Throttling Asus ROG Strix (14900HX & 4070)

[Letty]

My laptop experiences such a picture: 14900HX goes up to 70-80C in games and spikes up to 90-99 ocassionaly for milliseconds (then comes back to 70-80) with 1-2% (sometimes 6-8% but rarer) throttling. For example, when i am opening a map or starting some loading stuff in a game. No freezes and I don't notice any slow downs in the game. But. It happens either at stock settings or throttlestop.
It looks like that (100% CPU load was a stress test with 0% throttling after setting ThrottleStop, after it was Cyberpunk 2077):

My ThrottleStop looks like that. It is very rough and currently I am not about a fine tuning, because somehow even if I set PL1 and PL2 to such ridiculous limits for 14900HX it still hits 90C+ and throttles. I have tried to set the Prochot offset to 100C, no changes. Seems like the CPU throttles even at 91C.

As you can see, Max Power was 83W during the game, but CPU still hits 90+ and throttles in game moments. How come? Shoud I reduce my 14900HX to 15W and make him a Celeron to avoild it? xD Probably I miss something out.
GPU is running 75C during the game, as far as CPU sits upon the same cooling pipe it should be close to GPU temp. Is it even real to prevent the CPU from spiking up with such a little but throttling?
Any thoughts?

 

[unclewebb]

How come?

A 14900HX in a laptop is like having a funny car engine in a passenger car. The cooling has to be perfect.

I am not familiar with your Asus laptop model. Some Lenovo Legion laptops with the same 14900HX can run in the 150W to 175W range before they inevitably trigger thermal throttling. Your level of cooling is about half of that. I am not sure if the heatsink Asus used on your laptop is in the same league as what Lenovo is using. I do think it should be able to dissipate more heat than what it is presently capable of.

If it was my laptop, I would open it up and replace the thermal paste with some Honeywell PTM 7950. It is possible that the person working on the assembly line that day botched the installation of the heatsink. This is a known issue. I would not trust the local shop to try and fix this. You have no idea what level of experience they have or what thermal paste they will use. It is usually best to do this critical maintenance procedure yourself so you know it has been done properly.

GPU is running 75C during the game

Nvidia GPUs tend to run cooler compared to Intel CPUs in the same laptop. This might only mean that Intel does a better job of positioning their multiple core temperature sensors on the hot spot of each core. Trying to compare the peak temperature of a Nvidia GPU vs an Intel CPU does not really tell you anything useful.

 

[Letty]

150W to 175W range before they inevitably trigger thermal throttling

The weird thing is - it doesn't work that simple in my case. I can run a test at 120W with no throttling for hours.
1) A liquid metal here from the factory. Both the CPU and the GPU.
2) A steady load goes well. So the CPU may throttle at 80W in some apps but can be calm at some 120W steady load.
3) And the most interesting thing: the speed of fans is the same when throttling happens or doesn't happen in these scenarious (like 4500 - 4000 - 5600). This laptos has 3 fans.
4) You know, something might have worked out if I saw a dose-dependent effect. Like I set 120W = 20% throttling. I set 80W = 5%. Yet nope, the change is minimal. 1-5% anyway.
5) I didn't compare the chips but I meant that while GPU heats up the same pipe up to any dergree - a CPU goes up to the temp

 

[unclewebb]

Some laptops use an embedded controller EC to set separate turbo power limits compared to the MSR and MMIO power limits that ThrottleStop has access to. Whether the Nvidia GPU is active or not can be used to determine how much power is available for the CPU to use.

liquid metal

That is what I thought. It is still possible that someone did a poor job applying it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ASUSROG/comments/17cs9fm

So the CPU may throttle at 80W in some apps but can be calm at some 120W steady load.

When testing, is the GPU active at 80W? The extra heat from the Nvidia GPU might cause CPU thermal throttling even when CPU power consumption is lower compared to a 120W CPU only stress test like Cinebench.

 

[Letty]

It is still possible that someone did a poor job applying it.

