14 DAY TRIAL // A new Update Tuesday has passed and Surface Pro 3 tablets are still experiencing overheating issues, despite the new firmware update released this month.
The number of users who are confirming Surface Pro 3 problems is continuously growing, and some claim that very simple tasks, such as watching YouTube videos, make the device so hot that you can barely hold it in your hands.
Now it turns out that playing Minecraft has pretty much the same effect, even though it’s pretty obvious that this particular game doesn’t have so big system requirements.
Surface Pro 3 buyers who have posted on Microsoft’s Community forums have revealed that this month’s updates make no difference as far as the CPU temperature is concerned when running specific apps or games.
“When I am playing games such as Team Fortress 2 and Minecraft, the tablet gets very, very hot and I cannot hold it because of this. The fan is running at full blast but makes no different in the heating up of the device. It always heats up by the home button. If someone could tell me what I could do so cool it down that would be very much appreciated!” one affected Surface Pro 3 buyer explains.
Another one says that running Internet Explorer and the Windows 8 Mail app has pretty much the same result, with the tablet getting so hot that you need to let it cool down for several minutes.
“That's the same issue my Surface Pro 3 started experiencing last night. I've tried restarting it and it's not helping. I got the computer on Saturday and it worked trouble free until Tuesday night. All I've done this morning is use the Win8 Mail App and IE in hopes of finding a fix - so nothing that should make the computer work so hard. I got it for school; but the fan noise can be heard from about 8ft away in a quiet room,” he posts.
At the same time, the customer who started the thread explains that he already replaced three different Surface Pro 3 tablets in order to get rid of these issues and use the device as he is supposed to.
“While the fan did come on at a somewhat reasonable volume, I was able to do a full update (37 of them initially) including firmware, install Visual Studio 2013, and Office 2013 without the unit overheating and displaying the temp warning. One thing I noticed is that, while the unit was plugged in, the fan stayed on throughout the entire update/firmware process. The fan hasn't gotten as loud as my last few units,” he says about this new unit.
Microsoft has until now said nothing about these issues, but the company is most likely investigating the problem, so a future firmware update should solve everything. The biggest enigma right now is availability date.