Underclocking

[rishiswaz]

What would happen if you underclock your processor to the point where it does not meet windows specs. At stock speeds it exceeds the specs but my friend's laptop gets blazing hot to the point where he could no longer take it and decided to lower the multiplier on his CPU down from 20 with BCLK at 100 down to 11 so he is scraping the bottom of the minimum specs but his CPU core temps still hit around 94 (before at 2Ghz it would go up to 98-99 even hit 100 then shut down a couple times). If he lowed went to around 800Mhz would Windows not run or would it just be slow? He does not want his laptop to die early especially because it is pretty expensive with an i7 2630QM and some Nvidia discrete graphics.

 

[aaab]

Windows will run, but slowly. But I would look at fixing the underlying heat issue asap

 

[dudewitbow]

it would just run the computer slowly

 

[kajabla]

If his laptop's got a CPU like that, it's probably still under warranty and he should return it ASAP. Its heatsink has problems.

 

[rishiswaz]

Windows will run, but slowly. But I would look at fixing the underlying heat issue asap

Thanks, but he is saying: " There is nothing wrong with the laptop I just think it is the turbo boost raising it to 2.9Ghz. Why do they even have that on laptops?!"

If his laptop's got a CPU like that, it's probably still under warranty and he should return it ASAP. Its heatsink has problems.

He tried opening it up and replacing the thermal paste on the CPU and GPU first, he used some AS-5 he had left over from his recent desktop build. According to him it did the trick for a while but then when it got hot again he opened it and found it to be all crusted and not fluid at all. So that voided the warranty and he can't do that.

 

[aaab]

.... There is something wrong with it.... the CPU is over heating lol

Under-clocking to 800mhz is not a solution it's a workaround...

 

[kajabla]

Oh, that's bad.
AS5 is not supposed to stay fluid, but it's certainly possibly he put it on wrong. Most noobs apply far too much thermal paste. He should remove the AS5, buy some nice, cheap, traditional thermal paste and apply it like so: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=170&Itemid=38&limit=1&limitstart=4

 

[nukemaster]

I know this will sound strange, but have the heatsinks them self been checked for dust/hair? On many laptops you just can not see it without separating the fan/heatsink assembly from on another.

Turbo is on laptops for performance, but it ONLY kicks in when not all cores are in use. So if you have 1 core working and the other not, you can nearly disable the non used core and push the other one farther. This should NOT actually effect the thermals since one(2-3 even) core is almost sleeping at this time.

The fan looked fairly clean, but once the heatsink and fan have been seperated, the reason for the heat was easy to see. This was not even an old laptop. I was just told it was shutting down and needed a power jack re-solder. I found more then just a broken solder joint

 

[rishiswaz]

Well I finally got him to talk to Lenovo guys and they said that with 50 bucks inspection fee and 40 for a renewed 6 month warranty after the whole AS5 thing they would look into a RMA for him. The laptop cost him like 200 so I think that repairing it or getting a new one for 90 does not seem that bad. He did not want to risk the warranty any more by checking for dust/hair

 

[nukemaster]

Fair enough, at least it should get fixed.

 

[rishiswaz]

Update:He spent the 90 bucks then he got the RMA and they are sending him a new one.