ThrottleStop help with CPU not throttling down?

[mvalpreda]

Hoping ThrottleStop can help with an issue I have on a few Dell laptops.

When running on battery the CPU will idle at 0.80Ghz to 1.2Ghz, the laptop is cool, quiet, and gets pretty good battery life.

When plugged in, the CPU won't idle below 1.5Ghz. The laptop heats up and the fan turns on. I'm typically in a quiet office/room so even at a low speed, I can hear the fan. Was plugged into Dell Thunderbolt TB16 dock all day today and the fan never turned off - even with no apps open.

My non-scientific test is that I keep Task Manager open, and plug in the power. Power comes from a USB-C charger or dock cables (USB-C or Thunderbolt all Dell branded). The CPU will immediately go up to 1.5Ghz+ and the fan turns on. Unplug from power and the CPU throttles down, the laptop cools down, fan gets quiet, then fan turns off.

Seen some people in other forums mention they used ThrottleStop, but never gave much info. I have set up under-volting on both Performance (-49.8) and Battery (-80.1) settings in TS.

 

[AOne]

The speed of the CPU has nothing to do with the heat. The power it's using that matters. As an example - your car at 6th gear but down a slope with no gas - it's not using fuel (no heat). The benefit is you can hit the pedal anytime and have instant reaction. My laptop never falls under 4GHz and the temps are under 40-45 C when idle (close to 30 in cold weather) and the fans are absolutely quiet when idling (and you need ear protection when fully loaded - the sound from the fans is like a jet taking off).
Check your background apps in task manager. Sort them by CPU usage to find the culprit. Another reason could be dusty heatsink, bad airflow (check for obstacles near the fan openings) or thermal paste gone bad.

 

[mvalpreda]

I'm just going by my unscientific tests of the same apps running and what happens with the fans when plugged in vs not plugged in and what I noticed with the CPU speed.

 

[unclewebb]

Why are you using different under volt settings for Performance and Battery? Do some testing and come up with an undervolt that is 100% stable. Proper testing includes full load and light load. Try running some 1 Thread and 2 Thread TS Bench tests. Try using the Random MHz feature when testing to see if your undervolt is stable at a variety of different speeds. Once you come up with an undervolt that is stable, there is no reason not to use the same undervolt all of the time.

I agree with @AOne. The biggest problem is too many background tasks running that really do not need to be running all of the time. Some of these create heat and get the fan going. When idle, what does ThrottleStop report for C0%? If you can reduce the background clutter, CPU speed when idle becomes unimportant. Power consumption and heat will be the same when the idle cores are spending the majority of their time in the low power C7 state.

Huge change in speed. Virtually no change in power consumption or CPU temperatures.

http://imgur.com/0oJvXoC

Post some screenshots of how you have ThrottleStop setup.

 

[nguyen]

Why are you using different under volt settings for Performance and Battery? Do some testing and come up with an undervolt that is 100% stable. Proper testing includes full load and light load. Try running some 1 Thread and 2 Thread TS Bench tests. Try using the Random MHz feature when testing to see if your undervolt is stable at a variety of different speeds. Once you come up with an undervolt that is stable, there is no reason not to use the same undervolt all of the time.
Post some screenshots of how you have ThrottleStop setup.

I have undervolt at -180mV with Performance profile and -150mV with Battery.
The -180mV undervolt is not actually stable at low clocks but I just set the Power Option to Best Performane to keep the clocks high and the system never crash so I just leave it at that.

 

[Caring1]

Hoping ThrottleStop can help with an issue I have on a few Dell laptops.

When running on battery the CPU will idle at 0.80Ghz to 1.2Ghz, the laptop is cool, quiet, and gets pretty good battery life.

When plugged in, the CPU won't idle below 1.5Ghz. The laptop heats up and the fan turns on. I'm typically in a quiet office/room so even at a low speed, I can hear the fan. Was plugged into Dell Thunderbolt TB16 dock all day today and the fan never turned off - even with no apps open.

My non-scientific test is that I keep Task Manager open, and plug in the power. Power comes from a USB-C charger or dock cables (USB-C or Thunderbolt all Dell branded). The CPU will immediately go up to 1.5Ghz+ and the fan turns on. Unplug from power and the CPU throttles down, the laptop cools down, fan gets quiet, then fan turns off.

Seen some people in other forums mention they used ThrottleStop, but never gave much info. I have set up under-volting on both Performance (-49.8) and Battery (-80.1) settings in TS.

If you don't mind it running slow, then change power settings for when it is plugged in, you don't need Throttlestop.

 

[unclewebb]

@nguyen - Download ThrottleStop 9.2. It has a new option to control what Windows power plan your CPU uses. It gives you access to the Windows High Performance power profile that was hidden by Microsoft on many mobile computers. It also gives you access to the traditional Power Saver power plan. This might let your CPU idle down more if you use this profile while working in a quiet office.

 

[mvalpreda]

I do have 9.2! I will try setting a few options and see how the fan does.

 

[mvalpreda]

I find that if I have Firefox open the fans will kick on. Shut down Firefox and the fans will go to an almost inaudible level. That's even with no videos or anything going.....just using around 4-5% of CPU. I don't have but a couple of plugins installed - AIRoboForm and uBlockOrigin.
At idle (while typing this) C0% in TS is going between 7-20.