Surface laptop 3 fans running loud when laptop is plugged in

Anonymous
2019-11-17T19:40:03+00:00

Hello. I have been having this problem with my Surface laptop 3 where when I play a light game (like Minecraft) with the laptop plugged in the fans become extremely loud. However when the laptop is not plugged in the fans don't get even close to being as loud... Can someone help me solve this problem?

Surface | Surface Laptop | Power and battery

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Anonymous
2019-11-18T17:57:09+00:00

Hi 8gigLiam,

Thanks for reaching Microsoft Surface Community. We thank you for taking advantage on our new Surface Laptop 3. Definitely this is not the experience that we want you to have. We do have some few questions to have this isolated and some suggestions could lead us to a resolution.

When your on Battery, you have mentioned that you the fan is not that loud, But if you check on the battery slider are you on "Best Performance" while your in game?

You can adjust how you want your CPU to perform, by selecting the battery icon on the task bar and adjusting the power mode. Setting the power mode to Recommended throttles the CPU and helps keep it running cooler with less need of assisted cooling. While a setting of Better performance or Best performance will allow the device to run more quickly, it will also allow the fan to come on more often to keep the CPU cool and performing it's best.

Is this the 15" or the 13.5" Surface Laptop 3 for the Graphics"

If this is the 13.5" what's the processor?

We have :

Quad-core 10th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-1035G7 Processor

Quad-core 10th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-1065G7 Processor

You can check this by going to Task Bar search box and Type there "dxdiag".

Looking forward on your response. Please keep us posted.

Regards,

Edd

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-03-26T12:16:00+00:00

    Nothing as of yet guys, 

    Because of this COVID lockdown - Im working from home, last they asked was me to handover the laptop to Microsoft store so they can check - for that I need to go to Sydney city (not far for me 25K's away) but preferred to stay home to avoid risk. 

    But yes - still laptop going crazy on charging and on-dock - the battery is only lasting for 3 to 3.5 hours tops after disconnecting from the dock on full charge - my battery looks like it gave up already 

    I'm also having this issue. The laptop feels hot against the palms of my hands when typing on it, and the fan is constantly on when plugged into the charger. WMI Provider Host is eating a lot of CPU which I guess don't help things either.

    The fan issue is annoying, sure, but I've already started to notice a drop in battery capacity.

    Currently trying my best to find some fix for this, be it beta drivers or eventually installing Linux.

    Please help us out here, Microsoft. This is supposed to be one of your premium products, and it's the third iteration of it on top of that!

    Edit: Literally minutes after typing this up I found a quick workaround. If I had to guess, the heat/fan issue is due to Intel Turbo Boost being super-agressive. When plugged in the 1.5Ghz processor is constantly working at 2.5Ghz++ and thusly generating a lot of heat.

    When I changed the Maximum Processor State (when plugged in) to 99% it gets capped at 1.45Ghz-ish and the fan noise/overheating stopped within minutes.

    I'll report back if anything changes. But the times considered I'd rather have a bit slower laptop (I only do web dev work in VSCode anyway) than one that's speeding towards a RMA.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-12-18T20:49:32+00:00

    Same thing for me, even in this scenario:

    Machine idle on desktop, no apps running, on lowest performance setting, not plugged in: fans not running at all.

    Then if I plug in power, still idling, no apps running, lowest performance setting: the fans starts running making quite some noise....

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-03-17T06:45:01+00:00

    [removed by moderator] this Microsoft company. Their devices and their attitude suck..... I regret buying this laptop

    Apart from the fan and overheating issue, this device gives some electrical vibrations while being charged. Does anyone have the same problem?

    The interesting thing is that the store where I bought it (Shanghai authorized branch) said it it is normal and no refund could be done.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-11-25T20:47:24+00:00

    I'm also experiencing this issue on the Laptop 3 13,5" i5. 

    I've been monitoring both the temperature of the laptop and the usage of the CPU. Even under very low load (8-20%) and low temperatures (45 -55 celcius) the fans are running at what feels like max speed. 

    I've been using the power settings "Battery saver" both while charging and when running on battery. I almost never notice the fans while running on battery but when plugged in the fans are really loud.

    All available updates are installed and the diagnostics tool didn't notice any problems.

    Please help me solve this, right now I'm using noise cancelling headphones while it's charging to handle the noise.

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