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Overheating...Lost

Rowan

New Member
I love my Surface pro 3. So far it does everything I want it to. It has replaced my laptop, my textbooks, and my notebooks for school. I use my surface a ton. That being said I need a solution. Today in class I was asked to turn off my tablet because another student couldn't hear the professor over the fans of the surface.

Here is my set-up:

Surface Pro 3 I5 4gb

Here is what I use it for:

Taking notes in class on one note. Doing Homework. Typing papers. Surfing the web. Reading textbooks. Occasional Amazon Prime Movie.

When taking notes on onenote the tablet gets very very hot and the fan starts pumping out overtime. When I use the nook app to read textbooks it gets very hot, to hot to hold often. When I surf the web...sometimes its hot.

My tablet seems to always be running very high. It is at almost 50% memory usage WHEN IDLE. I am looking down my list of programs running and it is no where near 2gb let alone close to 3gb (and its almost always 58% or above when in use).

So all of that is being said...I am lost. I have owned this too long for Best buy to take back (over 2 months now) but I feel like this is a defect or...just something. Does anyone have suggestions or is there some information I do not have on how to fix this.

Thanks
 

kristalsoldier

Well-Known Member
I also noticed that when I use the pen with OneNote, the screen heats up and battery expenditure is higher than normal (this is only by eyeballing the battery meter). But as soon as I stop or finish with using the Pen with OneNote, everything drops back to normal.
 

ctitanic

Well-Known Member
I love my Surface pro 3. So far it does everything I want it to. It has replaced my laptop, my textbooks, and my notebooks for school. I use my surface a ton. That being said I need a solution. Today in class I was asked to turn off my tablet because another student couldn't hear the professor over the fans of the surface.

Here is my set-up:

Surface Pro 3 I5 4gb

Here is what I use it for:

Taking notes in class on one note. Doing Homework. Typing papers. Surfing the web. Reading textbooks. Occasional Amazon Prime Movie.

When taking notes on onenote the tablet gets very very hot and the fan starts pumping out overtime. When I use the nook app to read textbooks it gets very hot, to hot to hold often. When I surf the web...sometimes its hot.

My tablet seems to always be running very high. It is at almost 50% memory usage WHEN IDLE. I am looking down my list of programs running and it is no where near 2gb let alone close to 3gb (and its almost always 58% or above when in use).

So all of that is being said...I am lost. I have owned this too long for Best buy to take back (over 2 months now) but I feel like this is a defect or...just something. Does anyone have suggestions or is there some information I do not have on how to fix this.

Thanks
When you are using OneNote are you Synching with OneDrive? If that's the case turn off the synch to see if that fixes the issue.
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
Seems like a contrived story (paid) and not the first to appear in these forums. the occurrence of which is a well know fact, what are the odds. Must have held the Surface up to a megaphone right by the person ear. The fan noise on a decibel meter is about 35 decibels which is quieter than a quiet library. Can't hear the professor... no that would take a 75 DB fan like in the MacBook Air.
 
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hughlle

Super Moderator
Staff member
Seems like a contrived story (paid) and not the first to appear in these forums. the occurrence of which is a well know fact, what are the odds. Must have held the Surface up to a megaphone right by the person ear. The fan noise on a decibel meter is about 35 decibels which is quieter than a quiet library. Can't hear the professor... no that would take a 75 DB fan like in the MacBook Air.

Have to agree. No way the surfaces fan would have caused other students not to be able to hear the professor. If it really were the case, then it would be an instance of the professor trying to give a lecture in whispers, not a case of the sp3 fan being unreasonably loud.

It was just last night on youtube that i searched surface pro 3 (again :p) and selected to sort by upload date, and i couldn't understand why there were numerous 1 minute videos, all identical, purely to try and discourage buyers by making outlandish overheating claims. Makes me wonder just what peoples issue is to do such a thing. Noone actually beleives such a thing, due to the overwhelming amount of evidence against said claim. It's a bit depressing to know that there are people out there who's lives really are that shit.
 

mmoran27

Member
Once again people suggesting to disable core functions to get stuff working right.

This is why Apple does not make a Surface. Kludgy half baked Frankenstein gui and thermal throttling because the device can't handle PC tasks.
 

mohcho

Active Member
I just ran a test with Tomb Raider running on a standard configuration and the fan did turn on after a bit and was going quite loudly, but not full tilt as I have heard it going before. The CPU speed did automatically throttle down to just under 1Ghz, and the game became a bit choppy but it was manageable. Considering how thing this device is, and how much air it needs to pump through and around the heat pipe, it didn't get as hot or loud as before the recent firmware updates, so they are working on addressing the heat and throttling issues.

Once I quit the game, the fan immediately started to slow down and after about 30 seconds, the SP3 went completely silent again and cooled down quite significantly. Right now, you can feel a warm spot near the cpu but nothing out of the ordinary.
 

hughlle

Super Moderator
Staff member
Once again people suggesting to disable core functions to get stuff working right.

This is why Apple does not make a Surface. Kludgy half baked Frankenstein gui and thermal throttling because the device can't handle PC tasks.

Alternatively, people suggesting to turn off various functions so as to try and isolate the problem. Nice spin though.
 

mitchellvii

Well-Known Member
Ok, this is weird.

Was browsing the web in "tablet" mode and suddenly the fan started spinning up pretty hard. Huh, I thought, that's weird.

Opened Task Manager to see what was up and saw CPU usage was at 100%! But here is the weird part. It immediately dropped to 17%. Closed it again and reopened - again 100% then back to 21%. So what the hell is happening here? What is churning my CPU to 100% then immediately backing off once I open Task Manager?

Had Access open in the background and Chrome in the foreground. Temps never got above 60C and the infamous Windows Installer wasn't running. Bizarre.
 
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