Linux 5.10 To Fix Some HP Laptops Performing Less Than Optimally On AC Power

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 5.10 To Fix Some HP Laptops Performing Less Than Optimally On AC Power

Some HP Spectre laptops and possibly other HP models as well should be performing better when running on AC power starting with the Linux 5.10 kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.10-HP-WMI-Perf-Query

[ed31337]

Cooling, the achille's heel of most cheap computer systems. And by cheap, I mean expensive to buy, but cheaply made and engineered to fail at some point after the warranty period so that you're basically forced to buy something new.

My old Ivybridge HP laptop still works, but it sometimes overheats and spontaneously reboots. And sometimes the cooling fan just starts wigging out because I guess the bearings are old? The only reason why I boot it nowadays is for those times when I need to make a build of my app for Android (since Google doesn't provide Android build tools for my Raspberry Pi 4, which has replaced my HP laptop for mostly everything I do).

[QwertyChouskie]

Cooling, the achille's heel of most cheap computer systems. And by cheap, I mean expensive to buy, but cheaply made and engineered to fail at some point after the warranty period so that you're basically forced to buy something new.

My old Ivybridge HP laptop still works, but it sometimes overheats and spontaneously reboots. And sometimes the cooling fan just starts wigging out because I guess the bearings are old? The only reason why I boot it nowadays is for those times when I need to make a build of my app for Android (since Google doesn't provide Android build tools for my Raspberry Pi 4, which has replaced my HP laptop for mostly everything I do).

If I were you I'd buy a new fan and some decent thermal compound, which are usually about ~$10 each. I had an old HP laptop that ran super loud when doing basic stuff even after cleaning, but I put some fresh thermal compound in and it got WAY quieter.

Fixing your cooling should also give you much better performance. The laptop that used to be my main had a dead fan and I didn't know it at first, the system worked but was super slow as the CPU was always stuck at 800MHz due to the heat. Things got WAY more responsive once I got a new fan in there.

[timrichardson]

Cooling, the achille's heel of most cheap computer systems. And by cheap, I mean expensive to buy, but cheaply made and engineered to fail at some point after the warranty period so that you're basically forced to buy something new.

My old Ivybridge HP laptop still works, but it sometimes overheats and spontaneously reboots. And sometimes the cooling fan just starts wigging out because I guess the bearings are old? The only reason why I boot it nowadays is for those times when I need to make a build of my app for Android (since Google doesn't provide Android build tools for my Raspberry Pi 4, which has replaced my HP laptop for mostly everything I do).

This problem sounds like a software problem, not a hardware problem, because it sounds like the problem ThinkPads had: Lenovo programmed the power management profiles to be extremely conservative to keep heat down (to about 50 C), and then made sure Windows could override that in accordance with user preference. But Linux couldn't override it, and it was some kind of binary solution that the kernel didn't want to support. Lenovo got a lot of grief for this, because it was a debacle. Eventually for some models it released BIOS updates (not for mine) but solving Intel's mess in BIOS was apparently very difficult. It completely changed tack, I imagine there were some strong discussions with Intel. This problem may have been a trigger for the new Linux approach, where component vendors have to be linux friendly. On my T480 I use a workaround which continually overrides some hardware registers.

[cbxbiker61]

If I were you I'd buy a new fan and some decent thermal compound, which are usually about ~$10 each. I had an old HP laptop that ran super loud when doing basic stuff even after cleaning, but I put some fresh thermal compound in and it got WAY quieter.

Fixing your cooling should also give you much better performance. The laptop that used to be my main had a dead fan and I didn't know it at first, the system worked but was super slow as the CPU was always stuck at 800MHz due to the heat. Things got WAY more responsive once I got a new fan in there.

Yep, I used MX-4 compound (non-conductive) with a new cooling fan (was making some noise) and my notebook is quieter than it was when it was new.

