SOLVED - Acer Aspire 5740 Laptop Overheats

[devitor]

I have Linux Mint 16 installed on an Acer Aspire 5740 laptop. The machine has 8 GB RAM, and a 1 TB disk. I have a dual boot setup with Windows 7 - on the Windows side only the OS is installed.

The machine overheats when playing videos or when CrashPlan (cloud and local backup) is running.

I have PSensor installed and I'm constantly having to watch temps. With CPU usage in the single digits, temps are running 50 C. I've seen spikes all the way up to 100 C, and this morning had a thermal shutdown.

I've noticed this with other distros I had tried such as OpenSUSE and the desktop (Cinnamon, KDE, LXDE) did not make a difference.

I want to keep Linux, because it just works and does what it's supposed to do without drama and without problems - but I cannot work under the constant threat of a thermal shutdown.

I've cleaned the vents to the fan.

I've added this line to /etc/default/grub:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=linux"

And it appears to have made things WORSE.

[Mute Ant]

Machine is Acer Aspire 5740G.
CPU is Intel Core i5-430M 2x2.24Ghz Arrandale 32nm 35W TDP.
Windows 7 runs okay? It only uses one processor core by default.
The Windows application MSCONFIG will show if this is the case.
Linux Mint gets it hot.
I guess it is defaulting to two cores.
I can't test this I only have old hardware...
http://www.upubuntu.com/2011/09/how-to- ... ebian.html

[helterskelter]

How did you go about cleaning the air vents etc.? I have recently sorted a laptop for someone in similar circumstances. It had been cleaned but was still overheating.
I removed the bottom casing to get at the fan/heatsink and found a blanket of fluff blocking the 'Radiator' part of the heatsink/fan assembly. The Fluff came out in one solid piece,no way was huffin an puffin going to clear that!
Once that was cleared the laptop ran fine.
Incidentaly,have you checked the fan IS running?

eddie

[devitor]

I am now running Linux Mint 17 and upgraded the Kernel to 3.14, but the solution was to install cpufreq.

This is done from the command line.

sudo apt-get install indicator-cpufreq

Reboot.

CPUfreq will appear in your system tray to the left of the clock. Set it to "powersave." It will slow your computer down a little, but the temps will stay below 60C in the main.

[Banzai Beagle]

CPUfreq does not appear to work, certainly not in the manner described here.