Question CPU reaching Max temperature before reaching max clock speeds

[IncognitoFawkes]

Hey. I have an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS. I recently undervolted it to -22mV. The system is very stable. However, one thing I did notice when running a cinebench was that my CPU was reaching max temp (95 Celsius) way before reaching max clock. Furthermore, after I overclocked my GPU, when running a game my GPU never reached its higher temps as my CPU kept hitting the max temp first and starts thermal throttling. Is there a fix for this? I own a laptop by the way, so cooling is a bit more trickier.

 

[TerryLaze]

Max clocks for amd is single thread and "opportunistic" which means only at very light loads.
Also the undervolt might have made things worse as with some mobos/bios it can override the default boost.

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

That's the problem with laptops... cooling. Are you using a cooling pad?

 

[IncognitoFawkes]

That's the problem with laptops... cooling. Are you using a cooling pad?

No. Many other users with the same laptop had higher clocks at lower temps. Is this a cleaning and thermal paste issue? I retested it with a cinebench and it seems to be taking up 60 W, giving a clock of 4100 MHz, when it's actual limit is supposed to be closer to 90 W

 

[MrstimX]

In my opinion at least, cinebench is not a realistic workload for laptops. Most laptops wont have a cooling solution designed to handle running cinebench. It's likely only using 60W due to reaching thermal limits.

since you overclocked the gpu, regardless of its temps, it's still using more power and generating more heat which may be contributing to higher cpu temps.
Does it still throttle when the gpu is not overclocked?

 

[IncognitoFawkes]

In my opinion at least, cinebench is not a realistic workload for laptops. Most laptops wont have a cooling solution designed to handle running cinebench. It's likely only using 60W due to reaching thermal limits.

since you overclocked the gpu, regardless of its temps, it's still using more power and generating more heat which may be contributing to higher cpu temps.
Does it still throttle when the gpu is not overclocked?

I ran the cinebench after disabling the dGPU, with the iGPU. The 60 W results are with iGPU.

 

[MrstimX]

I ran the cinebench after disabling the dGPU, with the iGPU. The 60 W results are with iGPU.

what about when gaming without a gpu overclock?
Also this CPU is a 35W part according to AMD, but can scale to up to 75W. So my guess again is that at 60W, the cooling solution becomes the limitation.

Like you mentioned, It may be also be just assembly issues where there could have been a contact issue with the cooling solution or thermal paste problem. I'd contact the manufacturer for support as well to get their feedback.

 

[Karadjgne]

It's a laptop. Undervolt - fine. Overclock - not fine. Regardless of what manufacturer claims, design implementation for overclocking on a laptop isn't healthy. Generally the cooling potential is just enough to cover the wattage of cpu, apu, gpu, igpu etc and that's about it.

"Pay us extra for an unlocked cpu and motherboard so you can get performance gains" and use the exact same cooling as on the far cheaper locked cpus.

Oh, and you pay extra for the 'slim & lightweight' version, which realistically has even less cooling potential as it has slimmer fans that can't push the cfm and static pressure.

Imho, keep it Undervolt, that's good, but any OC can go out the window. I'd also suggest a decent cooling pad if you game heavily on it, keeps the battery cooler.

 

[IncognitoFawkes]

That's the problem with laptops... cooling. Are you using a cooling pad?

No, but it has more than enough airflow. It has a 360 degrees hinge so I just put it in tent mode to increase airflow.

 

[IncognitoFawkes]

It's a laptop. Undervolt - fine. Overclock - not fine. Regardless of what manufacturer claims, design implementation for overclocking on a laptop isn't healthy. Generally the cooling potential is just enough to cover the wattage of cpu, apu, gpu, igpu etc and that's about it.

"Pay us extra for an unlocked cpu and motherboard so you can get performance gains" and use the exact same cooling as on the far cheaper locked cpus.

Oh, and you pay extra for the 'slim & lightweight' version, which realistically has even less cooling potential as it has slimmer fans that can't push the cfm and static pressure.

Imho, keep it Undervolt, that's good, but any OC can go out the window. I'd also suggest a decent cooling pad if you game heavily on it, keeps the battery cooler.

Do you mean Overclocking the GPU or the CPU?

 

[Karadjgne]

Both. Undervolting is essentially overclocking, the processors are set to run a specific frequency at a specific amount of power, by lowering power use you are running a higher frequency than what was intended for the power used. Overclocking.

So 4.0GHz at 25w base, standard OC would be 4.1GHz at 25w, but is also 4.0GHz at 20w. With the way boosts work in modern processors, they'll boost according to self imposed temp limits, so just lowering wattage means lowering temps at that speed, so the processor can boost to the next step up, for longer with more threads and still not exceed temp limits.

Even if you got a 20% performance gain from any OC, it's not a linear scale to fps, that 20% may only be a 5% gain in overall fps, and 5% of 60fps is 3fps. You'd be punishing the laptop to gain 3fps that you can't physically detect, offers no real benefits other than a synthetic benchmark score improvement.

Gone are the days of 1GHz OC, where differences were visibly noticeable, now you are looking at 100-200MHz at most, and only on a few cores.

OC is realistically dead, the builtin boost algorithms of cpus and gpus generally do far better when left to their own abilities, with some power tweaks to increase efficiency, and therefore effectiveness.

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

No, but it has more than enough airflow. It has a 360 degrees hinge so I just put it in tent mode to increase airflow.

It's not just airflow, it's the compact design of the cooling mechanisms as well. There simply isn't as much surface area for the coolers to work as effectively as a desktop design.