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Created November 4, 2024 03:56
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Intel i7-8650U failure on openSUSE Tumbleweed
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i915_driver_fix.md

Symptoms

  • Freshly installed system hangs/freezes randomly, after login. The time span before the failure can be a few seconds or up to a few minutes.
  • Keyboard not working.
  • No kernel logs.
  • Running on Windows has no issue.

System

Dell latitude 7390 with i7-8650U / Intel UHD graphics 620.

Troubleshooting

  1. The laptop was bought second hand, initially I thought it was a hardware defect. But this was ruled out because on Windows it runs well.
  2. I thought this was due to my individual setup but found similar issues regarding the CPU. Not obvious solution found though.
  3. Saw this thread that suggested i915.enable_psr=0 but to no avail.
  4. Continued to the link, saw additional kernel parameters available for the GPU driver.
  5. Read out Arch wiki. Tried the fix suggested as in Crash/freeze on low power Intel CPUs and it worked.
  6. Tried removing the combination, and i915.enable_dc=0 was confirmed to be the fix.
  7. Searched a few additional articles that Kaby Lake Refresh CPUs seems have defect/issues that going to deep C-States with the GPU. See this kernel bug.
  8. Tried a few additional options found here and for more recent versions here. No other options worked except for i915.enable_dc=0.
  9. It was repored that enabling this options increases power consumption. To my testing the impact was minimal. On battery it consumes around 6-8W which is pretty decent enough. And for mere video/audio playing it goes down to only 2-3W, allowing the laptop up to 20 hours of estimated usage time.
  10. It has similar discussions on openSUSE forum but for Dell latitude 7490 models here and here

Conclusion

  1. It seems this issue is related to early low-energy models like Intel i7-8650U. I have a Dell latitude 7490 on i5 8th gen before but without issue though.
  2. Arch wiki/forum are useful, granted they have an active and growing user base.
  3. I should have searched openSUSE forum earlier, it has useful discussions too. It would save a lot of time.
  4. I was surprised by the low power consumption by the laptop.
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