[SOLVED] Is increasing the TDP power limit from 15 to 30 Watts safe in a laptop?

[Minaz]

I have an 11th Gen i5 laptop and I have been watching a youtube reviewer say that he doubled his benchmarked performance by do a very simple hack in the bios. He enabled the Turbo GT frequency setting, and he increased the power limits 1 and 2 in his TDP configuration page to 30W. He says the trade-off is reduced battery life.
My laptop already came with the Turbo GT frequency enabled so I didn't have to do that, but my power 1 and 2 on the TDP page is set at 15W and 25W.
Questions:

1. What is the difference between power 1 and power 2?
2. Is it safe to increase the power limit?
3. Will it lead to actual improvements? He showed a benchmark increase, but in real life would it just lead to throttling?

Thanks!

Edit: not sure if it will help but here is the link to the video where he first shows what he did then the before and after benchmarking:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YuJso34l30

 

[USAFRet]

"double the benchmark performance"?
Highly unlikely.

 

[SkyNetRising]

I have an 11th Gen i5 laptop and I have been watching a youtube reviewer say that he doubled his benchmarked performance by do a very simple hack in the bios. He enabled the Turbo GT frequency setting, and he increased the power limits 1 and 2 in his TDP configuration page to 30kW.

30kW ?!
If you connect 30kw device to your power outlet, fuses in your house will get blown out instantly.
Mobile Intel 11th gen cpus are 15W - 45W (not kW).

 

[Minaz]

"double the benchmark performance"?
Highly unlikely.

I mean I agree, but I am not opposed to just trying it out if its safe and even leads to some performance gains. I'm plugged in most of the time so unless the battery hit is drastic, it might a decent trade-off. I've put the youtube link above where he demonstrates the before and after benchmarking. Do note that in his machine, the turbo was off, and that might have been a glitch since as I understand it, that should usually be left on, and might go a long way to explaining the boost.

 

[Minaz]

30kW ?!
If you connect 30kw device to your power outlet, fuses in your house will get blown out instantly.
Mobile Intel 11th gen cpus are 15W - 45W (not kW).

Thanks, corrected.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Laptop cooling is just able to keep things cool at stock, and you want to pump even more heat into it? Yeah, that's gonna work. Besides, benchmarks are for bragging rights only, they are not in any way indicative of performance in normal operation.

 

[PapaCrazy]

TDP is a poor metric. It's a vague way to estimate heat production and power usage, but should never be used in the context of overclocking. There are 2 things that should be monitored: voltage and temperature. Since this is a locked chip, voltage is probably not going to be a problem. But since it's a laptop, heat will be. He was reporting very high temps (73c in gaming, and 89c in Cinebench). What makes this more alarming is that these look to be CPU package temps, not core temps which are probably higher. There's a pretty good chance that chip was bumping up against its TJ max of 100c in CInebench. Even if the chip survives this abuse, the thermal cycles will cause premature wear of everything else in the chassis.

 

[Phazoner]

I know I'm late for this party. But there's a take:

The power limit can definitely be a thing in laptops. Nowadays you can see RTX laptops with the very same 3070s in a wide range of maximum power limits. It's all about the thermals, but the thing is, I don't know if the board itself will handle properly higher power limits or if it is a the speedway to wear the laptop. Always considering no overvoltage and staying on good temps.

I've lived myself some of the scenarios discussed here. I want my components to last as long as they can, so pretty much everything I do is undervolting. But there are scenarios where definitely a slight overclock can make a huge difference.

E.g: I got a laptop with a AMD 7670m. It had a huge problem: That GPU was supposed to be paired with 1GB GDDR5 or 2GB of DDR3 (for bandwith sake). Toshiba only specified it had 1GB so I assumed it was GDDR5, but SURPRISE! It was DDR3, so there was a big ass bottleneck there. When the laptop was out of warranty I started messing around and just overclocking the memory got me huge, and I mean HUGE performance improvements in those games which were struggling with the RAM. Borderlands 2 turned from a barely playable ~25FPS experience to a quite enjoyable >40FPS gameplay.

I haven't seen the video, but if one of the modes was locking the consumption to 15W and it unlocked it to 30W, yes, I do belive it can actually double it's performance, because the componente itself was running way under its capabilities because it just was capped to keep thermals and consumption low.