i7-8750H ThrottleStop help request (ASUS TUF FX505GM)

[Meiszner]

Dear forum members and experts on this subject, I request your kind help!

3 months ago I bought an ASUS TUF FX505GM budget gaming laptop with an i7-8750H CPU and a GTX 1060 6GB GPU.

I did my research before my purchase, and I was prepared for bad thermals, based on other owners reviews. As soon as I had the laptop in my hands, I tested it, and of course the expected thermal problems occured. I read about this program called "ThrottleStop", and started to use it inmediately (I prefer TS over XTU as it known to be way more stable). Belive me when I say, I spent my last 3 months reading and gathering information of CPU-s and undervolting in most of my freetime, and I think I can say I raised my knowledge up to something from the absolute zero, however after all, this subject seems to be much more complicated than I ever thought, and now I am stuck at a point where I have to ask for expert help, and that is the reason I registered here.

So the problem is, that I did not achive much success in reducing thermals beside having the good performance, and the more I read about things, the more question arise in me, so now let me present you the situation, and please tell me what do I do wrong!

Maybe important informations:

- I use Ultimate Performance Power Plan
- I have my cores unparked (not sure if it matters)
- I have only ThrottleStop installed (no XTU on my system)
- The average ambient temperature is 28 degrees Celsius (indoor)
- I have a fresh Windows (version 1903, build 18362.239) with the latest untouched BIOS (version 305)
- My system can handle a maximum of -165 mV both on CPU Core and CPU Cache (I set this two equally every time)

My current TS settings:

Cinebench R20 results with the settings above:

As you can see, the maximum temperatures are quite high. The same high temperatures occur after around 30 minutes gaming aswell, despite the -160 mV undervolts.

What I have tried so far:

- Leaving TPL settings on default, only applying undervolts in FIVR, same results
- Moving Speed Shift - EPP number to 32-64-128, same results
- Disable Turbo (not in TS, but in Windows Power Plan advanced settings, adjusting maximum processor state to 95%), much lower temperatures, significant performance drop (tested in GTAO)
- Decreasing Turbo Ratio Limits, lower temperatures, directly proportional performance drop (tested in GTAO)
- Undervolting GPU using MSI Afterburner, resulting less high temperatures, but nothing special improvement

What I would like to ask for:

- Please review my TS settings if they are correct, useless, something too much, or less than needed, something I should adjust other than them
- Please show me your TS settings and results with the same configuration
- If you propose something, please explain why should I do that, so I can learn the reason behind the action
- Please do not link any basic guide or video of setting up TS, as I have seen it all by now probably
- Please note that I am not a professional, I may not know basic things, so well detailed and easy to understand answers would be the best
- Please be kind

Finally:

- Any other information, screenshot, data you need I will send as soon as I can
- Sorry for grammar mistakes, I am not a fluent english speaker, tho I have tried my best
- Thank you very much for all the answers and support in advance

 

[trog100]

high temps are normal in a gaming laptop..

i dont know enough about using throttlestop to say anything else..

trog

 

[Meiszner]

high temps are normal in a gaming laptop..

i dont know enough about using throttlestop to say anything else..

trog

Thank you for your reply.

High temps are normal and expected of course, but not this high temps, not temps over 95C for longer times. As you can see it is even throttling because of the temps, and that is what I want to eliminate. ThrottleStop is a well known program, what can be used to eliminate power and thermal throttling by providing less electric power to your hardware, what is then generating less heat.

Meiszner

 

[unclewebb]

Overall, your ThrottleStop settings look good. You are already undervolting as much as practically possible without losing stability. When under volting the Intel GPU, you usually need to undervolt the iGPU Unslice an equal amount. Gaming laptops have a dedicated GPU so undervolting the iGPU is not going to solve your problem.

Asus is using a heatsink and fan that is barely adequate. Lots of major manufacturers are doing the same thing. You were aware of this problem going in. You can try replacing the thermal paste between the heatsink and the CPU. Do some Google research about what pastes work best with mobile CPUs. Pastes that work well on desktop CPUs with integrated heat spreaders are not always best for mobile CPUs.

TONGFANG did a much better job designing their chassis for the 8750H. These are powerful CPUs when properly cooled.

