- last edited on by
ROGBot
I haven't changed the thermal paste in my rog g751jy in 2 years so I did it yesterday. I also cleaned all the dust. Before doing it, while playing Battlefield 1 my gpu was constantly at 86-87 degrees celsius and throttling, while cpu was around 92-97, with clock speeds bouncing between 3GHz and 3.3GHz, also reaching 3.4GHz sometimes. Fan speeds were around 3000rpm for gpu and 3300rpm for the cpu. After I was done with the paste and cleaning, I ran Battlefield 1 again and gpu never went above 75-76 degrees and was always at full speed. CPU however, runs at 3.4GHz all the time, and then it gets to 92 degrees and drops to 2.5GHz and ~83 degrees, and then goes back to 3.4GHz until it's at 92 degrees and it's a never ending cycle. Fan speeds were 3000rpm for the gpu and 3000rpm for the cpu (300rpm less than before for cpu). Idle temperatures are 40 degrees for the gpu and 45 degrees for cpu. Is this a normal result? I'm happy with the gpu results, but underwhelmed with cpu results. It never fell to 2.5GHz before, and why are the fans running 300rpm slower? Did I do something wrong? Any way to fix this? The thermal paste I used was Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and Arctic thermal pads for the vram and vrm (0.5mm and 1mm). I spread the paste with included spatula, as recommended by thermal grizzly. Is there maybe a curing time for the paste or something?
Here are the pictures:
Before cleaning:
GPU:
After cleaning (I cleaned the vram and vrms too but didn't take a picture):
CPU:
GPU:
New paste and thermal pads:
Thermal pads on the heatsink:
GPU:
CPU:
Here are the pictures:
Before cleaning:
GPU:
After cleaning (I cleaned the vram and vrms too but didn't take a picture):
CPU:
GPU:
New paste and thermal pads:
Thermal pads on the heatsink:
GPU:
CPU:
Ok, now it's pretty clear.
In the second video, before cleaning and repasting, your CPU was throttling because of CPU temps. Intel CPU starts throttling at 93-94 °C, and this kind of throttling reduces clock speeds just a little bit, like we can see in the second video. CPU clocks stay in the 3.1 - 3.3 GHz range, instead of 3.4 GHz (this is the turbo clock with all 4 cores active).
In the first video, after repasting, CPU temps stay in the low 90s, that is quite high but not enough to start CPU thermal throttling.
Now your throttling is much more aggressive, falling down from 3.4 GHz turbo clock to 2.6 GHz that is the base clock for the 4720HQ: this is the thermal VR throttling. You can see it in HWiNFO stats, at IA: VR Thermal Alert, and in your screenshot it's marked as YES.
You should see also an entry under CPU [#0]: Intel Core i7-4720HQ: Enhanced called VR VCC Temperature (SVID). If you can't see it, just put under load your CPU and then restore original order in HWiNFO, that temp sensor doesn't work if it's cold and show 11 °C or less (grayed out).
If you will monitor that sensor when you play games, you will see it goes up to 96 °C and then your CPU will start to throttle at base clock (2.6 GHz).
The paradox is that before repasting your CPU was thermal throttling because of CPU temp, and that was a "soft" throttling, cutting down just 200-300 MHz to keep CPU in the low 90s. Now, after repasting, your CPU is a bit cooler, it doesn't reach throttling temperature, but this allows the voltage regulator to run hotter and trigger another throttling system, that is more aggressive than the previous one.
Bad news n° 1: repasting has worked, but maybe not enough. Low 90s are still quite high temps for stock clock and voltages, with a fresh applied thermal paste and a clean laptop.
What's the temperature inside your room? I'd try to use a custom fan profile, to let them spin a bit faster. High 80s, with a demanding CPU game like Battlefield is already a quite good result in the middle of the summer.
Bad news n° 2: CPU VRs are not cooled, they are abandoned to their heat. I put some little heatsink over them just to have a sort of passive cooling, they help but don't work miracles.
Also in this case, if the fans spin a little faster, they should create more airflow in the chassis, that "could" cool VRs a little better. But without heatsink and active cooling, this is a very minor effect.
Anyway it's strange that you hit VR thermal at 40-45 W of CPU power, IIRC even with stock speeds I experienced this at higher power consumption (at least 60 W); but if your room temp is around 28-30 °C this can be possible (I simply don't play games/use intensive apps in summer lol).
You can also try to disable HyperThreading, if you don't use your laptop for rendering/encoding, heavy multitasking. From my experience, many games (even recent ones) will run better with HT off, and CPU stay cooler, with less power draw.
