High CPU temp on idle

[trahajopro86]

Hi Everyone.

I have been playing with various firewall distros and noticed that PFSense 2.2.1 runs my test machine really hot. System Activity shows 3 procs 100% idle and one with about 98% idle. Also my kill-a-watt shows the laptop pulling about 75 watts.

By comparison, Windows, IPFire, Untangle, and Sophos running on the same hardware shows little heat (if any) and runs about 30 watts.

This is just a straight default install with no packages or traffic running through.

The machine is a Thinkpad x201 with the most recent BIOS and I have tried all kinds of different BIOS power settings with no change.

Also, I tried all the different setting of PowerD (all min, all adaptive, etc)

Am I missing something? I'll probably try a Soekris install later, but wanted to demo on this old laptop.

Thanks

Tracy

[kejianshi]

Did you try deleting powerD altogether and running without it?  (-:

[trahajopro86]

Do you mean just leaving it turned off, or actually removing it?

I can't remember, but I think it was unchecked by default. I only learned about the powerD feature after initially researching the issue (and then enabling it and trying different settings).

[kejianshi]

I mean delete it.  Uninstall it and see if things are better.

(So you are saying you had this problem before powerD?)

[stephenw10]

75W seems incredibly high for a laptop running any OS.
What temperature is it actually running?

Steve

[kejianshi]

Also, see if your laptop has any issues with FreeBSD.

[trahajopro86]

@stephenw10:

75W seems incredibly high for a laptop running any OS.
What temperature is it actually running?

Steve

Ha ha.. I Agree! it only turns into a "heater" running pfSense ;-) Running anything besides pfSense is fine. Running pfSense make the laptop hot to the touch.

-Tracy

[kejianshi]

Press the update button.  See if problem persists.

[trahajopro86]

@kejianshi:

Press the update button.  See if problem persists.

I previously tried the update (2.2.1) and had the same issue. I reinstalled from scratch just before that last screenshot.

Just for giggles, I took the HDD out of the Thinkpad x201 and put it into a Thinkpad T420 and it doesn't seem to have the same issue. The same HDD install is running at about 28 ~ 35 watts and just over 40 degrees C.

Must be something specific to the x201 even though very similar to the t420. Seems like FreeBSD just doesn't like the x201 since it runs fine with any other OS.

Thanks Everyone!

-Tracy

[kejianshi]

Yeah - This last one looks good.

Are you sure that you are not having a cooling problem with the hardware and that maybe the other OSs might be throttling the crap out of the CPU freqs to keep it cool?

[stephenw10]

You have powerd running on the cooler laptop.

Steve