TechnologyGuide

Thank you for visiting the TechnologyGuide network. Unfortunately, these forums are no longer active. We extend a heartfelt thank you to the entire community for their steadfast support—it is really you, our readers, that drove

forum.notebookreview.com

 

[Meiszner]

Overall, your ThrottleStop settings look good. You are already undervolting as much as practically possible without losing stability. When under volting the Intel GPU, you usually need to undervolt the iGPU Unslice an equal amount. Gaming laptops have a dedicated GPU so undervolting the iGPU is not going to solve your problem.

Asus is using a heatsink and fan that is barely adequate. Lots of major manufacturers are doing the same thing. You were aware of this problem going in. You can try replacing the thermal paste between the heatsink and the CPU. Do some Google research about what pastes work best with mobile CPUs. Pastes that work well on desktop CPUs with integrated heat spreaders are not always best for mobile CPUs.

TONGFANG did a much better job designing their chassis for the 8750H. These are powerful CPUs when properly cooled.

TechnologyGuide

Thank you for visiting the TechnologyGuide network. Unfortunately, these forums are no longer active. We extend a heartfelt thank you to the entire community for their steadfast support—it is really you, our readers, that drove

forum.notebookreview.com

Thank you very much for your advices.

You know what? I have managed to get some pretty impressive results (see below). All I did was adjusting Turbo Ratio Limits in FIVR and Turbo Boost Power Limits in TPL. PL1 throttling still occurs, however I think it is impossible to get rid of that, as this model I use seems to have Turbo Boost Long Power Max locked at 45. (Am I right?) I tried ticking "Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits" but it didnt help either. Nevermind.

The new results:

This is the highest Cinebench score I got ever, and I am happy now, however I wonder if in-game I am gonna experience less FPS than before or not. Temperatures are still high a bit (90C max), but much better than before, and I think the thermal paste change you mentioned above will further lower these numbers. I am gonna give it a try.

Few more questions in my case:

- What is TDP Level Control in TPL Miscellaneous? Should I adjust it?
- What is Intel Power Balance? Should I adjust it?
- What are Primary Plane Power Limits? Should I adjust them?

Thank you once again for your time and effort to reply,
Meiszner

 

[unclewebb]

Intel considers any temperature under 100°C to be a "safe operating temperature". For a laptop, 90°C is high but it is on the safe side of 100°C. Asus actually set the thermal throttling temperature a little on the low side. Your CPU will start slowing down if it ever hits 95°C so this will protect against any long term damage. No worries.

Some of ThrottleStop's other features are more useful when you have one of Intel's low power 15 Watt U series CPUs. Setting the TDP Level Control to 1 or 2 can change these CPUs between low power TDP mode and high power TDP mode. I think TDP-up is 25 Watts and TDP-down is about 7.5 Watts. This is useful if you have a hot tablet running on batteries. The 8750H does support a low power 35 Watt TDP-down mode. If you check the TDP Level Contol box and enter 1, maybe you can change your CPU into a 35 Watt CPU.

Intel Power Balance allows a person to direct more power to either the Intel CPU or the Intel GPU. For gaming, maybe 10 Watts for the iGPU and 5 Watts for the CPU might give better frame rates than having all the power go to the CPU with very little going to the GPU. This only applies to the Intel CPU and Intel GPU. If you are using an Nvidia GPU when gaming, this setting will likely be ignored.

The Primary Plane Power Limit refers to the individual cores. The Package Power Limit controls how much power the entire CPU package can consume before throttling begins and the Primary Plane would allow a person to control how much power is going just to the CPU cores before throttling begins. If this is set to zero and not checked, that means your laptop is not using this throttling method. I have not done any recent testing. Some of the newer CPUs might not support this option. If you check and set this to a low number, you might see something new turn red in Limit Reasons.

With the Disable and Lock box checked, if you are still limited to 45 Watts long term, there is probably nothing you can do about it. You would need a modified bios which probably does not exist. Your cooling system is only good for about 45 Watts so trying to get beyond this limit is pointless. Some manufacturers will enforce the 45 Watt TDP limit while others leave this unlocked so users can experiment going higher. Looks like Asus locked this down.

For your Turbo Ratio Limits, maybe a better compromise would be 41, 41, 38, 38, 35, 35. That way you would still get full performance when lightly loaded with 1 or 2 cores active. As more cores become active, then the CPU would slow down a little below its rated speed to keep power consumption and temperatures in check. Play around with this setting. For some games you might be better off using slightly different ratios.