[ntropy]

That are good news.
My HP Spectre's thermal management has to be tended to all the time in Windows as in Linux. The i7-9750H is way to overpowered with 6 cores and 12 threads giving its transistor size for this thin laptop. When I run a parallel compilation full threaded, it goes up to 90 °C in a second and the fans take about 15 - 20 seconds until they kick in; by then the laptop is already burning. If the laptop is on light load, the cpu is pretty spikey. Meaning if you dont control it software-wise it will turbo-boost quite often, effectively letting the laptop run at 60 - 70 °C on light load. So I think I get what the engineers did here: they knew that this laptop does overheat a lot and since they did not want the fans to be on constantly (cause this would have prolly upset the customer) they let them kick in pretty late.

I'ld like to change that on the fly tho, if I know I am compiling or gaming, I want the fan to kick in instantly. On Windows HP gives out a software for this but that somehow stop working for me within a couple of days. I tho can set the fans to always on still.

What I did was getting a laptop stand with a pretty powerful fan. That helps when doing 3D development, cause if the nvidia powers up too, things get really hot. With the laptop stand I can keep it to 44 °C on light load and the fans will only occasionally spin up in video conferencing. Then I got this tool, which is pretty neat: https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/auto-cpufreq It does regulate on ACPI status and core load, works pretty good. Lets the CPU run at 2,6 Ghz constantly when plugged in, so on a balanced profile. I was sceptic of that first but it doesnt really matter, the cpu wont heat up more, as if you let it run on powersave at 0,8 Ghz then. It really depends on the load. On battery it goes to powersave and the cpu idles at 0,8 Ghz. Turbo boost is switched off and only goes on if core load does reach a certain point. I have talked to the dev and he fixed turbo boost not turning on, on single core boost as well; it does now, tho this is a pretty rare case (I had with geekbench) and was only for having the perfect tool. So I can really recommend it.

I use the laptop 99% of the time with Linux but at the beginning, I used it for some time with Windows. Thermals in Windows are + 10 °C if you do nothing, than in Linux. I disabled modern windows 10 power management and reverted back to the old settings, where you can set up everything manually. If I configure it that way, that 8 threads are put to sleep on idle and set the max freq to 1,2 Ghz (0,8 Ghz makes programs stutter in windows), it does run at 52 °C. So in windows thermals are way more bad. I dont know the role the UHD graphics plays in this on Windows (cause I havent cared about it so far). In Linux I do limit the GPU frequency via temperature if I use geforce Now for gaming or stream from my headless Linux gaming rig. That way I can up battery time to 4 hours 30 minutes when HD or 2k streaming. On light workload battery is around 6 hours 30 mins, which is the same on windows.

So my conclusion is this thing runs way better on Linux (installed automatic screen rotation to be able to work very well with the convertible touchpad features). And with that tools from the phoronix news, it will be even be more better.

Here is a geekbench result that was pretty good: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/3321647
The laptop is single core as fast as my Ryzen 3900X desktop and multi threaded about half of the performance.
The heat management and prolly a wrong setting in the hardware thermal profile tho, keeps it from achieving higher. Highest I ever got was 5400 on multithreaded, but I think it can go up to 5600 or 5800.

[ed31337]

If I were you I'd buy a new fan and some decent thermal compound, which are usually about ~$10 each.

Somehow, I very much doubt a laptop specific new fan for this old HP laptop is going to cost only $10. Unless you're talkin about an external fan blowing at the laptop, which could be that cheap for sure, but then that's not very portable.

I made two wooden sticks that screw into the VESA mounting holes on the back of my monitor. I bent some heavy gauge copper wires as hooks to mount my Raspberry Pi 4 between those two sticks, plus stuck an old 12V ATX power supply fan between those wooden sticks to blow at the RPi4. This is pretty portable (save not being battery operated), yet the fan will be dirt cheap and easy to replace, unlike a real laptop.

This problem sounds like a software problem, not a hardware problem

That I can somewhat agree with. While I can set the fan to always stay on from within the BIOS (and have done so), it still doesn't seem to dynamically change the fan speed all that quickly during heavy usage in Linux.

