Feedback on the Lenovo ThinkPad L490

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

The is expired only after 15 days without any answer or reply. I am reopening this.

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

The is expired only after 15 days without any answer or reply. I am reopening this.

Hi Saren,

Apologies for having missed this request. Have you seen any specific performance issues with this machine? In order to become certified it goes through our full test process, as this one did. I'll pass this request on to our Hardware Enablement team to see if we had any Ubuntu-specific workarounds in place for this.

Thanks
Chris

Hi Chris,

No problem at all. I have some issues indeed. From fan speed control to reduced clock speed, wifi issues etc. However, I am not sure if the reduced clock speed and thermal issues are directly linked to the topic I linked. That problem seems to be deeper than my model. I do get the kernel warnings though.
"Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled"
I guess my performance could have been better. There are some CPU intensive programs I am running (machine learning), which seem to work slower than my previous T450s. Since Lenovo didn't/couldn't fix the issue yet, the certification can be misleading.

Best,
Saren

Hi Saren,

We solved a similar problem about CPU throttling on T495s and X1 Carbon in thermal daemon: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thermald/+bug/1811730. The fix is already in 18.04 (Bionic).

Which Ubuntu release are you using? If you are using 18.04, check if thermald is 1.7.0-5ubuntu5.

If you are already using the latest version, try stopping the daemon by 'systemctl stop thermald.service'.

Thanks,
Anthony

Hi Anthony,

After disabling thermald (the version you mentioned on 18.04), I still see following logs appearing:
[258496.822146] CPU4: Core temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 100965)
[258496.822147] CPU2: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 867020)
[258496.822148] CPU1: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 867021)
[258496.822149] CPU0: Core temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 100965)
[258496.822150] CPU5: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 867021)
[258496.822151] CPU6: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 867020)
[258496.822152] CPU0: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 867020)
[258496.822153] CPU4: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 867020)
[258496.822175] CPU7: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 867020)
[258496.822176] CPU3: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 867020)
[258496.823185] CPU4: Core temperature/speed normal
[258496.823186] CPU2: Package temperature/speed normal
[258496.823187] CPU1: Package temperature/speed normal
[258496.823187] CPU0: Core temperature/speed normal
[258496.823188] CPU5: Package temperature/speed normal
[258496.823188] CPU6: Package temperature/speed normal
[258496.823189] CPU0: Package temperature/speed normal
[258496.823189] CPU4: Package temperature/speed normal
[258496.823217] CPU7: Package temperature/speed normal
[258496.823218] CPU3: Package temperature/speed normal

Lenovo Forums have some issues. The new link is below:
https://forums.lenovo.com/topic/view/27/4028489?page=37

Those messages do not necessarily mean problems. They mean you are hitting the temperature limit set by the manufacturer, and the OS is trying to slow down your machine so that it won't overheat, so that's actually the protective mechanism kicking in. The real problem should be whether the limit is incorrectly set to a lower value, leading to premature throttling.

Could you please run the test below:

sudo apt install linux-tools-common
wget https://people.canonical.com/~ypwong/p52_test_cpu.sh
chmod a+x p52_test_cpu.sh
sudo ./p52_test_cpu.sh

After the test is finished, you will get a tar.xz file, send it to me at <email address hidden>. Thanks!