Thanks for posting those pics. It makes it a lot easier answering questions when you have something to look at.

 

[trog100]

its hard thinking cpu temps near 100 are fine but its normal for a gaming laptop so is thermal throttling.. power throttling is also linked to thermal throttling.. heat or getting rid of it is the ultimate limiter. so are fans that sound like jet engines..

lowering the cpu core voltage as much as stability allows gives more performance before all the (inevitable) throttling takes place..

intel now allow 115 C as the max tempts on a desktop 9900K chip for example..

we all have to rethink what "hot" means.. old ideas are no longer valid..

trog

 

[Meiszner]

Intel considers any temperature under 100°C to be a "safe operating temperature". For a laptop, 90°C is high but it is on the safe side of 100°C. Asus actually set the thermal throttling temperature a little on the low side. Your CPU will start slowing down if it ever hits 95°C so this will protect against any long term damage. No worries.

Some of ThrottleStop's other features are more useful when you have one of Intel's low power 15 Watt U series CPUs. Setting the TDP Level Control to 1 or 2 can change these CPUs between low power TDP mode and high power TDP mode. I think TDP-up is 25 Watts and TDP-down is about 7.5 Watts. This is useful if you have a hot tablet running on batteries. The 8750H does support a low power 35 Watt TDP-down mode. If you check the TDP Level Contol box and enter 1, maybe you can change your CPU into a 35 Watt CPU.

Intel Power Balance allows a person to direct more power to either the Intel CPU or the Intel GPU. For gaming, maybe 10 Watts for the iGPU and 5 Watts for the CPU might give better frame rates than having all the power go to the CPU with very little going to the GPU. This only applies to the Intel CPU and Intel GPU. If you are using an Nvidia GPU when gaming, this setting will likely be ignored.

The Primary Plane Power Limit refers to the individual cores. The Package Power Limit controls how much power the entire CPU package can consume before throttling begins and the Primary Plane would allow a person to control how much power is going just to the CPU cores before throttling begins. If this is set to zero and not checked, that means your laptop is not using this throttling method. I have not done any recent testing. Some of the newer CPUs might not support this option. If you check and set this to a low number, you might see something new turn red in Limit Reasons.

With the Disable and Lock box checked, if you are still limited to 45 Watts long term, there is probably nothing you can do about it. You would need a modified bios which probably does not exist. Your cooling system is only good for about 45 Watts so trying to get beyond this limit is pointless. Some manufacturers will enforce the 45 Watt TDP limit while others leave this unlocked so users can experiment going higher. Looks like Asus locked this down.

For your Turbo Ratio Limits, maybe a better compromise would be 41, 41, 38, 38, 35, 35. That way you would still get full performance when lightly loaded with 1 or 2 cores active. As more cores become active, then the CPU would slow down a little below its rated speed to keep power consumption and temperatures in check. Play around with this setting. For some games you might be better off using slightly different ratios.

Thanks for posting those pics. It makes it a lot easier answering questions when you have something to look at.

Sorry for the late reply, I had quite a busy weekend, however now I want to inform you and everyone who will read this topic further on ever, that your suggestions worked like charm. I just adjusted my Turbo Ratio Limits as you recommended (41, 41, 38, 38, 35, 35) and it is just beautiful. Even during longer gaming sessions, my temperatures hardly even pass 90C, it is actually mostly under 85C which just feels really good and confortable for me. I have my inner peace back.

So people having the same problem I had! -> Try the settings I use in TS (pictures above), except my Turbo Ratio Limits, they has been changed to 41, 41, 38, 38, 35, 35. Everything else remained the same like on the pictures. Yours may work slightly differently, but mainly it is a good direction to follow.

@unclewebb I really appreciate you taking the time to write all that, you are amazing man, thank you.

SOLVED!

Meiszner

EDIT: Also do not forget to change Speed Shift Max from 37 to 41 under Miscellaneous section in TPL window.

its hard thinking cpu temps near 100 are fine but its normal for a gaming laptop so is thermal throttling.. power throttling is also linked to thermal throttling.. heat or getting rid of it is the ultimate limiter. so are fans that sound like jet engines..

lowering the cpu core voltage as much as stability allows gives more performance before all the (inevitable) throttling takes place..

intel now allow 115 C as the max tempts on a desktop 9900K chip for example..

we all have to rethink what "hot" means.. old ideas are no longer valid..

trog

You may be right, we should not overthink our thermal problems as much as we do, but you know, if you spend like a lot of money on something, you just want it to work properly and you want to take care of it as much as possible. Anyways it seems to be fixed now.

