Question Overheating laptop CPU - undervolt or turbo boost?

[Mazdamundi]

Hello community,

New guy here! Hoping to get some help with a new laptop I bought recently. Over the years I've often come across TH articles when dealing with computer problems. Hoping the community here is just as helpful!

Anyway, I recently got a new laptop: HP Omen 15 dc0006 that comes with an Intel i7-8750h processor (2.2Ghz to 4.1Ghz with Turbo Boost) and Nvidia GTX 1060 3Gb graphics card. Was hoping to get into some decent gaming, but unfortunately the CPU is seriously heating up. I’m tracking activity with Cpuid HW monitor and HWiNFO and can see CPU core temp going up to 98 Celsius quite regularly when playing high-end games. Is this normal?
Also the chassis becomes quite uncomfortably warm/hot, which is not a problem when I’m playing with wireless controllers, but when playing games that need keyboard controls this is a problem. I purchased a laptop cooler base but this hasn’t helped much.

Anyway, some commentators online say that this a known issue and quite common with this processor model. I’ve found information that says temperatures can be dropped using several techniques. My question is which is the best option? (excluding changing the paste which is a method that I’d prefer to avoid).

Firstly, I can disable Intel Turbo Boost. By default, Turbo Boost is always enabled with frequencies around 3.9Ghz while idling. By disabling turbo boost temperatures do indeed come down but so does my max CPU clock speed (to base 2.2Ghz). Is this a worthwhile trade-off for gaming? I know some games are more CPU dependent than others.
An old post on this forum advises to always leave turbo boost on and that it is set by manufacturers so it's 100% safe. Not sure about this.
So to disable Turbo Boost I edited the registry (my BIOS is locked) to show the "Processor Performance Boost Mode" setting under advanced power options. This gives following settings related to turbo boost:

-enabled
-disabled
-efficient enabled
-efficient aggressive
-aggressive at guaranteed
-efficient aggressive at guaranteed

Can anyone explain to me in layman´s terms what these settings mean, and which one I should be using while gaming? The first two are obviously self-explanatory, but with the others I have no idea.

The second technique, without disabling turbo boost, is Undervolting the CPU. I have no experience with this, so I had to look online for help. It seems like a lot of people have successfully reduced temperature using this method (with ThrottleStop and IXU programs). So does undervolting provide the best solution?
In some cases I’ve heard that by undervolting all you´re really doing is “limiting the boost frequency”, in other words not giving the CPU enough juice and running it sub-optimally.

Grealty appreciate any help!
MD

 

[amirdhamee]

I just bought a new Lenovo Legion Y7000 last week. It comes with 8750H (2.2Ghz to 4.1Ghz with Turbo Boost), GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB RAM... I believe HP Omen, Dell G7 and Y7000 (same specs) are all the same performance wise. After detailed research i chose Lenovo and i don't regret it a bit. Amazing looking laptop and those specs are just perfect for the price.

I downloaded a few games, such as Farcry 5, AC: Odyssey, Dota 2, BF V, etc. While playing these games, i noticed temperature rising up to 90-100c (ThrottleStop) in the first 5 minutes and the fans were running at full speed. While it didn't affect the performance a bit but those temperatures are just too high. I believe it's the same issue with all the laptops mentioned above as they are running at full speed and it doesn't matter whether it's a A title or a AAA title..

After doing a lot of googling i came across undervolting and overclocking and it sounded quite techy' so i saw some videos of people having the similar laptop to ours and i did some experimenting myself in ThrottleStop (TS). In TS i disabled Turbo Boost, opened up FIVR and changed CPU core offset Voltage to -150 and CPU Cache to -125 ( i can take this up to -180 without the Blue screen of death showing up but i chose to stay with -125 as i have no idea what i did here and i'm not interested in experimenting a lot with my new laptop just to lose it). After doing so, My CPU's locked at 2.2Ghz. All my games are running at Ultra settings and the new temperatures are CPU 60-70c, GPU 65-83c(depends on the game in Dota 2 it's 65-75c others mostly around 70-83 - MSI Afterburner). Total Package temperature via TS always shows 60-70c while gaming and 40-50c when idle. Before doing this, idle temperatures were around 60c to 70c.

I don't know about other people much, as people like to complicate very simple things by adding a lot of technical stuff where it is not necessary but after making these changes, my laptop has been running on good temperatures and i can play games on Ultra settings without any problems. If i come across a game that requires more CPU power, i'll probably enable turbo boost and change core turbo limits from 41 to 34(in the 32-36's range, depending on the temperatures). My laptop fans run silently and i can't feel laptop heating up like before.You can always experiment yourself, but under-doing anything is mostly safe. I don't like overclocking or even the sound of it on laptops. Maybe if i had a PC i would've tried overclocking but on laptops i won't because i take laptops as an investment for at least the next 3-4 years.

I Hope this helps you as i had to go through hours and hours of research. It also came to a point where i thought my laptop was faulty because when you spend that much, you want it to be perfect and not go all overheating and stuff.

 

[Mazdamundi]

Hey, thanks for the reply. Did you just join the forum too?
It was interesting to hear the good results you got on your Lenovo from under-volting (was close to going for the Legion too). I think I'll give it a go with Throttle Stop since IXU doesn´t work for me.
Just out of interest, i´ve also been doing lots of research and came across this video on the subject that seems pretty popular.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNt9L3BWOFo

Anyway, if you decide to take a look let me know what you think and if you followed the same steps as this guy. I think he tested a Dell G7 and using Throttle Stop reduced voltage and cache by the same amount. He acknowledges that every chassis is different and has it's own "sweet spot".

Something else worth noting. After my first post, I got in touch with HP technical support (still under premium warranty) and, according to them, when test gaming my model in "laboratory conditions" CPU temps regularly go above 100° with AAA games and upto 120° is considered over heating. So apparently my 98° is perfectly normal. I found this interesting because thought tha intel CPU's start throttling when they get to 100°. Not Coffee Lake tho. I was also advised to leave Turbo Boost on "efficient enabled" when gaming.
Cheers!