Re: Is Me-TV killing mainboards?
On Friday 17 February 2017 08:22:01 Hans wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> there is a weired thing happening. Maybe it is by chance, but maybe it is a
> bug.
>
> As my TV is dead, since 4 weeks I am looking television with my notebook.
> The application for dvb-t I am using is me-tv.
>
> Now it happens, that 14 days ago my first notebook suddenly switched off,
> but could be started again after some minutes. This happened during the
> last week 3 times, but now the mainboard is dead.
>
> Now, the same thing happens to my netbook. Watching tv with me-tv, then
> suddenly it switches off. this happened now two times.
>
> Obviously the cpu is getting too hot. However, several years ago I had a
> similar problem by a broken cooling fan. The machine went too hot and
> switched off.
>
> But there is a difference: The years ago I could see in the logs (syslog,
> kern.log), that the cpu went too hot. Today there are no entries.
>
> This is strange and I think, me-tv might suppress things. My notebooks were
> running on 100 cpu power for hours in the past (for example by building a
> kernel) but never switched off.
>
> Just when running me-tv. IMO me-tv is using full power of cpu and gpu.
> But that should not overheat the computer.
>
> When I force the cpu to powersave, the notebooks never switched off.
>
> Maybe I see ghosts, but I think it worth to be mentioned. Maybe someone
> else, who might using me-tv, and got into the same problem or notices
> strange things, can confirm or deny this.
>
> And maybe there is a bug in me-tv, which kills mainboards, then it might be
> dicovered before others are hit by this.
Are you watching TV with the computer sitting on your lap or on bed sheets or
some other fabric which could obstruct the fan inlet grills?
It may be possible that air flow isn't sufficient to cool the processor down when
you watch TV but is good when the computer is sitting flat on a table.
Some Intel processors are equipped with a built-in sensor that shut the
processor down when it overheats. It is a hardware feature. It can't be
disabled by software.
The Intel N270 is such a processor. It is supposed to reduce its power when it
overheats. On the other hand, AMD processors used to fry when they were not
properly cooled. I don't know if they are protected now.
Modern graphic cards are also expected to have some overheating protection
too.
So, even though there should be some sort of hardware protection, a
overheating component is definitely where I direct my suspicions when someone
says a laptop behave erratically when watching TV.
Frederic
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