Surface Book 2 throttles excessively, often down to 0.4 GHz

Anonymous
2018-05-30T14:41:18+00:00

I've recently purchased a 15" Surface Book 2.

When compiling large projects in Visual Studio 2017, I find that the processor often throttles excessively, often down to 0.4 GHz. As a result, compilation takes several times longer than it does on my 5 year old MacBook Pro. 

The Core Temp app shows that the CPU at this point is at 50-55 degrees Celcius or so.

The following question touched upon this problem, but the proposed solution did not work for me:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows\_10-performance-winpc/cpu-clock-speed-sometimes-capped-at-04ghz/315d06ac-a40a-41f8-8314-b370f8b51618

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks.

T

Surface | Surface Book | Power and battery

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-09-19T07:55:04+00:00

    I was in contact with MS tech rep in the past weeks and they are now supposedly actively working on the issue. I had to make some videos depicting the issue and how it helps with the fan. I also had to run some software which gathered system info. I'm still waiting for feedback on the latest uploads but we all know things like that take time.

    As far as i understand they still need to establish who/what is responsible for the issue, and having videos helps them push the case internally and with vendors.

    If not before then it will surely get more traction once SB2 gets sold more in India for instance.. But heads should roll if it is not fixed by then. ;)

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-09-18T20:17:39+00:00

    I just had yet another encounter with the chat support that ended in nothing but the support rep being rude and not at all willing to listen. I am seriously considering whether a refund is in order at this point... :'(

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-09-09T12:44:19+00:00

    I just received my 3rd SB2 but it also throttles down to 0.40 Ghz often - at the moment I have to resort to running a fan behind it. 

    I hope we can get a fix soon.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-09-06T05:53:03+00:00

    Same problem here. Surface Book 2 with i7-8650U. I've already returned it once to the local Microsoft store. I couldn't recreate it in the store (was very cold in there) but luckily I had taken video from my phone to show Task Manager dropping down to 0.4ghz during intensive PowerBI data-loads (it uses all available cores).

    The replacement doesn't suffer from the problem as badly as the first one, but it will still throttle back to 0.4ghz during some long data loads. I have found that a box fan pointed at the back of the display seems to help as well.

    Hoping this is just a firmware or driver update!

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-09-04T09:53:22+00:00

    One thing I do to make it more usable is to Force the usage of the integrated NVIDIA card as much as possible (in the Nvidia Control Panel set the prefered graphics processor to the dedicated nvidia one). This way using more the gpu that is in the keyboard will leave the integrated one (from the screen) more free time and it helps a little to keep the screen part a bit more cool so less throtling.

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