Sure. Anyway watching other laptop reviews thay have close temps in games. 70-80C. Or even higher. And they also spikes up to 90C+ for milliseconds. I just don't know if they have throttling there.

When testing, is the GPU active at 80W? The extra heat from the Nvidia GPU might cause CPU thermal throttling even when CPU power consumption is lower compared to a 120W CPU only stress test like Cinebench.

Inactive. Unlucky I can't put such a load upon the CPU and GPU simultaneosly. I've tried - they both are just receiving less W to balance it out.

Well. Anyways, the last questiong is does it harm the CPU? Occasional 90C+ hits with a few throttling?

 

[unclewebb]

does it harm the CPU?

The purpose of thermal throttling at 100°C is to make sure the CPU does not suffer any temperature related degradation. Intel has always claimed that under 100°C is a "safe operating temperature". Anything over that is not guaranteed by Intel to be safe. Your laptop shows PROCHOT Offset is set to 5 so it will start thermal throttling a little prematurely at 95°C. That should reduce any temperature related risks even further.

The main problem with 13th and 14th Gen desktop CPUs is voltage related degradation. The jury is still out on the very similar HX processors that are in the laptops. I would be more worried about high voltage than high temperatures.

Your ThrottleStop screenshot shows very high VID voltage. Are you using ThrottleStop to undervolt the CPU? You should be doing that if possible. The next TS version will allow V/F Point voltage adjustment of the HX and K series CPUs. This might be a great way to keep the max VID voltage in check.

 

[Letty]

The main problem with 13th and 14th Gen desktop CPUs is voltage related degradation.

The microcode update has come in august/october.
"Two months later, in August, Intel released the 0x129 microcode update, which limited VID requests by the CPU to 1.55 V. Finally, in October, Intel announced that it had discovered the root cause of the majority of CPU failures and released microcode 0x12B. This microcode update prevents the processor from improperly requesting elevated voltages during idle and light-load states."

Are you using ThrottleStop to undervolt the CPU?

I've tried but no luck. Tried to lower the overall CPU Offset voltage, tried to decrease Cores Ratio.
So currently I don't use anything cause it makes no difference yet.
Voltage is jumping from 0.700 to 1.400 ocassionally.

 

[unclewebb]

I've tried but no luck.

Can you explain that? Most people who undervolt their 14900HX CPUs have good results. What sort of settings did you try and what were the results? Did you undervolt both the P core and the P cache? Did you adjust the mV Boost value to this same value?

microcode update prevents the processor from improperly requesting elevated voltages

Call me a sceptic. I am not yet convinced that the microcode update will completely solve the degradation issues. I have already heard about a user running the latest microcode from day one and they are already having stability issues compared to when their CPU was new and first installed. I think it is still too early to know how well the microcode update really works long term.

The 13th and 14th Gen seem fragile. I would undervolt and I would also consider lowering the 1 and 2 core active multiplier. If you set all of the turbo multis to 52, the CPU will not have to jump so high with the voltage. This will sacrifice some light load performance going from 58 to 52 but realistically, no one is ever going to notice a performance difference when lightly loaded surfing the internet or watching a YouTube video. Your CPU might thank you later.

 

[Letty]

Did you undervolt both the P core and the P cache? Did you adjust the mV Boost value to this same value?

I haven't gone that deep. As far as I know, decreasing Watts automatically decreases voltage (P = I * V if I am not wrong) so I decided to start from there with P1 and P2.
I will try other things tomorrow.

Also, when I make settings in Throttlestop I can't properly reboot the laptop. It stucks upon a logo. So i need to shut it down with the power button and only then the laptop finally is able to boot the system. This doesn't happen with Intel Extreme Tuning Utility and Asus Armory Crate. A huge factor for me, but probably can handle it if something really useful comes out.

 

[Letty]

I am not yet convinced that the microcode update will completely solve the degradation issues.

Probably need to monitor max voltage levels for a day or two. But need to acknowledge what level is exactly a red line to find out if the CPU crosses it.

 

[unclewebb]

when I make settings in Throttlestop I can't properly reboot the laptop

What changes are you making?