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
    2018-08-04T09:26:09+00:00

    I just wrote a big writeup on this exact issue myself, but luckily I found this thread, I am seeing the same exact problems, it is happening from even just watching youtube for god's sake. 

    Is there a way to work around this issue? as we all know full well, this device is really very expensive, and I've had mine since april, so a refund is off the table. I was on the tangent that I must have had a badly binned CPU, but seeing as it's happening for a lot of people I now know that can't be the case

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-08-03T16:10:36+00:00

    Same issue here.

    Started happening just as the European heat wave hit with high temperatures in the office (~30 degrees celcius).

    After 2-3 hours of work the laptop drops to 0.4 Ghz max.

    Placing an external table fan pointing directly at the laptop to keep it cool "solves" the problem.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-08-02T20:20:43+00:00

    Same problem here. In XTU or throttlestop you can see the Power Limit Throttling being flagged even though temps are ok.

    I'm on my 2nd surface book 2. I'm thinking about returning it for a 3rd time since I don't appear to have an option to refund a device that costs £3000.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-07-26T09:23:57+00:00

    Having the same issue. Device becomes unuseable because of it. Changing power mode or removing the power supply fix the issue for a few seconds. It's a $3700 device.

    What can we do about this ?

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-07-26T08:24:29+00:00

    Hi,

    I'm astonished people still have the same problem as me while Microsoft just ignored this and doing nothing.

    In the previous month, I tried to learn things about CPU. Now I got a new conclusion, at leat for my case, that the throtting are caused by Power Limit Throtting, not Thermal Throtting aka overheat protection.

    Since the Power Limit can only be configred by the manufacture normally. So yes, it's Microsoft to blame.

    By ThrottleStop, we can know the reson why CPU is limited to is PL1.

    From this One, we can see when throttle happened, Power Limit Throttling was ON.

    And the core TDP dropped to an unbelievably low number at 1W. What's that mean? My smartphone got a CPU with power greater than 1W.

    Now, what's the designed TDP for I7-8650U? Check this:

    TDP-down is at 10W and 800MHz, whcih means, in the worst cases 8650U shouldn't go down beyond this line. UNLESS, I have said this before, the manufacture configured it to another line. Let's see what my 8650U truly got:

    Maximum is normal, shown as 300W but could go around 25W. However, the minimum is 0W!!!

    What's this crap? Allow 0W as minimum means it can go down beyond 10W at 800MHz and run at 1W at 400MHz.

    Now I am choosing to believe that Microsoft did this intentionally in oder to fix that power drain problem. And it's not as simple as a overheat protection.

    Why not providing a power supply greater than 102W? Come on.

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    30+ people found this answer helpful.
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