Librem 13 overheating to the point of shutdown

Hardware
1

Hi,

I have a recurrent problem of overheating while compiling, system upgrade, viewing big pdfs. The problem is that this can reach the point when the system/hardware immediately and abruptly switch off the laptop.

I see in the logs that CPU threshold is reached and CPU is throttled, but that doesn’t seems to be enough to avoid the switch off.

The problem has always been there.

Am I the only one to face such issue?

What can be done about it?

My laptop is a librem 13 v3 with 4Gb of RAM.

2 Likes
2

Sounds to me like you don’t have enough RAM for those tasks. Is your SWAP partition active when you try those things? Are you trying those things simultaneously?

Try contacting tech support and follow their instructions.

3

What is your coreboot version?

4

Hi,

How to find this information?

I simply need to enter in the BIOS at boot?

5

I usually have more than one application running, but it appears even with only 1 of those tasks running. The SWAP can be active, but not at a high level.

6

Run sudo dmidecode in terminal.

7

Here is the information:

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 24 bytes
BIOS Information
	Vendor: coreboot
	Version: 4.7-Purism-1
	Release Date: 02/15/2018
	ROM Size: 16 MB
	Characteristics:
		PCI is supported
		PC Card (PCMCIA) is supported
		BIOS is upgradeable
		Selectable boot is supported
		ACPI is supported
		Targeted content distribution is supported
	BIOS Revision: 4.0
	Firmware Revision: 0.0
8

Ah, yes, you need to update your coreboot. But before you start the update script you need to run:

sudo bash -c "echo -n 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo"

9

Can you explain that in more detail? Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

10

Is this the procedure to follow for the coreboot update?

https://puri.sm/coreboot/

@mladen, can I follow “blindly” the instruction in the above link with a non PureOS distribution?

11

@mladen, unfortunatelly, compiling the firmware from source leads to overheating that leads to emergency switch off of the laptop.

If I have looked correctly, I can install a pre-build version of the firmware.

Can I go with that option and then re-install it but from source?

12

@montaropdf Did you do sudo bash -c "echo -n 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo" before starting the compile?

13

Yes, sorry I forgot to say it.

14

Sorry for the very late reply.

I upgrade the firmware and BIOS a few weeks ago using the pre-build firmware (Librem coreboot Utility Script: usage, discussion, and help) and the laptop doesn’t experience any overheating since then.

Thanks for the work on the firmware and your support.

2 Likes