2 new Vaios behaving completely differently?!

Which one is normal? Both laptops are booted from cold and allowed to sit on a desk idling. The only thing running is HW Monitor to watch temperatures and the task manager to confirm that CPU is hovering between 0 and 1% usage. Both have 72 processes running.

Over a period of 1/2 hour:

Laptop1:

ACPI, TZ00 and TZ01 temperatures rise from 40C to 50C every 5 minutes kicking off the cooling fan at 50C and fan off at 40C. Core temp ranges between 28C and 45C with the fan coming on an estimated 12 times an hour with the laptop in idle. The two Core temps always differ by 8C with Core 1 always higher than Core 0.

Laptop2:

The same TZ00 and TZ01 temperatures never rise above 46C. The fan NEVER kicks in during this period. If I do something on this laptop to increase temps to 50C, the fan kicks in and reduces the temperature back down to 40C in about half the time as laptop1. Also, when the fan comes on, it isn't as loud as laptop1's fan. Core temps range between 40C to 50C with the fan kicking in an estimated twice or so in one hour on idle.

The two Core temps always differ by 5C with Core 0 always higher than Core 1.

--------

Both fans start out high and quickly reduce in noise and rpm although laptop1 tend to keep the rpms higher for longer.

---------

The result is that Laptop2 is much quieter and more pleasant to use.

What is causes this and which one is 'normal'? My guess is that the heat sink in Laptop1 isn't mounted properly or as well resulting in poor heat transfer between the CPU/GPU to the copper heat pipe. My theory is that this causes the CPU temps to rise much quicker and also makes it harder for the fan to cool it down.

Of course, I'm leaning on keeping the quieter Laptop2 unless someone can convince me that something is wrong with it or that this cooling behavior is not normal. It's just that is seems to good to be true.

 

Is there the possebility of a dust buildup in one of them?

 

Not likely, both are brand new FW170D's out of the box.

 

Then there shouldn't be a difference.

 

Could be that one CPU is a better sample than the other. Could be the heatsink/thermal paste (like you said).

By the way, undervolting can easily drop the temperature down.

 

So laptop 1 has lower cpu temps but the fan comes on more?
What about gpu and HDD temps?

 

I'll have to agree with that. One thing to note is that no 2 laptops will be made exactly the same, there will always be minor variations between them even if they are configured the same.

 

This is known as production variation.

 

Yes, but I believe the the cpu temps are only lower because the fans come on too often. Although the core temps spend more time in the lower temps at idle, when both laptops are called on to do real work, both seem to cover the same temp. range. HDD temps the same. Not sure about GPU because HW Monitor only shows core, hdd, and tz00 and tz01 (whatever they are).

Laptop1 definitely likes to cycle the fan on/off every 5 mins on idle. I think this is a bad thing because cooling/heating cycles are what kill processors rather than sustained heat (within design limits).

 

Yes, but my question was asking about what other FW owners are experiencing. I'm interested to know what is 'normal' behavior.

 

Hi.

do they have the same BIOS? , because when the fans cut in and out is controlled set in the BIOS!

 

I'm not sure how to check bios version, but regardless, when the fan is off, one laptop should not be rising from 40C to 50C triggering the fan every five minutes whereas the other one just stabilizes at around 46C with the fan never coming on.