[QwertyChouskie]

Somehow, I very much doubt a laptop specific new fan for this old HP laptop is going to cost only $10. Unless you're talkin about an external fan blowing at the laptop, which could be that cheap for sure, but then that's not very portable.

What is your laptop's model number? (Usually looks something like 15-ca007dx)

[gregzeng]

Many comments. Solutions, theories, software, hardware and better cooling options. HP, but Lenovo was mentioned. "Cheap" HP hardware? HP was started as anything but cheap; very professional only, last century. Both Dell & Lenovo are trying to reach where HP used to be.
It is not unusual that Linux has more problems unsolved, compared to the more popular operating systems: Windows & Apple. Windows especially has many more utilities to "fix" these problems, temperature, GPU & CPU performance changes & sensing, etc. Those of us in the Windows area are wondering whether the Linux people will ever be aware of the very many options existing in the more heavily used operating systems. Linux has yet to try to match the performance of Windows "Process Lasso", which is the best of these process governors, in my expert opinion. Then we can add temperature sensors & controllers of many types & complexities, to design for better battery life and-or other criteria.
On the "cheap" hardware accusation, this is known as "consumer" quality, and then various degrees of high quality. Each major brand might have three or more "consumer" levels: Beginner, General and Performance. Sometimes the more expensive options might be available: Business or Enterprise, and Military. The truly performance-orientated go beyond that again, to "customized", which seems to have no fixed limits nor definitions.
In the computer industries, most professional commentators seem to be ignorant of these machinery standards. This is very different from the other mature industries: transport, audio, video, therapy and "fun" (recreation). Senior information personnel dream one day that the day will arrive when the information journalists dare to understand that high standards of technical journalism are possible. Each market sector must be very deliberately mentioned since they are are all so very different.

[r1348]

Many comments. Solutions, theories, software, hardware and better cooling options. HP, but Lenovo was mentioned. "Cheap" HP hardware? HP was started as anything but cheap; very professional only, last century. Both Dell & Lenovo are trying to reach where HP used to be.
It is not unusual that Linux has more problems unsolved, compared to the more popular operating systems: Windows & Apple. Windows especially has many more utilities to "fix" these problems, temperature, GPU & CPU performance changes & sensing, etc. Those of us in the Windows area are wondering whether the Linux people will ever be aware of the very many options existing in the more heavily used operating systems. Linux has yet to try to match the performance of Windows "Process Lasso", which is the best of these process governors, in my expert opinion. Then we can add temperature sensors & controllers of many types & complexities, to design for better battery life and-or other criteria.
On the "cheap" hardware accusation, this is known as "consumer" quality, and then various degrees of high quality. Each major brand might have three or more "consumer" levels: Beginner, General and Performance. Sometimes the more expensive options might be available: Business or Enterprise, and Military. The truly performance-orientated go beyond that again, to "customized", which seems to have no fixed limits nor definitions.
In the computer industries, most professional commentators seem to be ignorant of these machinery standards. This is very different from the other mature industries: transport, audio, video, therapy and "fun" (recreation). Senior information personnel dream one day that the day will arrive when the information journalists dare to understand that high standards of technical journalism are possible. Each market sector must be very deliberately mentioned since they are are all so very different.

So... word salad much?

HP used to be good, then it was destroyed by over a decade or terrible management (Carly Fiorina anyone? Palm? They produced a... web series?!?). They are recovering, at least for what regards product quality in the professional PC sector, but they're still too focused on a legacy customer base that is quickly disappearing.
Dell and Lenovo might be upstarts compared to HP, but they're moving much more quickly in today's IT world, and in fact they're always the most suggested brands when it comes to IT professionals. And yes, Linux support plays a big role in this.

About the availability of system management tools in Windows vs. Linux, I can only suggest you to update your knowledge. It's not 2004 anymore. "Process Lasso", seriously?