SURFACE LAPTOP 3 - Overheating when charging and excessive Fan Noise

Anonymous
2020-01-07T23:58:07+00:00

Edit: 16 Jun 2021

Laptop is going OK - not much fan noise or heating as I haven't been using it much. mostly my work laptop

Got a better data USB C to USB C cable to plug into the dock and using a Lenovo Dock Gen 2 for the additional screen, think they are helping in better handling and keeps fans not to rev so much

Being my 3rd laptop (replaced 2 before) battery is performing better than the other two. Haven't run the full tests yet - still in progress to test real word batt life (office work, no games, no memory or cpu intensive apps)

Edit: 17 Feb 2021

Well, this 3rd laptop replacement is not as bad as the other two, however, the rocket engine fan noise is not completely gone. 

this laptop is for light use only, any slightest workload "WHEN hooked up to an additional monitor" + Microsoft teams video call, 3-word documents, 2 webpages, this laptop cannot handle. It runs however fans rev up and won't stop until we close a few applications or disconnect additional monitor. 

I think its the quick charging or charging which using additional display via display USB-C. Not much was done during the testing phase. 

I hear dell XPS's and some other laptops rev fans too, however only when there is significant load, not just basic office work.

Example: I had sticky notes, 1 webpage, and a TEMAS interview video call: Laptop fans did not stop revving at max speed until the end of the interview and I closed all applications. 

For this time there is nothing more I want to do - there is no fix for this, so i will have to s*C* it up and make a better decision next time. 

Edit:28 Oct 2020

Nothing changed its still overheats when plugged to an external display. Fans still rev high when on Microsot teams meeting or charging. Laptop battery looks like it gave up (3 to 5 hour max) on light use. What a shame this issue is not getting enough attention. 

Edit: 28 Aug 2020 

No change - Laptop still goes crazy when plugged to an additional screen

All Microsoft Stores are temporarily closed until further notice. So I have to escalate this again to Microsoft


Edit: 17 Apr 2020

The issue still continues, Couldn't attend MS Store because of COVID lockdowns.

At this stage im hoping they can fix this via software patch. However, after research, this has been a problem for a few MS products (charging, especially fast charging) 


Edit: 21 Jan 2020

Still did not go to Microsoft store. With this COVID 19 going on, working from home most of the time.

I will give away my laptop to the store soon to test. 

Biggest change I noticed.  Battery is being effected. When ever the laptop is hot during couple of hours of work connected to dock.... remove from the dock....u get 3 hours or so max on full battery... guessing due to excessive heat I guess. 

I tried multiple times charging with power adapter. Works fine without issues, no heat, battery lasts longer a little. Daily heating issue is causing battery to deterioate quickly 


Surface Laptop 3 - 13inch, i5, 8GB, 256GB SSD.

Surface laptop overheating on every charge - even with no applications running. Brand new laptop, room temperature is under 21 C. After plugging in the charger, if you listen closely near the exhaust vents - there is a faint static electric noise, not to mention is scary as i don't want to use this anywhere close to me. 

Laptop has already been replaced with a new one, still same issue. With some research a lot of people are experiencing the same issue. Any solution for this ?????

Surface | Surface Laptop | Power and battery

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-04-21T16:01:31+00:00

    In addition to the scary extreme heat during charging, do you also have problems with crashing? Mine often crashes if I try to charge during standby. Or it just does not wake up from standby.

    mine does that as well. it crashes and won't come back until after a good 2 manual restarts (using power button) and also another restart (via using power option from Start)

    I ended up getting a replacement unit in late January/early February. It has been working fine since then. I have not had any overheating issues since then and my Surface Laptop 3 works great.

    The one thing that also happened around that time is that MS also released the January 30 firmware updates that installed right after I set up the new machine.  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4526150/surface-laptop-3-update-history

    Using Firmware - 7.100.140.0 (and all the rest of the updates that came out at that same time), I have had no problems on the new machine. So, I'm not sure if this was fixed due to a new hardware or new firmware.  But, I'm happy that there are no more issues with overheating or crashing.

    Make sure that you are running the latest firmware. If it is still having issues while running the new firmware, try to reinstall windows using the "reset this pc" feature. If that still doesn't work, getting replacement hardware may help.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-04-21T07:20:22+00:00

    Just a wild idea!

    Might this be due to the charger they supply with the unit?

    Has anyone here tried using the non-MS charger or external charger for their surface?

    There is somewhere mentioned on this thread that its a lot better with mac charger. I haven't tried it personally, however my issue is with charging via dock (both DELL and Microsoft dock)

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-04-21T02:42:31+00:00

    In addition to the scary extreme heat during charging, do you also have problems with crashing? Mine often crashes if I try to charge during standby. Or it just does not wake up from standby.

    mine does that as well. it crashes and won't come back until after a good 2 manual restarts (using power button) and also another restart (via using power option from Start)

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-04-21T01:34:11+00:00

    Here is an info from Aus Consumer Law website

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-04-21T01:24:42+00:00

    Have had the exact same problem - first 2 weeks of having it was fine, but for the last 3 weeks, I could not use it at all. Whenever I was charging the laptop I could not use it due to the overheating and freezing. This is a major issue and I am gonna ask for a refund. Also, call me back for Australia is 1am to 9.30am! How ridiculous is that? That is horrible.

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