Ubuntu 20.04 - High GPU / CPU / FAN usage on Haswell-ULT

I'm facing an issue and I can't figure out what to do.

When using the laptop in a minimal-normal way (chorme + slack) CPU rises a lot. Chorme seems to be the one consuming the most. Task Manager in chrome always has "GPU Process" in the top of memory. Sometimes, simple google sheets are in top of CPU usage, but youtube, Google Meet, or any animation makes it go high. Google meet backgrounds makes it worse. Just to give an idea of what causes the CPU to go up. Of course, this make that the fans go crazy, and it is pretty annoying to have fans running high 80% of the working time.

So, any ideas on what to look for? these are the laptop specs.

# System: Hewlett-Packard HP ENVY 14 Notebook
# Board: Hewlett-Packard 2289
# Kernel: 5.8.0-53-generic x86_64
# Memory: 16GB
# Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4210U CPU @ 1.70GHz
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0b)

I also have a 2nd 1920p monitor. Is this configuration too low to support 15 chrome tabs? and a youtube video?

Adding this info when using just chrome with youtube and giphy homepage.

• System Status
• Gnome Extensions
• After setting more swap and removing Chrome extensions

Solution 1:

Your RAM/swap is a problem.

Note: You may have to add more RAM.

Note: Chrome may have a bad extension (you have 20 installed) or app installed, that's causing excessive CPU and memory/swap usage. Uninstall them.

In any case, your 2G /swapfile is too small. Let's increase it to 4G.

Note: Incorrect use of the rm and dd commands can cause data loss. Suggest copy/paste.

In the terminal...

sudo swapoff -a           # turn off swap
sudo rm -i /swapfile      # remove old /swapfile

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=4096

sudo chmod 600 /swapfile  # set proper file protections
sudo mkswap /swapfile     # init /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile     # turn on swap
free -h                   # confirm 16G RAM and 4G swap

Edit /etc/fstab, using sudo -H gedit /etc/fstab or sudo pico /etc/fstab.

Confirm this /swapfile line in /etc/fstab... and confirm no other “swap” lines... use SPACES in this line... confirm NO TABS...

/swapfile  none  swap  sw  0  0

reboot                    # reboot and verify operation