# Getting solid red during bench. Acer nitro 5 Core i5-9300H Geforce RTX 2060



## Ursinnig (Jun 30, 2021)

Hi, Recently learned about ThrottleStop and its uses. I bought a Acer nitro 5 laptop about a year ago and recently I've been feeling that its running really hot when I've been playing certain games Overwatch, Dota 2 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider specifically. 
So I looked into it and found this software and forum and have been trying it out a little bit. From the little bit of research I made I understand that apparently processors these days are running at high temperatures but I would still like to get it down a little bit for various reasons. 
I have seen improvements in temperature when playing and when testing using this software with basic setup. What I seem to be getting when testing in cinebench20 are solid red for pl1 under CORE and edp other under RING. Now since I'm very new to this I don't know if I'm doing anything wrong here and also what the yellows and reds really mean. I would appreciate it alot if someone more versed in this could have a look at my settings and tell me what I could do to improve.


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## unclewebb (Jun 30, 2021)

The 9300H has a 45W TDP rating. 









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At default settings, for a short period of time, this CPU can run as high as 56W (PL2 limit) but then long term, it must slow down so it does not exceed 45W. When things are lighting up red in Limit Reasons, look at the CORE column. Your screenshot is showing PL1 in red which is telling you that your CPU is being slowed down so it does not exceed the 45W PL1 turbo power limit. Reported power consumption is 44.8W so it is running exactly as intended. 

You could try increasing the PL1 power limit in ThrottleStop to 50W or 60W. This might cause your CPU to overheat so it will start thermal throttling instead of power limit throttling. 

I think your Acer laptop has hard locked the PL1 power limit to 45W. That means even if you increase this in ThrottleStop, the CPU will likely ignore that request and it will throttle at 45W regardless.

The default thermal throttling temperature for this Intel CPU is 100°C. Acer has low balled this and has set the throttling temperature to 92°C. If you look in the Options window, this means Acer set the PROCHOT Offset value to 8.

100°C - 8 = 92°C 

You have set PROCHOT Offset to 2 but this is not possible because it looks like the BIOS has already locked this setting. When you see the Lock icon in the Options window, any user changes to PROCHOT Offset will be ignored so do not even bother trying. Clear the check mark beside PROCHOT Offset and Lock PROCHOT Offset. Press OK, exit ThrottleStop and then reboot. If you immediately see the Lock icon in the Options window, that confirms that the BIOS has locked this. 

When no lock icon is visible, then you can make changes. 





You might not have to check the Speed Shift EPP box on the main screen. On most computers, Windows 10 is capable of controlling EPP so you do not have to use this feature. You can look in the FIVR monitoring table to see what EPP value the CPU is using. Move the Windows power slider in the system tray to Best Performance and usually Windows will set EPP to 84 which is good. Move the slider back and forth to see what values Windows is using. An EPP setting of 128 like you are using can reduce maximum CPU performance. It is OK to do this if your goal is to reduce heat and power consumption.

For your undervolt settings, some users get better overall results by leaving the cache at -125 mV and then they increase only the core to -150 mV or -175 mV. If you lose stability when trying this, reduce the cache voltage first. Maybe -110 mV for the cache. Do some testing with Cinebench R20 so you can see what values work best. After that, play some games to make sure everything is stable.









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I always recommend checking the FIVR - Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits option. This can help prevent the secondary power limits from being adjusted without your knowledge or approval.


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## Ursinnig (Jul 1, 2021)

Thank you so much for your reply! 
So if I understand this correctly the solid reds in my case are nothing to worry about?

I unchecked the PROCHOT offset checkbox and rebooted and the lock icon is still there so I guess I'll just leave that as is then. 

I unchecked the Speed Shift EPP like you suggested, I didn't notice a significant change on either heat reduction or increase/decrease on the performance in Cinebench anyway. Where would I find the FIVR monitoring table?

The best score I got with the undervolt settings of cache -125 and core -150 was 1790 if I recall correctly. It was stable while testing and just regular browsing etc. but crashed while I was testing it in some games, I got a bluescreen crash while tabbing out of a game. So I reduced it to cache -110 and core -140 which seem stable for now.


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## unclewebb (Jul 1, 2021)

Ursinnig said:


> solid reds


Red boxes in Limit Reasons indicate that some type of throttling is in progress. You should worry about this. If your laptop is locked down, you might not be able to do anything to fix it.



Ursinnig said:


> Where would I find the FIVR monitoring table?


Start looking in the FIVR window. Hint - top right quadrant. That data in that table is updated every second.

With the cache at -110 mV, you can start increasing only the core again. Too much cache undervolt will cause instability when gaming.


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