# PL2 and EDP Other constant yellow warning. Thermal Throttle at startup



## aftertheangels (Jul 25, 2021)

Hello everyone, first post here.
Been exploring Throttlestop for the first time this last week, using this forum as a guide.

My laptop is a Dell XPS15 9570. CPU i5-8300h, just repasted 2 days ago btw!

Since repaste, I've noticed a pretty decent improvement in temperature and thermal throttle incidence. I do still get it at startup and it seems to be triggered fairly quickly under some stress.

I can't seem to get rid of the PL2 and EDP other warnings, as soon as I clear them both flare up yellow - pc is idle at this point.

When running a stress test I get constant PL1 and EDP other in red, plus Core Thermal Throttling warning in yellow. I also notice some choppiness in games, with fps drops etc.

Indexed some pictures with the setup I'm running etc.

Picture 1 - idle after startup
Picture 4 - just after stress test

Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thank u!


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## unclewebb (Jul 25, 2021)

aftertheangels said:


> just repasted 2 days ago


What type of thermal paste did you use and how did you apply it? Some popular thermal pastes that work well on desktop CPUs can start to fail in as little as one week when used on a laptop CPU. If the thermal paste is good then there might be a problem with the heatsink. A well designed laptop should not thermal throttle while booting up. There is a 10°C spread in your maximum temperatures. It is possible that the heatsink is not perfectly flat. It seems to make good contact with two of the cores but not great contact with the other two cores. Some temperature variation like this might be sensor error. If you ever disassemble your laptop again, I would put a flat edge on the heatsink from corner to corner to check how flat it really is.

Many Dell laptops are locked to 45W.You can try increasing the PL1 power limit in ThrottleStop but long term, there is a good chance that this setting will be ignored and your laptop will still power limit throttle right at 45W. Not much you can do about that.



aftertheangels said:


> I also notice some choppiness in games


It is best to turn on the ThrottleStop Log File option and then play a game for at least 15 minutes so you have a record of the choppiness. Attach a log file to your next post so I can have a look.

The Dell XPS series has a long history of throttling problems. Dell never mentions in their fancy TV commercials that it was the XPS line that inspired me to begin work on ThrottleStop 12 years ago. Thank you Dell. Year after year they created new throttling methods. Starting with the 8th Gen Dell laptops, I finally gave up. Some of these laptops have some horrible throttling problems that cannot be easily solved. A log file will confirm if there are any throttling problems like this.

Here is how to enable CPU voltage control on many Dell laptops.








						Undervolting 2020 Dell Laptops like the Vostro 7500 and More Tips to Improve Thermals, Battery Life, and Speed - Brendan Greenley
					

2021 Update: Based on post and Reddit comments, the approach to unlock undervolting works for a number of models, including the XPS, Inspiron, G5, 11th Generation Intel processors, and 2021 Dell models and other lines. If it works for you, please leave a comment below so others may know...




					brendangreenley.com
				




If you could unlock voltage control, you could probably shave 10°C off of your full load temperatures. 

Try using ThrottleStop 9.3.1. It has a fix so data for each thread is reported individually. 









						ThrottleStop (9.5) Download
					

ThrottleStop is a small application designed to monitor for and correct the three main types of CPU throttling that are being used on many lapto




					www.techpowerup.com


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## aftertheangels (Jul 25, 2021)

unclewebb said:


> What type of thermal paste did you use and how did you apply it?


Thank you for your quick reply!

Cleaned every trace of the old thermal paste, and repasted with Arctic MX4, a friend had a freshly opened tube of it - not sure if the best for laptops, but for sure better than the dried one I found. Repasted both CPU and GPU of course.

I will try and confirm what you say about the heatsink next time I open it, somehow comforting to know that I'm not alone in this struggle with the XPS model.

Attaching a logfile below while playing a couple of minutes of DOOM.


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## unclewebb (Jul 25, 2021)

The log file shows your CPU is getting up to 100°C. You are never going to get smooth gaming performance when your CPU is constantly bouncing off the thermal throttling temperature. Thermal throttling is the CPU MHz getting yanked back and forth hundreds of times per second from full speed to 800 MHz. Fast slow, fast slow. Thermal throttling works well but it is definitely not ideal.

Some users have had trouble with MX-4 on laptop CPUs. Try using a different paste next time. How well MX-4 works depends on the laptop.






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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
				




You can let your CPU constantly thermal throttle or you can reduce the PL2 power limit to 45W and have power limit throttling instead of thermal throttling. Not sure which one would be best or if it will make any difference to game play. Throttling is throttling. Ultimately you need to improve your cooling if that is possible. 

Unlocking CPU voltage control would help solve this problem. There might be an older BIOS version available for your laptop before Intel and Dell started locking out voltage control.


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## aftertheangels (Jul 26, 2021)

unclewebb said:


> Unlocking CPU voltage control would help solve this problem. There might be an older BIOS version available for your laptop before Intel and Dell started locking out voltage control.



Thank you again for your help, I'll look into limiting PL2 first - kind of wanted to save messing up with BIOS as a last resource


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