbootable. This setting solves the overheating problem but you will loose some performance.

Details below (Thinkpad T500).
1. Running "stress -c 2 -i 2 -m 2" for several minutes now.
2. Temperature is not exceeding 65 degrees Celsius.
3. Thinkfan is on default settings.
4. CPU Frequency Governor is switching frequency between 800 MHz and 2660 MHz in about every second.

I think point 5. helps. When "Thermal Management" is set to "Maximum Performance" you always run on 2660 MHz when on A/C and under heavy load. This eventually leads to emergency thermal shutdown.

The problem is still not 100% solved. In Windows you can easily set up "Thermal Management" to "Maximum Performance" and never suffer from overheating.

Best regards.