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Domokelly's avatar
Domokelly
Copper Contributor
Aug 18, 2021

Video in Teams causes Surface Pro to overheat

Hi,

 

My Surface Pro has been getting really, really hot during video calls in Teams. Today it got so hot that it caused a shutdown.

 

Why is the camera so systems intensive? Can you please add a setting to allow reduced video load?

 

It seems crazy that a Microsoft product would run so poorly on a Microsoft device.

 

  • zafero1975's avatar
    zafero1975
    Copper Contributor

    Domokelly 

     

    I have a MS Surcface Pro 7.

    My cam is also heating up extremly and causes shutdowns using MS Teams.

    Both are Microsoft products, why it is so difficult to solve the probme. This is really disgusting.

    Now my camera is broken, i think because of overheating.

    Now i use an external webcam and deactivated the both onboard cameras (front/rear).

    The notebook is still overheating around the system cam when using MS Teams.
    I never ever would buy a microdoft product any more....

    The worst thing is, they don't deliver a solution for their own soft/hardware problem

    • Alexander_Novikov's avatar
      Alexander_Novikov
      Copper Contributor

      zafero1975

      I finally solved the problem by setting pl2 to 13 watt and pl1 to 25 watt in ThrottleStop. Pl1 time is 28 sec. ThrottleStop is in "turned off" mode and doesn't control Speed Shift epp (it is controlled by Windows) . Now my Surface works on 2.5-3GHz I don't have any throttling anymore.

      I probably spent a year to realized how to correctly set it but now everything works pretty fine even in heavy apps. 

       

      P. S. So, in reality the problem is that some Surface software sets pl1 to 61 watt on Windows. For example everything works correctly on Linux from the box. So, ThrottleStop just correctly sets Pl1 limit and that's it.

       

      P. P. S. Please, like my answer if it helps you because it may help other users (I hope) 

      • zafero1975's avatar
        zafero1975
        Copper Contributor

        Thanks for the your reply and solution. I don't know how to do this. I downloaded the tool ThrottleStop, but not sure, which concrete settings I should select. There are too many things which i could change and don't want to crash my notebook.
        I open ThrottleStop. -> Throttle is turned off by default as I understand.
        Then i need to go to "TPL" settings?

        Screenshot1

        - I changed following parameters in blue

        - to get the settings in yellow

         

        Now it looks like this

         

        This "Turn On" Button means, ThrottleStop is in "turned off" mode, right?!

         

         
  • Domokelly 

     

    I decreased PL2 limit to 12W in ThrottleStop to solve this issue. 

    I came here to find another solution but it is what it is.

  • vincentyumul's avatar
    vincentyumul
    Copper Contributor

    Has this overheating camera/surface problem been resolved when using teams? Apparently, this happens too when using Zoom or any software that uses the camera.

     

    Thanks in advance. 

    • Marek_Vit's avatar
      Marek_Vit
      Copper Contributor

      Have Surface PRO 7 and sometimes get camera sw stuck. Means camera led is on and camera service consumes about 30-40% of CPU time and in short time the computer starts overheat.

       

      Today, I had to switch camera on my Teams call off because of the overheating too. I see here three possible issues - not handled any of them yet unfortunately.

      • Camera driver/SW is broken
      • Teams uses camera ineffectively  (with effects disabled)
      • Effects on Camera (blur, background) overloads CPU while computing video stream during the call.
  • barrieg's avatar
    barrieg
    Brass Contributor
    We had the same issue and have now moved all our users over to another brand of non MS personal device sadly. We tried no video for calls but it is a collaboration and video product so this seemed pointless.
    • Padraic_D's avatar
      Padraic_D
      Copper Contributor

      barrieg Similar experience for me.  We have now embargoed further purchase of Surface Pro in our organisation ( a pity as in all other regards it was a superb device.) Have currently selected the Dell 7320 Detachable, which has copied the Surface form factor, as a replacement.   Camera, mic and speakers not as good - but if it can handle the demands of Teams without everything else grinding to a halt we will probably stick with it.

  • Unfortunately this is the reality we have with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Surface Pro :-(. I also have a Surface Pro and I'm aware of this pain, but for now we don't have any news about when this performance problems are going to be solved

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