Microsoft Surface Pro series facing heavy throttling issues

[The Sloth]

what happened? 

Our first Surface Pro model was the Core i5-7300U SKU and, as shown by our looped CineBench R15 Multi-Thread test scores below, CPU performance can fall significantly from 334 points during the start of the run to as low as 226 points towards the end. This represents a drop of almost 33 percent from what we expect out of a proper ULV Core i5-7300U. In fact, such behavior is more common on a 4.5 W Intel Core Y or Core M series CPU rather than a 15 W Core U series.

 

 

Surface Pro 2017 Core i7-7600U

 

processor will throttle just as heavily when under the same CineBench R15 Multi-Thread loop test as shown by our graph below. Scores drop steadily after each subsequent run from 410 points down to 340 points by the 7th or 8th loop. This means that users who purchase the Core i7-7600U SKU will actually have a performance level closer to that of a proper Core i5-7300U CPU instead of the Core i7 that they paid for.

 

 

Conclusion

Microsoft's promise of a 50 percent performance boost over the Surface Pro 4 generation is only partially true. Our tests on both the Surface Pro 2017 Core i5 and Core i7 SKUs reveal that performance is indeed faster, but only for the first few minutes before throttling inevitably kicks in. Microsoft is essentially overcharging for the Core i5 and Core i7 configurations since their respective cooling solutions are clearly unable to maintain the proper base clock rates that we have come to expect from a U-class processor.

 

TLDR- improper cooling on the new Microsoft surface pro, all of them are affected but the passively cooled ones gets affected the most. 

 

source -https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Pro-series-facing-heavy-throttling-issues.232538.0.html 

 

yes there was enough room for a fan on all the models

 

Edited July 17, 2017 by nerdslayer1
some missing details

[ARikozuM]

Quotes are needed. 

 

Interesting results, though. I wonder how quickly this would occur in actual usage. 

[iamdarkyoshi]

We put a faster CPU in it, therefore its faster

[DrMacintosh]

I don't think its improper cooling, I think its more the limitation of the size of the devices we are making today. This seems to be a common theme with every device that isn't an inch+ thick. 

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

I don't think its improper cooling, I think its more the limitation of the size of the devices we are making today. This seems to be a common theme with every device that isn't an inch+ thick. 

Like a HEMI in a Mini Cooper! It goes fast, but only for like 6 minutes!

[TrigrH]

I doubt this will be much of an issue in typical workloads.

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, TrigrH said:

I doubt this will be much of an issue in typical workloads.

It almost never is. 

 

Computers like the Surface, MacBooks, thin and lights like the HP Spectr and etc are almost always cool....until you run a benchmark and try to get the thing to break itself. 

[The Sloth]

2 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

I doubt this will be much of an issue in typical workloads.

depends on what your typical workload is, putting a small fan in the i5 model wouldn't have hurt much. they had the room but silent

 

-https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Pro+5+Teardown/92362

 

[DrMacintosh]

4 minutes ago, nerdslayer1 said:

depends on what your typical workload is, putting a small fan in the i5 model wouldn't have hurt much. they had the room but "silent" 

-https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Pro+5+Teardown/92362

 

Holy crap there is tons of room in there wtf

 

If you aren't going to put a fan in it fill that gap with another fucking battery cell.......Jesus tf MS. Even around the battery cell there is so much wasted space! 

[Gamerguy207]

32 minutes ago, nerdslayer1 said:

depends on what your typical workload is, putting a small fan in the i5 model wouldn't have hurt much. they had the room but silent

 

-https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Pro+5+Teardown/92362

 

Damn they could have at least but a fan running at like 200 rpm

[Dietrichw]

The surface has thermal throttled since the Pro 3. The Pro 2 was the last one that had two fans and not be super thin. 

[flibberdipper]

49 minutes ago, nerdslayer1 said:

depends on what your typical workload is, putting a small fan in the i5 model wouldn't have hurt much. they had the room but silent

 

-https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Pro+5+Teardown/92362

 

I love how the one heatpipe goes right between some of the battery cells

[Max_Settings]

This is the classic debate or, form over function? Or function over form?

[Pendragon]

holy shit this design is even worse than macbooks and blades. 

