Very high temps on laptop running Linux Mint

[dragonchan]

I've been having problems with Linux Mint on my laptop for the longest time. I'm still a noob at using it but I've done a lot of searching on the forums and on google. I still haven't been able to find a solution though.

Last year (or the year before), I installed Linux Mint version 11 for the first time. Everything worked great except my computer kept on overheating and would shut down randomly. My laptop runs a lot hotter on Mint than Windows for some reason. My laptop has an ATI Radeon 3650 card in it, and I found on the forums that ATI drivers and Catalyst Center would be needed. So I installed it but it didn't seem to help, and my computer was still overheating.

Last week, I decided to upgrade to Linux Mint 14 Xfce to see if it would help (I did a format and install). It didn't and my laptop is still overheating. Running sensors, I could see the cores go up to 86 degrees C. Thinking it could be the video drivers again, I tried installing the ATI Catalyst Control Center but I am having a lot of trouble with it. It appears that the latest drivers on ATI's site for my graphics card doesn't work well with the current kernel version on Xfce. I looked and found the guide linked below for installing version 12.6, but it seemed to have failed since running "fglrxinfo" still shows error.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/129597/h ... -12-04-lts

I don't know what else I can do. I like using Linux but it seems to crash my computer more than Windows. I would like to try getting the Catalyst Control Center and driver software in Linux to see if that would help, but I doubt it will since I managed to install it before on an older version of Linux and I was still having the same problems. My laptop normally runs at 40 degrees C on windows but it's doubled in Linux Mint. I checked the bios and I didn't see an option for fan controls. I opened up my laptop and made sure all the dust was cleared. I have to use two laptop fans in order to keep my laptop around 80 degrees C in LM. Any ideas on what I can do?

[thegreatgazoo]

I can't speak to your video card problems, but it may be that the CPU is not throttling down when demand is low. Have you tried installing "laptop-mode-tools". It's not installed by default. It's in the repositories.

Also you might want to install the Jupiter power manager. It puts an icon in the status bar that let's you quickly switch power modes.

Jupiter power manager:
http://www.webupd8.org/2010/07/jupiter- ... r.html?m=1

Podcast taking about laptop power tweaks:
http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/2494 ... as-s23e08/

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

[dragonchan]

hm...that seemed to help a bit. I installed both the laptop-mode-tools and the Jupiter manager, and it dropped my computer temps by 10 degrees C. It is still reading around 70 degrees though, and up to 75 degrees C when running more applications. Any ideas on what else I can try to lower the temperatures even more? Thanks