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Needs advice on screen & fan issues

Erilyon

New Member
Hi everybody !

So I've bought a Surface Pro 3 when it came out last year, and as I encountered many issues of black-light bleed and overheating I went through several procedures of exchange (as in return for reimbursement and purchase another since it was easier than to do a warranty exchange) but to no avail.

I though it might be an issue in the manufacturing process and thus I settled with a i5 model in august with still a lot of bleeds, but no noticeable overheating.

But nowdays, the surface seems to always ramp up the fan to max whenever I watch an online video, or I use the wifi for data transfer (I suspect the wifi chip to be the culprit, but it might well just me my usage of chrome).

So I turn to the community for advice on a few questions:

  1. Did the black-light bleed ever get fix ? Could I still do a warranty exchange at this point (so far from the purchase date) ?
  2. Does your surfaces also have a strong IPS glow on the 4 corner of the screen ?
  3. Is this overheating a known issues (due to some factor like the infamous chrome) or is my surface faulty ?
  4. And finally do you think I should contact support ?

I know it's a lot of questions, but I've been ruminating those for a while now.

Anyway I would be so very grateful for any insight guys : )
 

RémiM

Active Member
questions: did you check the task manager activity when your fan is on ? What does it say ?
 
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Erilyon

New Member
That's the thing, I was expecting to see the CPU running high, but most of the time there sometimes (every 5-6 seconds or so) is a spike at 30-35% (but I don't expect that to cause a complete fan ramp up), but most of the time is averaging between 7-12%.

Up until now I always attributed to chrome having a poor CPU management, but since it became more and more systematic (every time I play a video now) I started wondering if it wasn't an hardware issues.
 
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Erilyon

New Member
Here is a screenshot of the activity (with fan running high, and warm back). I captured at one of the high spike, the low average is around 7-9%.
Untitled.png


I also noticed something weird: If I raise or lower the tablet while the fan is running (when pivoting the tablet) I can hear some noise, like if the fan was rattling (like the noise toy helicopter's propeller do).
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
Here is a screenshot of the activity (with fan running high, and warm back). I captured at one of the high spike, the low average is around 7-9%.
Untitled.png


I also noticed something weird: If I raise or lower the tablet while the fan is running (when pivoting the tablet) I can hear some noise, like if the fan was rattling (like the noise toy helicopter's propeller do).

Look at the Processes Tab and sort it so the highest CPU users are on top.... that's what's causing your problem.
Also get details on the video, encoding, resolution, etc.
How does watching offline video do?
Online may be hampered by "malvertizing" etc. Run a scan with Malwarebytes and Install ad blocking/privacy lists.
 

RémiM

Active Member
I also noticed something weird: If I raise or lower the tablet while the fan is running (when pivoting the tablet) I can hear some noise, like if the fan was rattling (like the noise toy helicopter's propeller do).

I had exactly the same thing with my first SP3. It was driving me crazy. At the beginning it was a little background sound, and after 4 months it became much louder. I eventually exchanged the device (I also had bad screen bleeding). A "normally" balanced fan doesn't make this mosquito noise, even if you tilt the tablet.

For your CPU activity, you must follow what @GreyFox7 suggested.
 

Telstar1948

Active Member
I doubt the fan noise you mentioned (fan rattling) will get better or stay the same...it will only get worse over time. I know it's a pain, but I would recommend an exchange.
 
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