1y ago

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!

46 comments

Honestly the best thing you can do is to remove and reapply thermal paste to the CPU / GPU. Go for something with a high thermal conductivity. There are plenty of videos online on reapplying thermal paste and that will definitely cool off your laptop when done correctly as it increases heat transfer to your heat sinks and fans.
- I'll defo have to do this then, seems like the most probably cause of the system overheating. Thank you
  
  Also get some compressed air and blow all the dust out of your laptop's fans and vents.
- This should be done to any laptop after 4 years. A tube of paste only costs like $5, and it will have a massive difference.

The operating system in use shouldn't be a factor. Consider opening your laptop to perform a thorough cleaning, and also consider replacing the thermal paste as well. If you're not comfortable doing this yourself, taking it to a repair shop is a viable option. Investing in a cooling stand for the laptop would also be beneficial....
- I'm alot on the go so don't think there is a practical enough cooling stand for me, but thanks 🌻
  
  Replacing the thermal paste is essential. It dries out over time and stops conducting heat effectively. Cleaning the fans and radiator fins is important too. Takes an hour or so if you don't know what you're doing so shouldn't take long. I've kept my laptop going for years by doing that every 2 years or so.
  
  There are some slim battery operated cooling stands listed on Amazon. Not sure how well they'd work, but they are always an option....

Have you tried cleaning the vents/fans first?
- Yeah do it each year, should have mentioned that :)

Those specs should be fine. Have you tried cleaning it and replacing the thermal paste?
- I guess not well enough 🫠
  
  Honestly sometime devices are prone to overheating just based on design. If you've already cleaned it you may also consider under clocking the hardware.
  Your machine is still plenty powerful

I have almost the same laptop (PS63 8M, without any nVidia dGPU).
One of the issues I had to solve was the touchpad spamming interrupts after waking up from sleep. It would keep one core at 100% indefinitely, keeping CPU frequency (and temps) quite high and burning through the battery.
Here's the fix: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1865745#p1865745
This behavior seems fixed on modern kernels since I've installed Fedora recently and didn't have to do this workaround, but you can still check if this still applies to you.
You might also check if you can disable the dGPU in the BIOS (can't check since I don't have one), and/or play with power profiles either through Gnome or tlp (lower power profiles will make your laptop very sluggish though).
Maybe check if both your fans are running. I had to replace one of mine that was starting to fail a year ago.
Other than that, I've never had any overheating issues with this laptop.
- I will definitely check this out, merci 🌼
  
  De rien ;)

Have you tried running themald?
- No have not heard of this before, will try it asap
  
  Thermald is the way. I have a fanless pc that used to hit critical temperatures and restart quite often, but after using thermald and simple rules, it works fine now.

I sounds like you have to apply new cooling paste. This might be a pain to do on a laptop but certainly worth it. Another distro probably won't do the trick, whether it's minimal or not.
- Yeah it seems so, will try to get it done soon 👌

What you need to do is clean the dust off of your fans and ventilation filters (check guides or figure it as you go, but make sure to disconnect the battery and the fans from the mobo as soon as you open it). Then, repaste it with good thermal paste or some
. I have liquid metal (thermal grizzly condoctonaut) on both of my laptops, and one of them which had overheated since day one, doesn't anymore.

A laptop of that age should not have any trouble with the kinds of things you're doing, so it's probably more of a hardware issue than a software one, unless some rogue process is eating up your CPU. You probably don't need a lightweight distro (unless you prefer to keep things extra-light) and if it's a hardware issue installing one may not help. So, as others have said here, first check the running processes for anything odd, then repaste it and blow out the dust.
- Yup thanks will do!

Lots of cleaning advice, but let me add this bit: If you crack it open and use a can of air on it, unplug the CPU fan first. Super easy if you've gone that far.
- Okidoki 👍
  
  And before using a can of fresh air, look into an electronics fan. Compressed air doesn't actually play nice with electronics

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.

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?

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.

In addition to the basic hardware care (checking for dust, reapplying thermal compound if necessary) you can run powertop to check what is keeping your CPU awake when it shouldn't and take steps to purge unneeded services or resource-heavy applications.
- Thanks wasnt aware of this resource, will get it :)

How do you mean that its overheating? My GF says the same about her laptop, but its just cooling itself off. Does yours freeze or start slowing down a lot? Are you monitoring temps and see that they're beyond your CPU acceptable range (usually 90C, IIRC)?
- Yeah, the system totally slows down quite a bit, everything from the browser to my IDE uses quite a bit of time to load.
  
  If you are seeing temps out of spec for your CPU, its not unheard of for thermal paste to dry or even shift if the laptop has been through some chassis strain. Could be worth a careful examination.
  
  Can you hear your laptop's fan speed up when it's overheating? Linux on my old laptop couldn't control the fan speed so it was always overheating. When I figured out how to manually set it to maximum, it overheated much less.
  
  This could also be done to the RAM filling up and/or high I/O activity of the disk. I suggest to investigate these possibilies as well

WDYM by "overheat"?

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€

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.

In my experience with them, MSI laptops tend to run quite hot in general, your OS probably isn't going to fix it. You can try one of those laptop cooling plates, basically a mesh platform with fans, ensuring cool air is always available to the laptop intakes, but it isn't exactly a perfect solution.
Really it just needs more cooling capacity - they seem to cut razor close to the amount needed in their designs so when eventually cooling becomes less efficient either through fans getting tired/clogged or thermal paste/pads breaking down, it will not keep up.
- Yeah it's a rather thin laptop, but I will open it up and get some cooling paste on it 👍

- What?
- Uh thanks?

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

46 comments