Surface Book 3 Overheating During Updates and Routine Downloads?

Anonymous
2020-05-27T20:43:15+00:00

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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  1. Anonymous
    2021-02-28T13:42:30+00:00

    Are you still using the external monitor and surface dock?

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-02-28T13:13:37+00:00

    Returning to this thread to report that - as of 2/28/2021 - my overheating issues seem to have abated. I am using the latest drivers for the Surface Book 3 13" and have reset my UEFI settings to charge batteries to their fullest.

    I'm glad I did not go through the process of swapping out units. I'm pretty convinced the issue was around driving an external monitor through Surface Dock 2.

    Perhaps related - My ethernet port or the Surface Dock 2 would not always come back online when the laptop returned from sleep. This problem seems to be solved also.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-01-26T16:43:04+00:00

    Go into the power settings/ additional power settings/ choose what closing lid does/ and set it to either hibernate or shut down.

    I use shut down because I rarely leave open work. Solved the hot problem.

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-01-23T14:02:40+00:00

    I have just checked mine and now both are limited to 50%.  I suspect that change came in with 20H2 or other update.

    David

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  5. Anonymous
    2021-01-22T04:59:32+00:00

    How do you limit only the screen battery to 50%? I turned on the Battery Limit option in the UEFI, but it's limiting both the screen and keyboard battery to 50%. It also doesn't stop the throttling altogether, but that's another matter.

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