Overheating laptop, should I try a lighweight distro - which one?

Hello Penguins,

I’m looking for distro advice. For the last 4-5years I have rocked this laptop, MSI PS63 Modern RC. I have tried Debian, Garuda, Ubuntu, and now currently rocking Tumbleweed. Although I am statisfied with the current choice of distro, my laptop still overheats like crazy whenever its preasured even slightly, for example: doing updates, being on zoom for uni, or ofc low-end gaming.

I realise the laptop is old, but i really want it to last half a year longer before i start working for a company, which then will replace my need for having a personal laptop.

So, should I try a more lightweight distro or do you think the problem lies elsewhere? I’ve had the same issue across all other distros i’ve tried. I’ve looked at trying Alpine and MicroOS from openSUSE.

Appriciate any pointers!

Pantherina,

Cant you cramp up the fancourve? Best is in the BIOS as it mostly works best. Also have a look at using liquid metal for cooling, costs nearly nothing. Or simply new good heatpaste, costs like 8€

rotopenguin,
@rotopenguin@infosec.pub avatar

Keep an eye on thermals with s-tui. You could down-throttle the processor with tlp. At some point you’ll probably have to deal with the thermal-transfer pad being bad or whatever, that is never a fun job on a laptop.

Atemu,
@Atemu@lemmy.ml avatar

WDYM by “overheat”?

the16bitgamer,
@the16bitgamer@lemmy.world avatar

I have a Gigabyte Clevo thingy, so take what I say with a grain of salt. My laptop has a i5 11 gen intel cup, and it doesn’t have the cooling for my cpu. I don’t know if this is a bug in Linux, or a fault in the pc (probably both). So when I play games it spikes to 80-90C then throttles.

So what I did was look into software that lets me control the CPU frequency, which led me to Slimbook Battery. This software is amazing and lets me tune the power usage of my cpu to manage the thermals.

I believe Open Build has a package of Slimbook Battery for Opensuse Tumbleweed, but I’ve had no luck running it. On my Manjaro install it works excellently.

authed,

The fan in my Toshiba laptop once died… Make sure that isn’t your problem and replace it if it is

danielfgom,
@danielfgom@lemmy.world avatar

The issue isn’t with Linux directly so any distro you use will do the same.

It could be a hardware issue that the machine is not dissipating heat.

Or it could be that you need some kind of driver/controller software for fan. It sounds like the system isn’t properly controlling the fan. It leaves it low when it doesn’t defect usage but when it does, instead of increasing the fan a little bit at a time, it just goes full tilt to be safe. It probably cannot read the temperature sensors and so has no idea whether your need cooling or not.

I don’t know the answer but do some googling around system temperature reading on that model and see if there is a module you need to install.

Diplomjodler,

Depending on your skill level, it might be worth opening it and checking the internals. Cooling system works, airflow not obstructed, etc. Probably also worth checking the thermal compound of the processor. But that’s not something a beginner would be happy to try. Maybe take it to a repair cafe, if there’s one near you?

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