CPU throttling for no reason

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eduard.fot

Dec 3, 2018
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Hi!

I have a 5 year old laptop (Asus K56CM, 8GB RAM, GeForce 635M 2GB graphics) that I still use every day, and it has the i5-3317u processor. It's rated to 1.7 GHz and Turbos up to 2.4 GHz. Now, long story short, I almost always use it heavily, and I have a huge problem when I open a game or any intensive work related program, at which point the CPU throttles horribly, goes down to 990 MHz and won't go back up until a restart. At that point it's unusable. It's not a heating issue, as it happens even when the temperatures are around 60°C (it NEVER goes over 80, I have an external cooler to make sure of that), the laptop has been profesionally physically cleaned, so I know it's not dust on some random component. Also, I have ThrottleStop installed, and I disabled BD PROCHOT, which solved the problem for some time, but it resurfaced soon. The power settings are also correctly set (everything to high performance, minimum processor state 100%, the laptop is always plugged in etc.)

Thing is, it's basically always at around 2.4 GHz during normal use. When I open an intensive application it works fine for a short time and then throttles massively.

Is there any way to not have my laptop throttle on me and work at full capacity? As I'm 100% sure it's not a heating problem, changing some BIOS options or something like that shouldn't be dangerous.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
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terry4536

terry4536

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Mar 28, 2010
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Check the Windows Power Options, apart from heat throttling that is the only thing I can think of that would turn down the processor.

Select a High Performance Power plan.

On the individual plan, select Change Plan Settings and then Change Advanced Power Settings. On that page, scroll down to Processor Power Management. There you can check the minimum and maximum Processor settings. And you can change it.
 
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stdragon

stdragon

Admirable
Apr 5, 2018
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Also be sure you're using the original power adapter for that laptop. If it's aftermarket where it auto-detects voltage, then it won't supply enough current and starve the CPU under load - I've seen that occur many times.
 
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eduard.fot

Dec 3, 2018
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Thanks all, but I have the original power adapter, and the Processor setting in the power plans are correctly set. If you can help any other way, I would appreciate it
 
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terry4536

terry4536

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Mar 28, 2010
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Are the minimum and maximum Processor State both set to 100% ?


In the BIOS under the Main menu, it will list the operating and turbo processor frequencies. It will also list the memory frequency.

The main nemesis of a laptop performance is heat. You say it isn't an issue, but blow out the dust from the heat sink and fans anyway.

The only other thing to look at is the power supply and the battery.
 
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terry4536

terry4536

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Mar 28, 2010
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Having too many applications running in the background can affect system resources (driving performance down).

You can check this in windows Task Manager under the Startup Tab. That will list every app that is loaded during Startup. It also means that every one of those applications are running constantly.

You can clean those up by first selecting those with medium and high impact on Startup. Then use the disable button at the bottom. The repeat that process for any applications that aren't used every few days. This doesn't delete the application, ,it just prevents them from running constantly.
 
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eduard.fot

Dec 3, 2018
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Yes, the minimum and maximum processor state is 100%, and the laptop is set to High performance at all times, and I manually set literally everything I can in that menu to prioritize performance.

The dust has been blown out about a month ago, and it made a difference for a really short time. I always use it with a laptop stand and in relatively non-dusty environments. Blowing it out every month or more often seems a bit overkill for me, it should definitely work better.

I also tried closing down all unnecessary applications and opening ONE intensive application, and it still happens.

What's really weird is, the laptop can run a ton of programs at the same time, multimedia, movies, series, music, office etc. at maximum 2.4 GHz, but when I open an intensive app (a game or some 3D application that I use for engineering), it runs fine for a couple of minutes, then drops down and stays at 997 MHz.
These applications are all run by the dedicated GPU, and, according to ThrottleStop, it doesn't heat up unreasonably. I never go over 80°C in the CPU or GPU, the clock speed just gets slashed for some reason.

I understand that Turbo Boost on Intel CPUs is not really designed to be on all the time, but in my case, it IS on all the time, but when I open an intensive app, it just slashes the speed after a minute or two. I don't really understand how this works or why it happens.

Is there something I could manually set in BIOS or in ThrottleStop to override any protection and do some testing (I repeat, BD PROCHOT is already unchecked)? Would a BIOS update help?
 
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eduard.fot

Dec 3, 2018
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I'll try updating some drivers next, yeah. The CPU cooler was professionaly remounted with fresh paste about a month or two ago, and it made no difference.

I'll update the drivers as soon as I can. Do you have any recommendations for driver sites other than the official Asus website?
 
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terry4536

terry4536

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Mar 28, 2010
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The only other thing I can think of is a fresh install of Windows. After 5 years I'm sure there is plenty of clutter that has accumulated on the system drive. A fresh install will get rid of all of that. But you would have to reinstall your app's & software.
 
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eduard.fot

Dec 3, 2018
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I updated whichever drivers I could and Windows was reinstalled from scratch a couple of months ago. I'm
a bit dumbfounded, so I'll try to brute force it.

Let's assume it IS a temperature issue.
Can I undervolt the CPU? And will it work using Intel's XTU? And, if that fails, maybe a good solution is to try limiting the turbo frequency to 2.2 GHz instead of 2.4 GHz, for example. Is this doable on this laptop with this CPU?
 
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eduard.fot

Dec 3, 2018
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Yeah, I guess I'll do that since I'm kinda out of options. Does anyone know if it's possible to undervolt this specific CPU, or lower the max turbo frequency?
 
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Tolis_GR

Tolis_GR

Honorable
Mar 13, 2017
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If your bios allows tweaking, you can disable turbo boost there, undervolt or downclock your processor. If not, simply go to your selected power plan and set your max cpu usage as 99% instead of 100%. That way you will prevent turbo boost from kicking in.
 
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terry4536

terry4536

Glorious
Mar 28, 2010
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The best way to find out is to try it. As was suggested you can adjust the maximum Processor State to under 100%.

Just by the design of the laptops and notebooks, heat dissipation is always going to be a problem. Using it on a cooling pad will help too.

But taking it apart and changing the thermal paste is a step that I'd recommend trying. And blow all of the dust out of the fan. A magnetic screwdriver will help with the small screws.
 
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eduard.fot

Dec 3, 2018
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Thanks for the replies guys. Unfortunately, the BIOS is locked I guess. I'd love to be able to undervolt it, it's definitely worth a try, but XTU or Throttlestop don't give me the options, and when I go into BIOS myself, there's nothing relevant there. I guess the only way to do it would be with a BIOS mod or something like that, which is too risky for me right now.

The short-term solution right now is cleaning it up and repasting it, and disabling Turbo boost in software (I'm able to do that in Throttlestop) when I know I'll run something highly intensive. It's better to have 1.7 GHz all the time than 2.4 GHz for a minute and have it go down to 0.9 Ghz until the next reboot.

The long-term solution is never buying a laptop with an low-powered, locked processor ever again :D

I believe we as customers should have the option of tweaking everything we want on everything we buy, in some cases not right out of the box, but with specialized software, and I was very disappointed to see that I can't do anything in XTU.

Thanks anyway!
 
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