Fan turns off when screen turns off?

[Gematria]

Hey.

So ive recently gotten myself a SP3 i5 256 SSD.

Im currently using it a lot for streaming to Chromecast using Google Chrome, and while its streaming, i have the screen turned off. Not sleeping, just turned off.

However.. From time to time, the stream will start to stutter, and i notice the tablet is getting pretty hot. If i then initiate the screen again, the stuttering disappears. Investigating further, i noticed that whenever the screen turns off, the fan turns off too, regardless of the load.

Is there any way to have the fans still run while the screen is turned off?

 

[jnjroach]

You are most likely running into a background process that kicks in when the screen is turned off and Chrome's poor coding that tends to overwork the machine. How do you have the SP3 configured, I ask because with Connected Standby, when the screen is off the machine is supposed to be in Connected Standby and all Win32 Applications are suspended.

 

[Gematria]

CS is disabled. HyperV enabled. Sleep mode disabled all around. Set to high performance all around

 

[jnjroach]

OK...so now that is is running like any normal desktop with Hyper-V, when the screen goes off prior to hibernation the background tasks kick in are running at the same time that Chrome is running, but by disabling Connected Standby you have handcuffed the Power Management and Cooling Firmware.

 

[Gematria]

Not sure i get what you are saying.. anyway, tryed disabling hyper v, still the same.

 

[jnjroach]

The Surface Pro 3 is a Hybrid Device, it has the Power of an Ultrabook and the Engineering of an ATOM or ARM Tablet. It uses a modified version of Connected Standby (Intel's S0iX Power Scheme), the part that enables the Power Management is a propritory Firmware that allows for 2 levels of Hibernation and Connected Standby on the SP3, by enabling Hyper-V and High Performance you have over-rided that Firmware.

The SP3 is not designed to function in the way that you are using it. Can it be done, yes and why does the SP3 allow this because its Windows and there are scenarios where the user needs to use Virtualization (developers and testers mostly).

What you are running into depending on the version of Chrome you are using, is that Chrome used "cheats" to improve performance of its browser by preventing the CPU to idle, with each tab opened in Chrome each process is keeping a CPU call open, add to that you are using WiFi Direct to control Chromcast.

 

[Gematria]

So i cant have the fan running while screen is turned off? Or is there another way i can maintain a decent battery life while streaming?

 

[GreyFox7]

I think the simple answer to your question is. No, there's not a way to enable that. It's not a designed for supported use case. Workaround is to leave the screen on and dim the screen to max.

You could copy your power profile and make the change there then save it. Switch to this profile as needed.

 

[Gematria]

Oh well. Turning down brightness leaves me with like 7 or 8 hours of streaming, accordin to windows anyway. Will have to do. Thanks for the replys