Am I expecting too much from my Lenovo Y50?

Oh, I'm sorry I'm no help in regards to the use of linux on the laptop as I've simply used Win 8 and now Win10.

And yea, the stock TN Lenovo used was pretty bad.

sobe said:

Oh, I'm sorry I'm no help in regards to the use of linux on the laptop as I've simply used Win 8 and now Win10.

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No apologies! You provided useful information.

thanks,
hank

Edit: Perhaps more helpful than you had thought. I booted up Win10 last night and updated the BIOS. I was at 2.<something> and 3.03 is current. I installed BOINC and I'm not stress testing using Rosetta. System ran overnight at ~50% load which it would not do under Linux. It also seems to be running cooler so perhaps Rosetta/Win10 does not stress as much as Rosetta/Linux. When I downloaded BOINC I saw that there was an option to download a Virtualbox VM. Maybe I should give that a try.

Another wrinkle is the Video drivers/usage. I'm not sure how this works on Win. I thought it would automatically switch to the Nvidia GPU for specific programs. AFAIK the state of the art with Linux is that I select one or the other and restart the desktop. I usually run plugged in so I selected Nvidia. Maybe I should try using the Intel GPU on Linux.

This is a Linux problem.

I booted Win10, updated the BIOS and thrashed it with Rosetta, Prime95 and some GPU benchmark (furmark?)

I ran 8 threads of Rosetta for a few hours and as the WUs finished, I brought up threads of Prime95 to keep the processor at 100%. The system was rock solid. With 8 Prime95 threads going it ranged from about 80-85°C. After a couple hours of that, I dropped a thread and ran this furmark benchmark thinking it might be a combination of GPU/CPU activity that provoked the problem. The system remained rock solid. I'm not even sure that the processor throttled. Hardinfo reported it at ~2475 and 2500 is the nominal max.

Satisfied that the laptop was running OK on Win10 I booted Linux, switched to Intel graphics and kicked off 8 threads of Prime95. Temps ran about 60°C. I noticed that the processors were running about 800 MHz and before I could ponder that, the laptop shut down. I'm happy that the H/W appears to be good and really disappointed that it is not performing to spec on Linux. At least that leaves me the option of looking for a S/W solution.

Another chapter.

Things get worse before they get better.

After stress testing and crashing on Linux, Linux would no longer work. By 'no longer work' I mean it would boot and in a few seconds it would lock up. Solid.

I ram MemTest86+ for a couple hours to convince myself that there was not a RAM problem (and made a mental note to reseat it if I have need to open the case again.) It reported no problems.

I booted from a recent live Mint USB and checked both root and home file systems and found no problems. Clearly something had become corrupted. As long as I had the Live USB handy, I reinstalled. At this point things started getting better.

Right now I've got 4 threads of Rosetta and 4 Prime95 threads and the system has been solid since before lunch. Temperature seems pretty steady at 84°C It seems that the shutdown had something to do with the Linux setup I had going. I'm not sure what that is but before (and after) making any significant H/W changes I'll be stress testing again.

I just checked temperatures and found it down again.

Have you tried any other distros? I'm not a Linux guru at all, but I've found that the popular distros like Ubuntu and Mint can sometimes be problematic on some laptops. It may have something to do with how they implement things like powersaving and such.

To give you an idea, right now I'm in the middle of a re-image/software reinstall of Windows 10. I use PartImg, which is included in System Rescue CD, and that part went off without a hitch. Then, I wanted to secure-erase my 500GB drive, since the biggest reason for the re-image was Steam games not saving. I had accidentally filled the drive 2 days ago (long story), and figured that something had kicked in that prevented writes to the drive. This idea was further cemented by the fact that these same games would save again when deleted and reinstalled on one of my other drives, but not the 500GB, but I digress.

I checked the drive's frozen state by running "hdparm -I /dev/sdc" (my drive), which indeed returned a frozen state. Goody. I wasn't surprised, but now I have to figure out how to thaw it without turning this heavy monstrosity around and unplugging the drive. I tried to suspend in SysRescCD, and that didn't work. I tried in Knoppix, which also didn't work. Then I tried in Ubuntu and BLAM! Thing turned off like it was it's job. However, both before and after, the system feels sluggish, so I'm guessing the frequency is super low or it's not liking something.

I shared that to say this: Not all distros will treat hardware the same way, and some flat out don't like some hardware at all. I can't get Manjaro to even boot, which stinks because I was kinda hoping to run it in a dual boot (saw it live on a friend's system, and thought it was pretty cool).

Dlaw said:

Have you tried any other distros? ...

can't get Manjaro to even boot, which stinks .

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I've considered it. Manjaro is high on the list in fact. I nearly always use a separate /home partition which makes installing the OS pretty straight forward. When I speak of a S/W solution that's one of the things I think of. Problem is... There's so many to choose from! Ubuntu-Mate is one I'd like to try and perhaps I should just go back to Debian. Manjaro is one I'd consider because (based on Arch) it's pretty different from the Debian flavors I'm accustomed to. I had a go at Arch on a Raspberry Pi and felt like I was a stranger in a foreign land. Maybe I could get up to speed on Manjaro with a little less pain.

Before I do that, I'll try some newer kernels.

Thanks!

Hopefully this is the final chapter. I am cautiously optimistic that the problem has been solved (and without shipping the unit in for repairs.) Newer kernels with Debian derivatives did not help. Stability improved with newer kernels but frequency governors presented a problem. For reasons I could not fathom controls reduced processor frequency to ~700 MHz while crunching 8 threads. (Reminder: I-7-4710HQ with nominal frequency of 800MHz to 2.5 GHz.) That was maddening!

I switched to an entirely different distro: Manjaro. That's based on Arch but with an easier installation. It was not without issues - lacking some of the polish I have come to expect with Ubuntu and Mint - but my Y50 seems to be stable under load and the cores are at ~2.7GHz continuous. And the touchpad seems to work better too.

I don't really have an excuse to trade up to an XPS any more. I can save my pennies for something else. (*cough* Skylake? *cough*)