KDE 4.14 heating up my lap(top)

[O. Sinclair]

On 23/08/2014 08:29, O. Sinclair wrote:
> On 23/08/2014 01:36, Myriam Schweingruber wrote:
>> Hi Sinclair,
> 
> 
>> On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 5:20 PM, O. Sinclair
>> <o.sinclair at gmail.com <mailto:o.sinclair at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
> 
>> Hi,
> 
>> I installed 4.14 KDE on my 14.04 laptop and find that the
>> cooling fan is constantly running and the cpu-heat reports an
>> extra 4C or so constantly.
> 
>> Starting any webbrowser from Rekonq via Qupzilla to Firefox I
>> see TOP reporting that they chew from 15% CPU up to over 100..
>> with 1 tab open.
> 
>> This was not happening in 4.13.3 - anyone seeing this and have
>> an idea of why and what to do?
> 
> 
>> What laptop is it? Some brands have more problems than others,
>> and it could simply be a kernel issue. Did you try running a
>> previous kernel to check if you can narrow the problem down?
>> Since there have been a few kernel upgrades lately that could
>> also be an issue, not just the 4.13.3 release. Also, talking
>> about the degrees: what range do you talk about? I have 
>> permanently the heat going over 70°C when using a browser on a
>> Lenovo X220, apparently this is unavoidable :(
> 
> In my case it is HP Pavilion with the dreaded hybrid intel/AMD gpu 
> combo. For unknown reasons the proprietary drivers stopped working 
> around 11.10 even though they are supposed to be supported for this
> combo.
> 
> What I normally do is to use vgaswitcheroo to shut down the AMD GPU
> as I don't game, watch movies and whatever on my laptop. This
> stopped working with 14.04 as the free Radeon driver is now so
> improved that if I run on battery the GPU is turned off.
> 
> That was a somewhat lengthy explanation as to why I have more than
> one kernel installed and normally run on 3.12.x as that was the
> last kernel where I can get vgaswitcheroo to kill off the AMD GPU
> at boot.
> 
> The "any browser eats CPU in 4.14" is consistent in kernel 3.12,
> 3.13 and 3.17 as far as I can see.
> 
> Somehow it seems to be related to plasmadesktop or kwin processes
> as these also shoot up when I launch a browser.
> 
> Otherwise my hardware is 2nd gen Intel i5 CPU, 4gb RAM and an
> ordinary HDD
> 
I should have added that my CPU temp kicks up from around 47-49 C to
over 60 C when using browsers - regardless of KDE based Rekonq, QT
based Qupzilla or GTK Firefox. This was not the case in KDE 4.13.3

It calms down if don't do nothing but keep a browser open - but that
is hardly the usercase...