9550 high PCH temp when laptop is plugged

Hi @Dell-Alan D

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Is this a sudden increase of PCH temperature that you have seen as it could be indicative of a fault with the charging circuit?

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I've uploaded the first post with a temporary solution.

"I've somehow found a temporary solution. I've realize that if I suspend the laptop when is on battery and then I connect it to AC and then I wake it up there is no overheat problem. This is giving me some hope that the problem can be fixed somehow"

So maybe it's not a hardware problem. With this solution I'm getting 50-55 degrees with AC connected.

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It could also be an issue with the cells failing in the battery causing the heat when the ac adaptor is connected. 

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I've detached the battery from the motherboard and the problem was the same. So I don't think is a battery problem.

@Panabuntu

You have advised - I've realize that if I suspend the laptop when is on battery and then I connect it to AC and then I wake it up there is no overheat problem

If you suspend the laptop and then plug in the ac adaptor to charge the battery, the PCH stays at 55 degrees even when it is charging?
For how long did you test this fix? i.e 20 mins, an hour, a few hours

Alan

Thanks @Dell-Alan D

Looking forward for a solution :)

@Panabuntu, 

Thanks for the confirmation. I shall pass the information onto engineering so they are aware of it. 

Alan

@Panabuntu, I require some more details from you regarding your fix, I'll send you a private message.

Alan

I'm seeing this on my XPS 9550 too .  Temperatures near 70C on the PCH diode when using the supplied laptop charger.  With the WD15 dock I saw temperatures over 77C!  The suspend trick doesn't seem to work with the dock.

I'm also in Linux (PopOS  17.10) and I find that the fans just sit around 2500rpm regardless of the cpu load, where as in Windows they spin up an down more.  I'm running tlp but not i8k utils.  I was expecting the BIOS would just deal with fan things in Linux, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Not only is it cooking my left hand, but I'm pretty sure these temperatures are critical and will cause premature failure.

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@PsyKotyk wrote:

I'm seeing this on my XPS 9550 too .  Temperatures near 70C on the PCH diode when using the supplied laptop charger.  With the WD15 dock I saw temperatures over 77C!  The suspend trick doesn't seem to work with the dock.

I'm also in Linux (PopOS  17.10) and I find that the fans just sit around 2500rpm regardless of the cpu load, where as in Windows they spin up an down more.  I'm running tlp but not i8k utils.  I was expecting the BIOS would just deal with fan things in Linux, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Not only is it cooking my left hand, but I'm pretty sure these temperatures are critical and will cause premature failure.

 

 

 

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@PsyKotyk, i'll drop you a private message to get your tag details from you. 

When this issue happens are you running on battery or ac adaptor?

That OS that you are running is not supported on this system so I can understand if it's not regulating the fans as well as a Windows based install. 

What other temperatures are you seeing during use?

Alan

Hi @Dell-Alan D

The issue seems to happen only on ac/dock power.  On battery, everything is cool as a cucumber.

I applied the latest firmware upgrade to the WD16 (the one that came out in June 2018) and I think it might have changed something, as on usb-c dock power with a full battery charge it hovers around 70C (which is still more than I'd prefer, but not physically painful like 77C).  

I was mistaken about the fans not speeding up.  Under load and when the CPU gets to >65C -ish they do speed up, and under 35C they are off.  I work on just a flat desk surface in an office environment, so I don't think airflow is being blocked.

Here's a paste of my temperature data after running for about an hour.

pch_skylake-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +69.0°C

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +25.0°C (crit = +107.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0: +44.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0: +39.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1: +41.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 2: +36.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 3: +37.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

dell_smm-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
Processor Fan: 2504 RPM
Video Fan: 2525 RPM
CPU: +43.0°C
Ambient: +46.0°C
Ambient: +43.0°C
Other: +35.0°C

Just one quick update.  I went into powertop and under the Tunables tab I saw there were a lot of power management kernel options that were flagged as 'Bad'.  I flipped them all to 'Good' and saw a 4-5C temperature drop while using the dock.  I'm now at a more reasonable 65-67C while idle (though I've seen it as high as 82C under heavy load)

According to the skylake PCH datasheet, the suggested trip points for the chip are Hot=108C and Catastrophic=120C, so I no longer fear the chip is being damaged, but it still makes for uncomfortable use.

The items I thought might be of particular interest are:

Runtime PM for PCI Device Intel Corporation Skylake Processor Thermal Subsystem

Runtime PM for PCI Device Intel Corporation DSL6340 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Alpine Ridge 2C 2015]

Runtime PM for PCI Device NVIDIA Corporation GM107M [GeForce GTX 960M]

I'm going to make sure these get set correctly on boot.  @Panabuntu would you be able to confirm if the powertop tunables have any effect?