 

ms engineer: "hey, u think it's gonna be cool if we made heatpipes that ran across the entire computer and fuck enigneering?"

 

wtf even happened here. 

 

i dont think i've seen a ulv processor that can be passive cooled. need the m series. 

[The Sloth]

4 minutes ago, Pendragon said:

ms engineer: "hey, u think it's gonna be cool if we made heatpipes that ran across the entire computer and fuck enigneering?"

 

the reason they spread the heat pipes around is to give it more surface area to cool, they forgot all the cutouts to let the air in, seriously, they could fit a decent size fan in, what the hell was the engineers thinking. 

[Pendragon]

2 minutes ago, nerdslayer1 said:

the reason they spread the heat pipes around is to give it more surface area to cool

i get that, but that's a REALLY stupid way to do it. 

 

your manufacturing tolerance needs to be extremely high cause if the heatpipes touch any part of the mb, the laptop is fucked. it's like deliberately fucking over your laptop. I don't even think an aggressive undervolt + LM repaste will save this. like if u do that with an xps13 it's fans will rarely spin up and it's cool as fuck. this is just fucked.

[captain_to_fire]

To all people with a Floatplane subscription, is there a Surface Pro 2017 review already? Maybe Linus or anyone can confirm this with a video. 

[The Sloth]

7 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

To all people with a Floatplane subscription, is there a Surface Pro 2017 review already? Maybe Linus or anyone can confirm this with a video. 

no, Linus said reviews or other time sensitive things go to youtube and floatplane at the same time. 

[LAwLz]

My guess is that they probably arranged the battery and heatpipes that way for weight and weight distribution reasons. Putting another battery in that big empty space was probably possible, but it would have made it really heavy in that corner. 

[Misanthrope]

To be fair: I hardly think Cinebench is indicative of the target audience for this product. This isn't a serious laptop or desktop people could reasonably expect to use those kinds of workloads: It probably can cope well enough with occasional peaks for when Powerpoint or Chrome are being nasty.

[mrchow19910319]

7 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

It almost never is. 

 

Computers like the Surface, MacBooks, thin and lights like the HP Spectr and etc are almost always cool....until you run a benchmark and try to get the thing to break itself. 

Completely agree with you on this. 

 

90% of the time the machine is fine. And 90% of the user won't push their device as hard as "running a benchmark for an hour". So our product is probably fine.   

 

I am not saying that they are wrong, but for tech enthusiasts, knowing that you are using a device that thermal throttles is un acceptable. But for most users, its fine. 

 

[captain_to_fire]

7 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

It almost never is. 

 

Computers like the Surface, MacBooks, thin and lights like the HP Spectr and etc are almost always cool....until you run a benchmark and try to get the thing to break itself. 

I think the only time these devices will thermal throttle like the Surface Pro is during CPU intensive tasks like video rendering with Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve or do gaming in medium to low settings. For people who only crunch numbers in Excel or copy paste PDFs or use it as a Facebook machine, I think it won't thermal throttle. 

[GoodBytes]

Plagiarism detected. Please write in your own words.

As a result, it has been moved out of the Tech News section until it is fixed.

[GoodBytes]

All the Surface Pro's, similarly to most ultrabooks, throttles under extended loads. They are not gaming machines. They are design to give short burst of high performance, but mostly stay idle as you write or draw or type, which it is.

 

From what I saw online from people testing the device, the device runs with less throttling than the SP4. And the SP4 throttles less than the SP3. The best Surface Pro, with the least throttling, is the Surface Pro 2. But I don't know how it compares with the SP4 or the new Surface Pro due to the age of the device. Nevertheless, the device was MUCH heavier and thicker (almost or was twice as thick). Intel thermal output reduction of its CPU didn't really change over the past few years. This should change with the 10nm Coffee Lake.

 

[Dackzy]

heh, don't they show the i7 model as a 3D work 2in1 laptop? I remember they did with the Surface Pro 4 and 3, which means this sucker will go to that level of performance often if you choose to do what they advertise it for...

I remember the old Pro 4 had a fairly low thermal throttling point that could be tricked to increase if you pointed a fan at a certain place on the Pro 4, because it took body temps into consideration, I wonder if this is still the case or if they go 100% of CPU temps now.