Question How to trick windows into thinking it's running on battery while plugged-in OR power limit a laptop GPU?

[mohitakundi]

So, here's the scenario:
I need to run a really long render on my MSI GL63 Laptop with a 1660ti. The render might take days and it'll be running 24 hours. I understand 85C is normal for a gaming laptop while gaming but letting it sit at a toasty 85 constantly for numerous days (maybe even a week or two) is just not comfortable for me.

I did notice, that while on battery, the laptop power-limits the GPU and drops the frequency from 1925Mhz to around 1300ish and the temperatures go down dramatically (under 60) without a major hit on the render times. This is probably either MSI's or Windows' own power management kicking in and limiting power. The problem is, unlike a desktop GPU, there's no way to manually change power limits on the laptop GPU (At least I think there is none), so is there a way to trick windows into thinking its running on battery power while still plugged in?

I've tried limiting the frequency curve on afterburner, but it does not help
To give an idea, while plugged in, it pulls up to 80Watts. On battery it pulls just 20W.

Appreciate your help, Thanks!

 

[helpstar]

did you try setting the energy management power plan lower than balanced while plugged in?
https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/a...Using-the-High-performance-power-plan-Windows

 

[mohitakundi]

did you try setting the energy management power plan lower than balanced while plugged in?
https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/a...Using-the-High-performance-power-plan-Windows

Yeah, lower power plans limit the CPU wattage but the GPU remains unaffected

 

[Ralston18]

Not an answer - full disclosure.

However, I must ask what is being rendered? What software is being used? What hardware specs are required for that software?

The laptop may simply not be up to the rendering task at hand. Full laptop specs?

Even if there is some way to lower the temperatures or otherwise keep the laptop, etc. cooler the long term effects may be detrimental to the laptop.

Recognizing that you may not have any other choices regarding the hardware it still seems to me that something else is astray.

End result being that the laptop is doomed to fail in some manner.

Maybe fail right near the end of that expected really long rendering process and all is for nought.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

 

[mohitakundi]

Not an answer - full disclosure.

However, I must ask what is being rendered? What software is being used? What hardware specs are required for that software?

The laptop may simply not be up to the rendering task at hand. Full laptop specs?

Even if there is some way to lower the temperatures or otherwise keep the laptop, etc. cooler the long term effects may be detrimental to the laptop.

Recognizing that you may not have any other choices regarding the hardware it still seems to me that something else is astray.

End result being that the laptop is doomed to fail in some manner.

Maybe fail right near the end of that expected really long rendering process and all is for nought.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

It's just an animation on blender with cycles. Each frame takes around a minute to render at full blast(slowing down over time as it heats up). Usually, I work with eevee but for this particular clip I need features supported on cycles only.

I've found a temporary workaround right now by downgrading the driver to version 525 which allows tweaking the power limits via nvidia-smi but I can't sit on an outdated driver forever. Newer drivers locked this functionality which sucks. I can understand nvidia not wanting folks to bypass limits on MaxQ cards, but lowering limits from the defaults should be available as an option.