Thank you,
Meiszner

 

[jaggerwild]

Use a window air conditioner in front of your desk, turn the power up!

 

[trog100]

look at the size of desktop gpu and cpu coolers... compare them with what can be crammed inside a gaming laptop..

it aint entirely surprising a gaming laptop will run hot..

trog

 

[Taraquin]

I have used throttlestop for several years on my i7-laptop and installed it on others as well. A problem With Asus, MSI etc is that built in software for high performance somehow nullifies parts of or all of the gains from throttlestop UV. I would try uninstalling\disabling all Asus-software that affects performance. Also, on many setups you can undervolt cpu cache more than core, gains from undervolting iGPU is underwhelming in general.

On my i7 laptop I have run -164 core\-192 cache for 2 years now. Temps under load are Down With about 15C and powerconsumption is over 20% lower.

 

[Zenocide]

I am currently using the FX505GM with the i7-8750H and GTX1060 and I can confidently say that the thermals suck. Don’t get me wrong, the laptop is phenomenal for the price. However, the thermals are not to be desired.

The cpu constantly overheats and thermal throttles. GPU on the other hand is fine. After undervolting, it only helped it a little. So does reapplying thermal paste. After months of finding a solution, I eventually gave up.

I then changed the thermal paste again and while doing so, I realised that there is literally no intake vents underneath the laptop. I found that funny but it gave me an idea. After reapplying the thermal paste, I left the under cover off and played some intensive games such as NFS payback at High settings and my god...what a difference. MSI Afterburner showed cpu temps at the 70’s compared to constant 90’s. I concluded that there was nothing wrong with the cpu or the fans or the heat pipes. It’s the freaking air intake design or the lack of it. Although that’s the case, there is literally no way to fix the issue. The cause is there but nothing can be done as this is a design flaw.

My advice at the moment is try to game with the under cover off and see the results.

 

[gabrielsousa]

i have the same problem, if i do to 41, 41, 38, 38, 35, 35 i will clock down the cpu
my problem is allways on power limit

 

[Mathragh]

Reading through the comments, I think one thing might perhaps be (re)-)stated more clearly:

With these latest gens of Intel laptop CPU's, the maximum turbo frequencies are so far over the (multicore) frequency that the actual TDP actually supports, that lowering the voltage almost never results in a very big drop in temperature.

This is because when you lower the voltage and thus the power usage, the CPU will just use the extra power headroom to boost up higher untill it hits that temperature limit again (or ofc TDP limit if the cooling is decent). The maximum clocks are so far above the base clock that in any real world multicore load you'll never reach those clocks in the heat-constrained space of a (badly cooled) laptop. Imho indeed the only way to limit those temperatures is to limit the clock itself as been suggested, or directly limiting the TDP, which might allow for more fine grained clock control by the CPU. I'm not sure if you tried limiting the TDP to something like 40W or even 35W to see how that fares for you.

Above that all, also as stated before, both Intel and the manufacturers using their chips (like Apple) are apparently quite comfortable with letting their CPUs run at up to a 100 degrees for extended periods, so one can only assume it's not that big of a deal to begin with, even though intuitively it's not the best idea.

Furthermore, if you're getting a bit more comfortable with your knowledge of laptops and are not afraid of opening it up and tinkering a bit, as also been suggested above replacing the thermal paste might also improve your coolings' capabilties.

Good luck and welcome to the forums!

Edit: oops only just saw that the original post is already half a year old,.. ohwell

 

[CGraham]

Sorry to comment on an old thread but do any of yous have a throttlestop profile that you would be able to send me that yous use for this laptop? I'm trying to get a hold of one for my friend to help him out sorting the temps on his laptop

 

[Legend12]

oh i have a dell g7 with a i7 8750H and gtx 1060 max q, temperatures are not my problem but the power throtelling yes, in game it lags much, my gpu is fine at 72 dregrees and 1400Mhz so no thermal thotelling, i use my cpu at the base frecuency so 78 degrees max but the power limit hate me.
pt: i dont want to raise the cpu frecuency because this would elevate my gpu temperature and it throttle