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GPU recently started reaching power limit

mynameislong

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Mar 12, 2017
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Hi all, first time posting here. I have a Razer Blade 14 (970m with i7 4720HQ) which I've owned for over a year but recently I experienced a new problem I've never encountered before.

While playing League of Legends, I noticed my FPS (which is normally capped at 60 without ever dropping), started dropping to 30 for a few seconds then coming back up to 60. It would drop to 30 as if I had unplugged the charger where it stays at exactly 30. This is the first time I have ever encountered this situation. I changed screen brightness to 5% when unplugged to see if there was intermittent "unplugging" of the charger, and sure enough when the FPS dropped the screen would also go dark.

I went to look at MSI afterburner to see if anything funny was going on, but my GPU usage and temperature were both at their typical values (in the 60-70 degree range and around 60% GPU usage - no where near max where I get around 90 degrees with 100% GPU usage on AAA titles). What I did notice was that the "GPU power limit" would spike to the value "1", last a few seconds then return to "0", coinciding with the FPS drop. I haven't overclocked or changed the voltage settings at all either. I then ran the Heaven benchmark and also experienced FPS drops unlike my previous Heaven benchmarks which didn't have this problem. I can't think of anything that has changed to cause this so suddenly.

Although initially seeming like a problem due solely to the battery status intermittently changing from plugged to unplugged, what concerns me the most is that the FPS drops were more frequent the more my GPU was under load. In LoL it would happen once every 10 minutes, in Chivalry it's once every 10 seconds, in Heaven benchmark it's virtually constant. I have emailed Razer and they suggested reinstalling the battery driver although that didn't seem to fix it, and am waiting for a friend to pop by and use their charger to see if it's my charger. Does anyone have any suggestions/advice? Thanks for reading this far!
 
Did you recently update the video drivers?
 
Is it set to high performance. Sounds like it's throttling when on the charger.
 
This is a gaming laptop. Your biggest problem is heat and dust. Dust creates heat over time. If you run over 90c for months on in gaming... Failure is imminent after a couple of years.
 
Is it set to high performance. Sounds like it's throttling when on the charger.

It has always been set to high performance. My concern is that it hasn't been like this before so I'm not sure why it would suddenly do this.

This is a gaming laptop. Your biggest problem is heat and dust. Dust creates heat over time. If you run over 90c for months on in gaming... Failure is imminent after a couple of years.

Yeah it isn't the best with temperatures, I regularly go 90+ when gaming. I do have a PC now with a beefier GPU, but I do like this laptop and hope it stays alive.
 
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I think, it's the charger
 
new charger or up it's rating. Many with the same model have suggested this and it appears to sort the issues.
 
Check the cpu temp as well. AFAIK the cpu and gpu shares the cooling system. Thermal paste on it might have gone bad as well. The other posters are kinda on point as well. It looka like the battery or adapter.
 
Check the cpu temp as well. AFAIK the cpu and gpu shares the cooling system. Thermal paste on it might have gone bad as well. The other posters are kinda on point as well. It looka like the battery or adapter.
Yeah I realised I got my temp's wrong, under max load my GPU is usually in the 70-80's but my CPU peaks around 95. Will try another charger to see if that's the problem, hopefully it's as simple as that.
 
Razer Blade 14

Personally I would never buy this razer blade 14 "gaming laptop" , this laptop is very flat and it lacks the beefy cooling that other better gaming laptops have,
I'm not surprised that it gets so hot while gaming.

I hope another powerbrick will solve your problem!

GL!
 
Personally I would never buy this razer blade 14 "gaming laptop" , this laptop is very flat and it lacks the beefy cooling that other better gaming laptops have,
I'm not surprised that it gets so hot while gaming.

I hope another powerbrick will solve your problem!

GL!

The laptop was my bro's but he ended up not needing it anymore so gave it to me, before that I had an alienware 13 which I found to be really good actually. It would never get hot (but I guess it came at the price of being thicker).
 
The laptop was my bro's but he ended up not needing it anymore so gave it to me, before that I had an alienware 13 which I found to be really good actually. It would never get hot (but I guess it came at the price of being thicker).

Thin laptops lack necessary cooling for gaming.
 
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