Improve thermal throttling - Surface Laptop Go 2

[LemonScent6]

Wondering if anyone can look at my laptop and see if there are any suggestions for undervolting my new PC. I have a Nitro 5 that @unclewebb assisted with previously and now I got another laptop for more on the go fun. Nothing has been adjusted aside from changing power usage of the battery to 'best performance'. This is out of the box, no adjustments yet in Throttlestop as I don't want to adjust too far before I get some approved guidance first. The log file is during 2 runs of Cinebench R20 btw.

DEVICE DETAILS:
Surface Laptop Go 2
Processor 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz 2.42 GHz
Installed RAM 8.00 GB (7.83 GB usable)
Device ID 8BFA5A97-42F4-4677-985E-C30995A537A7
Product ID 00356-06273-83749-AAOEM
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch Touch support with 10 touch points


Thank you all for your time and to whomever comments to assist me!

 

[unclewebb]

11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7

Intel removed CPU voltage control from the 11th Gen G7 series so there is not much ThrottleStop can do with these processors.

Your cooling seems to be barely adequate which is typical of the Surface series. You can try setting both the PL1 and PL2 power limits to approximately 25. If you try to go any higher, you will run into thermal throttling problems. I would also check the MMIO Lock box in the TPL window.

Post some ThrottleStop screenshots. Beyond the above, there is very little else you can do.

 

[nochi]

Hi,

Just going to talk about the experience I have with the Surface Laptop Go (the first one), which essentially has the same cooling solution as the Go 2. The Go has a i5-1035g1 that could barely run up to 3 GHZ for intervals more than 30 seconds after it inevitably throttles down to an abysmal clock speed. This laptop can seemingly go from a normal 40 degrees Celsius to 90 degrees in the snap of a finger for some reason. I suspect that it may be a thermal paste issue as I bought a refurb laptop, however other online forums with similar surface devices seems to either have drastically different experiences or the same.

Anyhow, the voltage controls are locked as expected from a Microsoft device produced within recent times, so i had to make do with power limits. What i ended up with was a PL1 setting of 19 and PL2 of 20. I also changed Speedshift EPP to 80. I have also parked my cores at 20% in a program called QuickCPU. Now, the laptop usually runs at a consistent 50 degrees Celsius with spikes up to 80 degrees. I still get thermal throttled very often if i launch an "intensive" program. Fallout New Vegas is playable with stutters that are questionable, while Genshin Impact runs at a frame rate slower than my previous laptop with a i5-5300u. Osu runs normally as expected, however i find myself missing a lot of notes due to fps drops that completely screw up your rhythm. Oh and did i mention that this laptop will literally shut down after 20 minutes of playing Fallout New Vegas? Because it will.

Now to be fair, this laptop was on sale for 300 Canadian, and it is actually a decent laptop for a student like me. However the frustrating part is that i spent my money on a piece of overheating metal that performs worse than a 5 year old laptop in tasks that require a decent amount of performance. Not to mention the lack of IO on this thing, due to it's design of portability.

Also while im on here, i found this guide on Youtube. Seems pretty sketchy as the research I have done online says otherwise, as you need a modded BIOS for undervolting. If anybody has any idea on what this person is doing, please lmk.

Below will be my settings, if anybody on the forums would have suggestions i would gladly take em. Logs are also attached.
PS: PL4 didnt really seem to matter that much, so i just have it set to max.

 

[LemonScent6]

K I got some more screenshots @unclewebb! Thank you @nochi for the background on the 1st gen. The throttling is incredibly fast as you both alluded with the design of the laptop but overall I think these results may surprise you! The next two scores with Cinebench R20 after making the adjustments you made @unclewebb were over 1900 respectively. I have made no other adjustments aside from the initial ones that Unclewebb made as I want to get the baseline test first and then make sure the next steps after that are required.

What are your thoughts on the findings? 2nd run didn't really exceed low 90 degrees but went to PL2 immediately.

***BTW this is all on battery, no power cord plugged in either...***

 

[LemonScent6]

So update, I tried playing Overwatch with the settings that you @unclewebb suggested and it thermal throttled hard up to 100 deg + and crashed almost immediately. I've attached the log file from yesterday here and also today where I adjusted the settings to what @nochi suggested and it kept the temps under 80 degrees and it didn't crash the game. Let me know what else to adjust as just like @nochi said, it almost immediately thermal throttles without throttlestop turned on and then once the fans finally kick it it calms down but the fans aren't reactive fast enough till I adjusted the settings as @nochi suggested.

 

[nochi]

Yeah, its like that sometimes. Messing around with Speedshift EPP would also decrease temps at the sacrifice of performance.

Although, some people on reddit have ghetto solutions that somehow work. For example there was this guy who stuck a piece of wet paper towel on his Go, which achieved suprisingly good results.

I wouldnt recommend trying anything absurdly stupid though. Maybe you can take apart the laptop and add in thermal pads for better heat dissipation though.