CPU overheating issues, pulsating fan, recommendations?

[ome...@firemail.cc]

Hey all,

Over the last week I've noticed my laptops CPU keeps peaking @ 80-85
every now and then, even when I'm not doing any resource intensive
tasks.

I run 11-12 VMs @ a time which barely scratches the 34GB RAM on a P51
Thinkpad with a i7 7820HQ running in a standard temperature room
environment majority of the time.

Have thought of getting a cooling pad to resolve this, but would prefer
to see if there are any tweaks which can be made within dom0 or the BIOS
to put an end to this.

Also of note, I'm getting similar pulsating fan noise as posted here
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3599.

Many thanks,
om

[Mike Keehan]

Run xentop in dom0 to see which of your VMs are using cpu the most.
Web browsers can use lots of cpu on some pages!

Mike.

[Jon deps]

fwiw, this morning I woke up and my system was at the qubes 1st login
screen , apparently the system has crashed just far enough to close all
VMs but not reboot?

I am now looking at the Xentop CPU numbers and with whonix-ws update
and one up to date torbrowser window 1 tab open and one page view, the
CPU is at 150%

Maxmem was at 2000 , up'd that a bit, but also changed the VCPU to '3'
it was set to '2' and now the CPU with 1 page torbrowser open is at 5%


I guess my question what effect changing the VCPU of the TB-AppVM-Qube
is

or maybe something changed with the whonix-ws recently to mess up the
CPU usages???

[Mike Keehan]

I don't use whonix, but I've just started it up to see how it behaves.
And yes, it is using 150% cpu in the tor browser (using top in a
terminal window in whonix-user VM), and about 170% cpu in xentop.
(and my fans have come on!).

All I can suggest is to close the tor browser when not in use.

Mike.

[awokd]

Mike Keehan:

> I don't use whonix, but I've just started it up to see how it behaves.
> And yes, it is using 150% cpu in the tor browser (using top in a
> terminal window in whonix-user VM), and about 170% cpu in xentop.
> (and my fans have come on!).
>
> All I can suggest is to close the tor browser when not in use.

There's https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/4969. I have this
sometimes too where it stays high, but closing that DispVM and opening
another works around it. CPU is always high when first starting, but
should drop down to <10% on its own.