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i5 10210U - is there a way around the 10W power limit?

M

mrfrakes

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Hi,

just bought an Acer Aspire 5 with an Intel i5 10210U and a MX350. Honestly it is a pretty decent notebook. I only has 8GB of RAM but I'm planning to upgrade to 16.
Anyway, using ThrottleStop I noticed that after a while the CPU limits itself to 10W no matter what I do.
I can't even get it above its 15W turbo limit for longer periods of time. I've tried to increase Turbo limits in both XTU and ThrottleStop.

My guess is that the i5 is the lower power verision with only 10W, is there any way to get the Power limit higher for 10th Gen Mobile?
I read somewhere that you can enable TDP Level Control in ThrottleStop but no luck.
 
It's most likely limited by the manufacturer even if it is a 15W chip, as it's a cTDP chip Acer is most likely playing it safe and keeping it at the base of 10W when they can be configured up to 25W depending on the system builder.
 
Yeah, I kinda expected that.
Do you know where this limit is set? (Hardware, BIOS, etc.)
Knowing that most Acer Aspire 5's of this generation seem to share most of their hardware there might be a general solution for this.
 
mrfrakes said:
Yeah, I kinda expected that.
Do you know where this limit is set? (Hardware, BIOS, etc.)
Knowing that most Acer Aspire 5's of this generation seem to share most of their hardware there might be a general solution for this.
Click to expand...
It has to be Hardware as the Bios would be easy to modify for those that know how, and those modded Bios's would be in circulation already.
 
Ok if it is a hardware thing - who decides what power these CPUs are limited to? Does Intel selected chips based on power rating or are they all the same and the notebook manufacturer decides?

My guess is that Intel has nothing to do with it as I have seen ppl putting crazy power into their mobile cpus :)
 
It would be safe to assume that the chip dies are tested for functionality at least , after beeing carved from the waffer and while at it, binned perhaps.
 
mrfrakes said:
is there a way around the 10W power limit?
Click to expand...
Did you try using the ThrottleStop 9.0 - FIVR - Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits feature? If the power limits in the TPL window are set appropriately and that box is checked, there is nothing you can do to get beyond this limit. At that point I would contact Acer and tell them that they can have their laptop back. Not good when manufacturers do stuff like this and sell laptops that cannot run at the 15W TDP limit. I can see being limited to 10W when on battery power but you should be able to use the full 15W when plugged in.

Edit - As you know, 10th Gen U technology is capable of so much more. What you get all depends on what an OEM leaves unlocked. They all have the exact same TDP rating.

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After testing some more I figured out that it only goes into the 10W power limit if some program is using the Nvidia GPU at the same time so it is probably some total power/thermal limit thing.
If I just do a TS Bench it at least stays at 15W.

I really don't know enough about modern notebook architecture to draw any conclusions from that but I'm actually still pretty happy with this notebook - my last laptop was a Sandy Bridge Mobile with 45W TDP paired with a 30W GPU and this thing still beats them easily and I don't have to do stupid stuff like overvolting the fans to keep its 75W cool
 
How's the performance of the MX350?
 
It is pretty decent. Playing GTA5 at 1080p you can expect around 60FPS on "normal" settings.
One thing I would recommend is getting GPU Tweak II and increasing the target temperature by a couple of degrees since mine was constantly throttling.
 
Hy! we have the exact same GPU, RAM and ofc the CPU. And what i know from the Intel official website is the TDP high configuration is up to 25W. Someone tells me that if i wanted to maximum the performance, you need to go with 25W TDP. So, have you found a way to unlock this 15W Max TDP (which you can see on CPUZ software) ?
 
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