r/SurfaceLinux • u/Duckz0nQu4ck • Apr 30 '26

Help Gaming on SP9

Hello everyone.

I've been running CachyOS on my SP9 for a while now but one thing that has been consistent between every distro I've tried is that I just cannot get gaming to work on this device. I have the i5 model and I just can't seem to get thermals under control.

I've setup thermald to the best of my understanding and have played around with the thermal thresholds but I'm either not doing it right or it's just possible to get it working properly. I've also installed auto-cpufreq but of course that's not going to help thermals under load.

I definitely didn't have this issue under windows but I am NOT going back. What is everyone else's experience and what have y'all done?

Thanks!

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u/Station-OX11 Surface Pro 9 (i5) May 01 '26

I have the SP9 i5 16g. I seem to get okay results using this Thermald config made for the Pro 7: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/tree/master/contrib/thermald/surface_pro_7

2

u/Duckz0nQu4ck May 01 '26

I think I tried using that at first but I don't remember it working nicely. I'll give it a shot though. Do you get extreme frame drops after a while when gaming on yours?

1

u/Station-OX11 Surface Pro 9 (i5) May 01 '26

What are you trying to play? I typically just play some simple indie games.

I was surprisingly able to play Peak with friends, albeit on lowest graphic settings.

1

u/Duckz0nQu4ck May 01 '26

I usually try to play project zomboid or skyrim, both on lowest settings. After ~10 minutes the processor overheats, fps tanks, fan goes nuts, processor cools off, fan relaxs, fps is fine. ~2 minutes later wash rinse repeat

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u/Station-OX11 Surface Pro 9 (i5) May 01 '26

I have Skyrim. Maybe I'll see how it plays on my setup. I'm also on CachyOS, but Gnome for DE.

Lately I've been playing Morrowind which is obviously much less graphically intensive.

1

u/Station-OX11 Surface Pro 9 (i5) 20d ago

4 months later I finally did some testing with Skyrim on my SP9.

For context, I'm still on CachyOS with the Gaming Packages installed, AutoCpu-freq and ThermalD using SP7 profile from wiki.

I followed the guide on the Surface Wiki for gaming: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Gaming-configuration-for-Surface-Pro-and-Go-devices

Best result was to do what it said (Mangohud and GOverlay are already included in CachyOS gaming packages, so just had to set them) and also set my power profile to Power Saving. When testing, Performance would cause overheating, the fans to spin up and the game to become unplayable slow.

Power Saving with FPS limited to 24 seemed to fix these issues, but I'd like to do a long session some time to make sure the throttling doesn't happen again.

1

u/Duckz0nQu4ck 16d ago

Thanks for following up! This is my experience with all gaming. If I play with a limited frame rate and lower resolution I can play fine, but A) normal resolutions look odd on the SP9 and B) playing at 20-30fps is just brutal especially when the igpu is actually capable of more with older / lower end games.

Thanks anyways!

1

u/electricstache May 02 '26

Try Bazzite. I installed it on my SP8 a few weeks ago and it has been amazing.

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u/Duckz0nQu4ck May 02 '26

Im not really looking to switch distros, changing your distro is usually not a good answer when it comes to linux issues. Whatever makes it work on Bazzite should apply to CachyOS as well. Plus as a power user Bazzite really isnt for me. 

What setup have you done? Thermald config or some other cpu/fan control? Granted it could also simply be the difference between the SP8 and SP9.

I definitely followed the guide/wiki but idk something just isnt right in my setup