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
    2018-08-18T11:47:16+00:00

    Yes i heard that too on reddit, the guy said that he needs to improve the tool and then we will put it on github

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-08-20T07:08:20+00:00

    finally some good news, sort of.

    I got a reply from MS tech that they have identified the cause of the issue and also reproduced it in their offices. They say the issue was already seen in some other laptops and also some PCs. Of course it will now take time for some vendor to wake up and fix their drivers. I'll post more info after a followup call some time this week.

    So it seems the attention was raised and things are moving, thanks to all of you posting on forums and twitter!

    I can also confirm that placing a small USB fan behind surface technically fixes the issue. I was finally able to use SB2 without constant slowdowns for a whole day! Thank you very much for the suggestion.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-08-20T07:18:44+00:00

    that is great news, let's hope it'll be sooner rather than later!

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-08-24T09:47:57+00:00

    That's what I also do recently, and it helped:

    With another good news:

    WINTER IS COMING!

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-08-28T21:16:14+00:00

    I purchased a surface book 2 a little over a month ago and we are also seeing the throttling issue. We especially see it when the system is connected to an external monitor either with a Microsoft USB C to HDMI adaptor or through the surface dock. 

    I'm torn about returning the device. It's form factor is great and we were planning to replace a large number of systems with them.

    Is this something Microsoft can fix?

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