Got my new SB 3, 13" / i7/ 16GB unit for few days. It got very hot at the back with minimum usage (web browsing). After reading through this, i will return the unit and get macbook M1 instead.
Surface Book 3 Overheating During Updates and Routine Downloads?
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Anonymous
First off, the specs are: 13.5"/i7/32GB/512GB/1650 Max-Q
Not sure if this will be the case for all users, but I am currently troubleshooting a issue with the Surface Book 3 going into a thermal throttle state from just restarting or trying to update even basic things.
The first few days were fine - though attempting to run Minecraft didn't actually engage the dGPU for some reason. Eventually got the dGPU to work by installing NVIDIA's GeForce Experience, or whatever it's called.
Then I noticed that the fan would spin up even when the SB3 should have been in sleep mode; I fixed this by just having it hibernate instead. Since then, I haven't heard any fan noise at all, even when the thermals were hitting well into the upper 90s C and even a few cores hitting 100 C.
Now, I can't seem to cool the thing off. I was trying to install Adobe Acrobat Pro and the latest Intel drivers (apparently one was released on 5/20?) the screen shut off and a little thermometer popped up (which I assumed, and later confirmed, meant that it had overheated and shut down to prevent damage).
Like I mentioned just above, now I can't seem to get the darn thing to run cool enough to even install it's routine updates. I have a box fan pointed on it to try and help, but even that doesn't seem to be effective.
When last I checked (which admittedly was a few hours ago now since I'm trying a factory reset to see if one of the updates caused this) the CPU was capped out at 400 MHz, but it hasn't overheated since. It sure does take a heck of a long time to do a reset when your CPU is capped to 400 MHz.
I'm hoping that this factory reset will fix the issue (hey, ya never know 'til ya try, amirite?), but otherwise I assume that I will likely have to warranty this particular SB3.
Not really sure where I was going with all of this, I guess I was wondering if this is something that could be caused by updates and drivers or if there is a more serious hardware issue.
I spent far too long trying to see if I could force the fans to spin regardless before just giving up on that.
I'll add a link here that has a picture (would've done a screen cap, but it's in the middle of resetting) and some video showing what I'm talking about.
Thoughts or suggestions?
Surface | Surface Book | Power and battery
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Anonymous
2020-12-02T01:58:00+00:00 -
Anonymous
2020-12-01T00:08:58+00:00 Similar experience. After much back and forth with Microsoft they offered to replace it. I could not afford to be without it for work so I had to decline for now.
Would you post your experience with a new unit here? I'm very skeptical but also a little desperate given my investment. My configuration is similar to yours.
Thanks.
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Anonymous
2020-11-30T23:37:45+00:00 Same problem here with my i7 13.5 Surface Book 3. Actually having them ship me a new one but rather sure that will not help. Even when out in the sun on a 70 degree day it overheats doing barely anything.
I have found if you use the below fan and have it run through the screens vents it helps a ton and keeps the CPU in the 70's. What a horrible design. I wish I could get my money back.
Talk to an friend of mine who used to be an engineer on the Surface team. He said the thermal engineer on the Book 3 was the best they had. Well he must have had an off day on the 13". I told this same friend that it has an i7 without a fan, and he looked at me like I was crazy. I said no. MSFT is crazy.
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Anonymous
2020-11-12T18:00:25+00:00 Hello,
Since I wrote this ours have seen a marked improvement, none have blue screened this week. We found ours only tended to overheat when running multiple screens. and doing other things like Zoom.
I am not sure what has improved, one thought is that the heatsincs may not have been bonded to the chips 100% and the heat has since solved them. Before the fan hardly operated on mine (dont think the 15" are fanless") and now it appears to be running a lot more often and properly discharging the heat when it should.
One of my colleagues has changed the graphics setting of the high demanding programmes to High Performance, it would appear their is a power saving option which appears to be an Intel Iris Card which we think my give up if you ask it to do too much.
Hope this helps, I hope it gets better. Yes the Spectre is a good option.
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Anonymous
2020-11-12T17:35:50+00:00 Microsoft has confirmed that the 13" model is FANLESS. My older Book had one in the tablet section. My Book 3 does NOT and it runs very, very warm and occasionally just shuts down until it cools off. This is while laptop is 'closed' and hooked to the Dock 2 running dual monitors. When running purely on battery power this does not happen. VERY ANNOYING.