Ubuntu 16.04.2 temperature spiking

**dpcole72** · June 18th, 2017

Hello. I have a Dell Latitude e5570, which periodically spikes to 70C or so then goes back down to 39~40C for idle. I only have Firefox running and System Monitor doesn't appear to show any apps prompting the temperature hike.

I've done a system reformat, trying different drivers (from integrated to AMDGPU-PRO), nothing's worked.

Over time I fear these spikes will harm the CPU since the system fans don't turn on until after temperatures go up. Going up and down so constantly would probably wear out the fans, too.

What else can I troubleshoot to find out what's causing the spiking? Any help would be appreciated.

**Autodave** · June 18th, 2017

A couple of things come to mind. First, you may want to look into the program fancontrol. Secondly, what version of ?buntu are you running? Ubuntu will use way more resources than one of the lighter versions such as Xubuntu (or even lighter) Lubuntu.

**dpcole72** · June 19th, 2017

Fancontrol was already installed at the time...

Am using Ubuntu creator edition. Usually in idle the temps are upper 30s in a 22c ambient-temp room. It's only the spikes that become concerning. Until recently they only spiked after starting Crossover. Now the spikes happen even on bootup.

What's odd is, I now just reinstalled Fancontrol from scratch just to see what would happen, expecting nothing... Now the fan is running almost all the time, showing in PSensor, going between 0 RPS to 2800 then down to 2400 then back to 2800 then 0 then 2700... ) If a background service does something, the fans ramp up to 4000RPM...

Before I removed fancontrol, its config file had nothing. After reinstalling, I saw this - an obvious improvement compared to before:

Code:

# Configuration file generated by pwmconfig, changes will be lost
INTERVAL=1
DEVPATH=hwmon3=
DEVNAME=hwmon3=dell_smm
FCTEMPS= hwmon3/pwm1=hwmon3/temp1_input
FCFANS= hwmon3/pwm1=hwmon3/device/fan1_input
MINTEMP= hwmon3/pwm1=20
MAXTEMP= hwmon3/pwm1=60
MINSTART= hwmon3/pwm1=150
MINSTOP= hwmon3/pwm1=100

Wish there was a way to control the fans with more nuance, I'm still a bit green on all this... MINTEMP suggests if I up the value to 40 the fans will remain idle; since my previous comment 5 minutes ago the number of times the RPM went back to 0 happened 4 times but the temperatures reported were all in the upper 30s or low 40s.

I read up on these values but still don't understand them all... MINSTOP is one I could probably set to 30? The docs said not to set this one to 0.

All in all, maybe there was a misread on the initial fancontrol install all those months ago. As of the reinstall the fan speed is faster or equal to the temperature readouts and under idle use temps remain in the 40s apart from a brief blip from a core going into the 70C. Still, without knowing what's causing the blip when only a web browser (Chrome or Firefox, makes no difference) is running with maybe 12 or so tabs running. PSensor is the app that keeps showing 12% usage when everything else shows 0% anyway, oddly.

Something else seems to be going on, with light usage it shouldn't be spiking any process in the background after x minutes, never uind the temperatures spiking along with it. 73C under heavy load is one thing. But when virtually idle? (it's still slowly going up during each spike...)

So ultimately nothing happened since reinstalling fancontrol - despite still going back down to 0 on occasions - one would think they would be running constantly since the minimum CPU temps haven't once gone to 20C, which is impossible.

**Autodave** · June 19th, 2017

Spiking on bootup is weird: I cannot believe that anything could get that hot on just booting: doesn't make sense.

From thew time that the temp is normal and then spikes and then returns to normal again: how long for the whole cycle?

**dpcole72** · June 20th, 2017

Did a backup this morning. Temps were under control unless a file copy error popup appeared, where a spike up to 65C was noted. At the end, I loaded this browser window and temp spiked to 70C.

Fan temps were largely hovering at 2751 but would spike up after CPU temp had. Occasionally fan temp would do a spike DOWN to 0 then back up, oddly.

**dpcole72** · June 20th, 2017

Screenshot from 2017-06-20 10-31-45.jpg

Oops, duplicate - thought I had problems when uploading but the previous reply's pic finally did show up - sry