Ubuntu-Certification

Feedback on the Dell Studio XPS 1340 - High Temperature in Idle

Asked by Michele Costantino Soccio

Hello,
I have just installed the Ubuntu 12.10 on my Dell XPS Studio 1340. All the hardware devices seems to be working fine (I didn't try the video output yet).
However this release of Ubuntu seems to have serious problems with the Power Management. When the computer is Idle (just started, no software opened, CPU set to Power Saving) the main temperature is stuck to 71°C (the temperature that psensor call "temp1", and that is shown by most of the temperature controlling applet and software).
With Ubuntu 12.04, the idle temperature was 62°C. On Windows Vista, original OS installed on this machine, the idle temperature is 49°C. Although in winter it can be pleasent to have a little heater to warm your hands, the noise of the fans after a couple of hours can be pretty annoying, so I really would like to significantly drop the temperature of loyal Ubuntu laptop.

Here a small recap of my computer and the software:
- Ubuntu 12.10 AMD64
- System fresh installed
- Using i386 32bit version of Ubuntu 12.10 does not improve
- CPU manually set to Power Saving (to avoid the CPU going to 80°C too easily)
- Compared to the Certified Hardware, my machine has "Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P9600 @ 2.66GHz"
- The memory of the machine has been upgraded from the original 4GB to 8GB (I have changed both the modules installed)
- Hardware has not changed (exactly same hardware was tested on 12.10, 12.04 and that Microsoft OS I cited above)
- In "powertop", after manually setting all the tunables from "bad" to "good", the situation didn't noticeable improved (the temperature was 72°C and then dropped to 71°C)

Please provide me any instruction that could help you the gather any extra information you may need to help your long term devoted user.
Thank you

Question information

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Ubuntu-Certification Edit question
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Solved by:
Sylvain Pineau
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Revision history for this message
Best Sylvain Pineau (sylvain-pineau) said : 		#1

I have a xps 1340 with nvidia graphics and a P8700 @ 2.53GHz, if like me you were running the nouveau drivers, it may explain your problem with quantal.

Try to install nvidia-current on your system (please manually install linux-headers-generic before to avoid bug #1070427).
I have 50°C with Precise and Quantal, both running the Nvidia proprietary drivers.

Revision history for this message
Michele Costantino Soccio (michelinux) said : 		#2

Thank you Sylvain, installing the nvidia-current has indeed lowered three degrees. Now I get 66°C, when keeping the CPU on Power Saving and doing nothing, except writing this. So remind me to treat you a good coffee whenever we'll meet.
Which is already a good result (I guess my loyal notebook will take a few minutes more before blowing up).
I really wish I could get the 50°C of Sylvain's machine.
Any other suggestion? Some tweak on the wifi maybe?
Anyway, IMHO, if Canonical declares this machine as certified, the installation should setup the system in the optimal way and install the nvidia-current since the beginning.

Revision history for this message
Michele Costantino Soccio (michelinux) said : 		#3

Thanks Sylvain Pineau, that solved my question.