# Need guidance on setting up ThrottleStop (i7-9750h)



## ballista (May 29, 2021)

Laptop: Eluktronics Mech-17 G1Rx w/ RTX 2070 & i7-9750h

Hello,

My laptop used to hit easily above 100°C and shut down or my GPU gets disabled and BSOD on shut down with error name 'VIDEO_DXGKRNL_FATAL_ERROR' because of overheating. I changed my stock thermal paste to Kryonaut, but I didn't feel like it helped much. To avoid overheating, I reduced my turbo limits down to 36, and Long-Short PL to 40, alongside with -125 CPU Core-Cache undervolt (-50 stock undervolt). These settings helped me keep my temps just below 95°C on most AAA games. 

Yesterday, I bought and applied Thermal Grizzly Carbonaut upon several recommendations. With the same settings above my temps never went past 85°C. Now with the better temps, I want to reset my ThrottleStop settings and fine-tune according to Carbonaut, and need your guidance. So far, I have only changed Speed Shift and CPU Core-Cache values.

Thanks in advance.

I have followed some older threads, and no longer need assistance. The thread can be closed.


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## unclewebb (May 31, 2021)

ballista said:


> and no longer need assistance.


What settings did you change? Might as well share what you learned to help other users. 

I would have suggested increasing Power Limit 4 from 60 up to at least 150.

PL1 to 60W or 70W works well on the 9750H. 

Some users have good success by setting the cache to an offset of -125 mV and then bumping the core up to -175 mV or -200 mV. Cinebench R20 is a great program to test different voltages.









						MAXON Cinebench (R20.0) Download
					

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer's performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON's award-winn




					www.techpowerup.com


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## ballista (May 31, 2021)

unclewebb said:


> What settings did you change? Might as well share what you learned to help other users.


Increased PL1 to 70W.
Reduced Turbo Time Limit from 56 to 28.
Increased Power Limit 4 to 160.
Decreased turbo ratio limits to (40,39,38,37,36,35). I was getting thermal throttling in TS Bench with default limits, now it barely hits above 90°C with reduced limits.
Reduced Speed Shift Max to 40.
Increased IccMax to 255.75 on CPU Core & Cache.

I'm looking forward to your comments.


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## unclewebb (May 31, 2021)

Have you tried adjusting the core and cache offset voltages to different values? Here is an example of some Cinebench testing a user sent me.






						Cinebench Test.zip
					






					drive.google.com
				




Doing this not only helps Cinebench but it can also help modern games that use the AVX instructions. It is worth doing some testing. 



ballista said:


> Decreased turbo ratio limits


If the CPU heatsink and fan cannot keep your CPU below the thermal throttling temperature then reducing the CPU speed is all you can do. When making adjustments like this, think about the problem that you are trying to solve. Is your CPU getting too hot when 1 or 2 or 3 cores are active? Probably not. Maybe you can use the default turbo ratios for these and only lower the turbo ratios when 4 or 5 or 6 cores are active. I would leave Speed Shift Max set to its default value of 45. You are using the turbo ratios to control your CPU speed so no need to also use Speed Shift Max.

Some users set the Speed Shift EPP value to 128. This can help reduce maximum CPU performance.

If your cooling cannot handle running your CPU long term at 70W then you can reduce that limit back to 60W. If your cooling cannot handle running your CPU at full power for 28 seconds then it is OK to lower the turbo time limit. I think the default value is 28 seconds but for most laptops, that is usually too long. The CPU will likely start to thermal throttle before the 28 second time limit expires. You can check the PL2 Clamp option if you want to make sure your CPU does not go beyond the PL2 power limit.

Most modern gaming laptops have overly powerful hardware and not enough cooling. You seem to be understanding how to balance speed vs power consumption and heat. These are just some generic suggestions. Whatever works best for you is fine.


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## ballista (May 31, 2021)

unclewebb said:


> Have you tried adjusting the core and cache offset voltages to different values? Here is an example of some Cinebench testing a user sent me.


Tried -200 and -175 core values. No issues in Cinebench but my computer freezes when I alt-tab out of the game in some cases. (e.g. after the end of a multiplayer match in Call Of Duty: BOCW) So I revert the value back to -125. Is it worth testing with the values between -175 and -125?



unclewebb said:


> Some users set the Speed Shift EPP value to 128. This can help reduce maximum CPU performance.


I am currently using a value of 83. I guess this is also fine too.


unclewebb said:


> Is your CPU getting too hot when 1 or 2 or 3 cores are active? Probably not. Maybe you can use the default turbo ratios for these and only lower the turbo ratios when 4 or 5 or 6 cores are active.


Thank you, I will try this out.


unclewebb said:


> I would leave Speed Shift Max set to its default value of 45. You are using the turbo ratios to control your CPU speed so no need to also use Speed Shift Max.


I don't really know what Speed Shift does. Most of the time, I see that other people's Max value were equal to their 1 Core Active Turbo Ratio Limit. So I was doing the same.


unclewebb said:


> If your cooling cannot handle running your CPU long term at 70W then you can reduce that limit back to 60W.


I have absolutely no issues with this while using with adjusted Turbo Ratio Limits. I might change this if I experiment with increasing the turbo ratio limits.


unclewebb said:


> I think the default value is 28 seconds but for most laptops, that is usually too long.


The default is 56 in my case, reduced to 28 and no issues so far.


unclewebb said:


> You can check the PL2 Clamp option if you want to make sure your CPU does not go beyond the PL2 power limit.


I haven't seen it exceed 90W yet, so I have no issues with that as well. Again, thanks for the tip.

Thank you for your assistance, much appreciated.


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## unclewebb (Jun 1, 2021)

ballista said:


> Is it worth testing


If your computer freezes at a core offset of -175 mV, I would reduce the cache to -115 mV and test again. If your computer is stable at -125 mV for both offset voltages and you would rather be playing games than playing with these settings then leave it as is. Stability is the most important thing. You like playing games, I like playing with the voltages.   

When using the Windows power slider in the system tray, on many laptops, the Best Performance setting will usually set EPP to 84. If Windows can control the EPP value appropriately then I would not bother checking the Speed Shift EPP option in ThrottleStop. Let Windows control EPP. The ThrottleStop monitoring table will show what EPP values the CPU is using. If you move the Windows power slider back and forth, you should see the EPP value in this table change. When testing Windows, make sure Speed Shift EPP is not checked in ThrottleStop.



ballista said:


> other people's Max value were equal to their 1 Core Active Turbo Ratio Limit.


That is correct. Speed Shift Max can be used to limit the maximum CPU multiplier. The maximum multiplier for your CPU is 45 so I would leave Speed Shift Max set to 45. You do not need to use this setting to control your CPU speed. You can use the turbo ratio limits instead. For you, Speed Shift Max is redundant. For some users, the turbo ratio limits are locked and cannot be adjusted so their only option to limit the CPU speed is to adjust Speed Shift Max. 



ballista said:


> Thank you for your assistance, much appreciated.


You are welcome. It looks like you are quickly learning how to fully control your CPU.


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