After my low-end gaming laptop kinda sorta died (charging circuit problem), I bought a new laptop, the Inspiron 7586. While not intended for gaming, it does feature a dedicated GPU, the Nvidia MX150. I quickly found that this was suboptimal for gaming, so began tweaking various settings. I also found that most GPU utilities couldn't really do anything with this particular GPU, except for Asus GPU Tweak II. It allowed for undervolting, overclocking RAM and actually increasing temperature limit.
The main bottleneck I found was that Dell had imposed a limit of 64C on the GPU. The spec sheet, on the other hand, indicates that the GPU can go up to 94C. With the Asus tool (forget Afterburner, no dice) I can increase the temperature limit to higher values. I've found that the optimal settings are 7000MHz on the 2GB of VRAM, and a temperature limit of 74C. The keyboard deck does get pretty warm, though not as toasty if I set the limit to > 80C. At limits in that range, the keyboard deck is barely touchable.
So is running the GPU at this temperature advisable? I guess I could help things a bit by re-pasting the GPU, but I'm not all that anxious to tear the laptop apart. I work on desktops all the time, but all the tiny screws and parts are trouble for my shaky hands. My guess is that +10C is probably alright, but more than that is asking for trouble.
EDIT: Undervolting just doesn't matter. The minimum I can set in the Asus tool is 930mV, but the temperature limit means that the GPU hardly ever hits that. It's usually down around 700 - 800 mV.
The main bottleneck I found was that Dell had imposed a limit of 64C on the GPU. The spec sheet, on the other hand, indicates that the GPU can go up to 94C. With the Asus tool (forget Afterburner, no dice) I can increase the temperature limit to higher values. I've found that the optimal settings are 7000MHz on the 2GB of VRAM, and a temperature limit of 74C. The keyboard deck does get pretty warm, though not as toasty if I set the limit to > 80C. At limits in that range, the keyboard deck is barely touchable.
So is running the GPU at this temperature advisable? I guess I could help things a bit by re-pasting the GPU, but I'm not all that anxious to tear the laptop apart. I work on desktops all the time, but all the tiny screws and parts are trouble for my shaky hands. My guess is that +10C is probably alright, but more than that is asking for trouble.
EDIT: Undervolting just doesn't matter. The minimum I can set in the Asus tool is 930mV, but the temperature limit means that the GPU hardly ever hits that. It's usually down around 700 - 800 mV.
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