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@PsyKotyk wrote:

Just one quick update.  I went into powertop and under the Tunables tab I saw there were a lot of power management kernel options that were flagged as 'Bad'.  I flipped them all to 'Good' and saw a 4-5C temperature drop while using the dock.  I'm now at a more reasonable 65-67C while idle (though I've seen it as high as 82C under heavy load)

According to the skylake PCH datasheet, the suggested trip points for the chip are Hot=108C and Catastrophic=120C, so I no longer fear the chip is being damaged, but it still makes for uncomfortable use.

 

The items I thought might be of particular interest are:

Runtime PM for PCI Device Intel Corporation Skylake Processor Thermal Subsystem

Runtime PM for PCI Device Intel Corporation DSL6340 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Alpine Ridge 2C 2015]

Runtime PM for PCI Device NVIDIA Corporation GM107M [GeForce GTX 960M]

 

I'm going to make sure these get set correctly on boot.  @Panabuntu would you be able to confirm if the powertop tunables have any effect?

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@PsyKotyk thanks for the update. I was going to advise that I had spoke to engineering and they advised that the temperatures you are seeing are well within spec, however you already supplied the info from Intel confirming this. The system is working as designed.

Alan

@PsyKotykmy powertop just show as "Bad" some items when is on AC but I think is normal, some items are in powersave mode just when is on Battery. If I plug the AC on, all of them come to "God" again.

I got this values:

pch_skylake-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +69.0°C  

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +25.0°C  (crit = +107.0°C)

iwlwifi-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +49.0°C  

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0:  +41.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0:        +38.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1:        +38.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 2:        +36.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 3:        +37.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

And after apply the fix I got this:

pch_skylake-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +51.0°C  

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +25.0°C  (crit = +107.0°C)

iwlwifi-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +35.0°C  

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0:  +41.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0:        +38.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1:        +40.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 2:        +38.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 3:        +38.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

@Dell-Alan DI don't think that temp is normal for a laptop, it's too hot, before I didn't have this problem at all and other people are reporting that the temp in the PCH is around 50 degrees on AC. It's between 15 and 20 degrees more that we get. I don't think that a premium laptop was designed to be really annoying when you use it on AC.

Hi

I have the same problem with my XPS 15 9570 that I bought recently (Spain). In my case, when the pc is is connected to the current, the temperature of CPU reaches almost 100 ºC. The fans are continuously running at high revolutions. The heating is by the zone of ctrl and shift keys. When the battery is fully charged the temperature decreases but the fans are still running (connected to the current). I have also noticed that a slight beep is heard in the central area of the keyboard.  This does not happen when the pc works only with the battery. 

As I continue to fine tune my Linux install, I found a few settings that seem to affect things.

1) /etc/default/tlp 

I change RUNTIME_PM_ON_AC=auto.  That puts most of the items powertop shows as bad into good by default.

I added RUNTIME_PM_BLACKLIST="00:14.0" as tlp was putting the dock USB ethernet into power saving mode every few mins causing the connection to drop and restart.

2) I noticed gnome-shell was using a lot of CPU.  This turned out to be a mis-configuration on my end, where it was using the software opengl renderer instead of the i915 opengl implementation. 

I still get thermal creep when on the dock and doing cpu intensive stuff.  It's still uncomfortable to use for any amount of time.  Will report back if I discover anymore settings/config.

@Panabuntu wrote:

@PsyKotykmy powertop just show as "Bad" some items when is on AC but I think is normal, some items are in powersave mode just when is on Battery. If I plug the AC on, all of them come to "God" again.

I got this values:

pch_skylake-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +69.0°C  

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +25.0°C  (crit = +107.0°C)

iwlwifi-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +49.0°C  

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0:  +41.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0:        +38.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1:        +38.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 2:        +36.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 3:        +37.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

And after apply the fix I got this:

pch_skylake-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +51.0°C  

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +25.0°C  (crit = +107.0°C)

iwlwifi-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +35.0°C  

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0:  +41.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0:        +38.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1:        +40.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 2:        +38.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 3:        +38.0°C  (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

@Dell-Alan DI don't think that temp is normal for a laptop, it's too hot, before I didn't have this problem at all and other people are reporting that the temp in the PCH is around 50 degrees on AC. It's between 15 and 20 degrees more that we get. I don't think that a premium laptop was designed to be really annoying when you use it on AC.

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@Panabuntu according to the the technical white paper attached to the previous post, the system is not overheating and the temperatures exhibited by the PCH module are well within spec. 

Alan