Battery charging -> watching a video -> the laptop becomes warm/ hot, CPU fan runs at high speed!

[Laszlo Gyimothy]

Hi,

I have the following problem and I am pretty sure that is typical Surface Book 2 problem, everybody can reproduce it:

Surface Book 2, 15 inch, RAM: 16 GB, SSD: 512 GB
I have just reset my Surface and I have all of the updates.

Test1:
0. Power mode: Best performance, Wifi On
1. plug the charging connector into the charging port on your Surface
2. charge the battery to 100%
3. DO NOT UNplug the charger
4. close all of your running applications
5. restart your laptop
6. start the Edge browser
7. navigate to youtube.com and start an HD or a higher quality video
8. wait some minutes and your Surface becomes warm/ hot, CPU fan runs at high speed!
9. set the power mode to battery saver and wait some minutes, everything is OK again
10. set the power mode to best performance again and wait some minutes, your Surface becomes warm/ hot, CPU fan runs at high speed!


Test2:
0. Power mode: Best performance, Wifi On
1. DO NOT plug the charging connector into the charging port on your Surface
2. use your Surface and wait until the battery is below 98%
3. DO NOT plug the charger
4. close all of your running applications
5. restart your laptop
6. start the Edge browser
7. navigate to youtube.com and start an HD or a higher quality video
8. wait some minutes and everything is OK again
9. plug the charging connector into the charging port on your Surface
10. charge the battery to 100%
11. your Surface becomes warm/ hot, CPU fan runs at high speed!


Test3:
0. Power mode: Best performance, Wifi On
1. plug the charging connector into the charging port on your Surface
2. charge the battery to 100%
3. DO NOT UNplug the charger
4. close all of your running applications
8. put your Surface (the tablet part) close to your ears, you can hear a very silent noise!
9. set the power mode to battery saver
10. put your Surface (the tablet part) close to your ears again , you cannot hear this noise anymore!


Any idea? What could be the problem?

 

[jnjroach]

Yes, the Surface Book 2 is doing exactly what you are asking it to do....power always equals heat. Best Performance unlocks the TWP so that the Quad-core CPU uses all of it's power within the thermal envelope which IIRC ~100 degrees C. If it gets to ~90 it will start thermal throttling. The fans are designed to keep the dGPU cool.

This is only an issue if the machine thermally shuts down. I watch 4K videos using the recommended Power Option. You realistically only need the Best Performance for 3D Gaming, MR or 3D CAD.

 

[Laszlo Gyimothy]

I am sorry, I was on holiday, I could see your answer just now. Thank you very much for your quick answer!