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Throttlestop/TSBench crashing when running 16 thread jobs

Joined
Jan 28, 2016
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I recently acquired a laptop with an i7-8565U with an OEM set TDP of 15w. Wanting to get some more performance out of it, I downloaded and installed Throttlestop. Before I began undervolting and increasing the power limit, I ran a few stability tests and I *think* I successfully ran a couple of 16 thread/1024M tests.

I then began tinkering with various settings and finally achieved a stable undervolt of around -80mv. I then boosted the power limit to 25w to try and take full advantage of the CPU. Things seemed very stable until I came back to TSBench and tried to run another 16 thread test. It promptly crashed TSBench and Throttlestop itself. Even renaming the Throttlestop directory and .ini file, then shutting down did not resolve the crash.

Have I fried my laptop? Nothing else has crashed - so far.

Specs: i7-8565U (4c/8t), 16GB DDR4-2400 RAM, Nvidia MX150 2GB, Toshiba NVMe 512GB SSD
 

unclewebb

ThrottleStop & RealTemp Author
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Jun 1, 2008
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If your laptop crashes while running the TS Bench test then your under volt is not 100% stable. The TS Bench is basically doing millions of calculations. It does the same calculation twice. A stable laptop should come up with the exact same answer. When an unstable CPU does a calculation, sometimes 2 + 2 = 4 and sometimes it might tell you that 2 + 2 = 5. Obviously, that is a problem.
Nothing else has crashed - so far.
Sure you can get away with this for a while but at some point, your computer is going to randomly crash. I have had some users tell me that after a few weeks of running their computer like this, Windows became corrupted and needed to be reinstalled.

When you increase the power limit, this can increase the speed the CPU runs at. The amount of voltage being used will also increase. That means an under volt that is stable at the default 15 Watt level might not be stable when running at 25 Watts. A stable under volt will be stable when the CPU is idle or when it is running a 1 or 2 thread test or when the CPU is fully loaded.

Here is a very similar 8th Gen Core i7-8550U that has no problem running the TS Bench test reliably at well over the 25 Watt level.



The 8565U uses the 46 multiplier when one core is active. Intel is pushing this technology to its limit. That means you will not be able to under volt as much or you will have to decrease the turbo ratio limits so the CPU does not use this multiplier. This trick might let you get away with the under volt that you are trying to use.
 
Joined
Jan 28, 2016
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@unclewebb Thanks for the reply. After I posted my last message, I had a couple of Firefox tabs crash which I assume was because of the undervolt. I restored the default voltages and set a short term turbo PL of 25w and a long term max of 20w. So far that's been stable, but it really reduced the sustained clock speed of the i7. With the undervolt I was getting 3.2GHz under load, but now it's staying closer to 2.6GHz. The laptop is a 'thin and light' with mediocre cooling, though it at least has a metal chassis which radiates excess heat pretty well. I'm going to have to go back and see if I can find a more stable undervolt.
 
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