[Pan-users] heat problem revisited

[Bob]

Have been having a heat problem lately.  Mostly since Mint 12.
Problem started with Pan, and have been active on the gmane pan user
group and have some resolution of problems by reducing the number of
headers that my groups contain. This helped in some instances.

I am running a home built system. It has a gigabyte ma790GPT-UD3H MB, 8Gb 
DDR3 1333 memory with an Amd 965 processor with stock cooling.  Prior to 
the upgrade into Linux 3 kernels, I had no known heating problems.  

Until recently, the cpu temp would, with no major activity other than
firefox or a movie player, hover around 92 to 99 degrees F.  When Pan
was downloading headers, the temp could easily soar into the 120 deg, F.
range.  I pulled the 965, heat-sink and fan, removed and re-applied the 
thermal grease and after cleaning everything, reinstalled it all.  

That took care of some of the problems, The idle core temp would still
hover around 92 degrees, but would peak at around 110.

Finally, I went into the bios, and turned off the AMD cool and quiet. 
This basically lets the fan run at full speed all the time. 

Now, the idle temp runs around 88 degrees and peaks at around 100. 

Just an FYI if anyone is seeing this type of problem.  Eye of Mate
also causes the heat up problem in slide-show mode with less than a 4 
second delay between changes in displayed image.

All of this since since the change from the Linux Kernel 2 series
to Kernel 3.

Right now, typing this in, Core Temp is 87 deg and ambient temp is 81 deg.

I posted this to alt.os.linux.mint and received the following.

 ========= <http://duckduckgo.COM/?q=linux+power+regression>

There is a lot there. Read some of the messages if you are having the 
same type of problems with Pan hanging. I installed a libsensor panel 
appelet to keep an eye on the system temp while I run the system.

I posted the following after reading up and making a change to grub to 
install the workaround.

Tried the `pcie_aspm=force' mod in etc/default/grub and it seems
to have helped dramaticaly.  I ran eye of mate in slideshow mode for 
about 30 seconds at a frame every 2 seconds and the temp went from 90 f, 
to 97F.

Then tried manually at one frame per second for 45 seconds. Temp rose to 
100F and would drop back and forth from 100 to 98 back and forth. Stopping
the display caused the temp to drop to 92F in around 5 seconds.

Before it would just keep rising to 105F to 110F or higher before locking 
up.

// Just as a test, I downloaded over 4000 images with Pan(0.139), all in 
one continuous run, and the system temp never exceeded 93F. Before making 
the change, Pan would have locked up after the first 100 or so images.//

bob