If you can't disable it through Windows or CPU affinity, as last resort I would try to set a limit on CPU multiplier, something like 3.1 - 3.2 GHz through XTU. 200-300 MHz should not affect your gaming performance, but can be enough to not suffer from aggressive throttling, that can cause FPS drops or inconsistency.
In the second video, before cleaning and repasting, your CPU was throttling because of CPU temps. Intel CPU starts throttling at 93-94 °C, and this kind of throttling reduces clock speeds just a little bit, like we can see in the second video. CPU clocks stay in the 3.1 - 3.3 GHz range, instead of 3.4 GHz (this is the turbo clock with all 4 cores active).
In the first video, after repasting, CPU temps stay in the low 90s, that is quite high but not enough to start CPU thermal throttling.
Now your throttling is much more aggressive, falling down from 3.4 GHz turbo clock to 2.6 GHz that is the base clock for the 4720HQ: this is the thermal VR throttling. You can see it in HWiNFO stats, at IA: VR Thermal Alert, and in your screenshot it's marked as YES.
You should see also an entry under CPU [#0]: Intel Core i7-4720HQ: Enhanced called VR VCC Temperature (SVID). If you can't see it, just put under load your CPU and then restore original order in HWiNFO, that temp sensor doesn't work if it's cold and show 11 °C or less (grayed out).
If you will monitor that sensor when you play games, you will see it goes up to 96 °C and then your CPU will start to throttle at base clock (2.6 GHz).
The paradox is that before repasting your CPU was thermal throttling because of CPU temp, and that was a "soft" throttling, cutting down just 200-300 MHz to keep CPU in the low 90s. Now, after repasting, your CPU is a bit cooler, it doesn't reach throttling temperature, but this allows the voltage regulator to run hotter and trigger another throttling system, that is more aggressive than the previous one.
Bad news n° 1: repasting has worked, but maybe not enough. Low 90s are still quite high temps for stock clock and voltages, with a fresh applied thermal paste and a clean laptop.
What's the temperature inside your room? I'd try to use a custom fan profile, to let them spin a bit faster. High 80s, with a demanding CPU game like Battlefield is already a quite good result in the middle of the summer.
Bad news n° 2: CPU VRs are not cooled, they are abandoned to their heat. I put some little heatsink over them just to have a sort of passive cooling, they help but don't work miracles.
Also in this case, if the fans spin a little faster, they should create more airflow in the chassis, that "could" cool VRs a little better. But without heatsink and active cooling, this is a very minor effect.
Anyway it's strange that you hit VR thermal at 40-45 W of CPU power, IIRC even with stock speeds I experienced this at higher power consumption (at least 60 W); but if your room temp is around 28-30 °C this can be possible (I simply don't play games/use intensive apps in summer lol).
You can also try to disable HyperThreading, if you don't use your laptop for rendering/encoding, heavy multitasking. From my experience, many games (even recent ones) will run better with HT off, and CPU stay cooler, with less power draw.
If you can't disable it through Windows or CPU affinity, as last resort I would try to set a limit on CPU multiplier, something like 3.1 - 3.2 GHz through XTU. 200-300 MHz should not affect your gaming performance, but can be enough to not suffer from aggressive throttling, that can cause FPS drops or inconsistency.
andreacos92 wrote:
You should see also an entry under CPU [#0]: Intel Core i7-4720HQ: Enhanced called VR VCC Temperature (SVID). If you can't see it, just put under load your CPU and then restore original order in HWiNFO, that temp sensor doesn't work if it's cold and show 11 °C or less (grayed out).
.
Yup, just checked with battlefield again, it goes to 96 degrees:
I don't have a thermometer here right now, but it does feel like room temperature is 28-30 degrees.
Is there anything I could do other than increasing fan speed and disabling hyperthreading?
Also, someone here mentioned the k5 pro thermal paste for the vr chips, but I assume it's not going to make a difference since CPU VRs aren't cooled at all like you said.
EDIT: I just remembered that I have a fan in my room that shows temperature when you turn it on, and it shows 29 degrees.
Cannon.19 wrote:
Yup, just checked with battlefield again, it goes to 96 degrees:
I don't have a thermometer here right now, but it does feel like room temperature is 28-30 degrees.
Is there anything I could do other than increasing fan speed and disabling hyperthreading?
Also, someone here mentioned the k5 pro thermal paste for the vr chips, but I assume it's not going to make a difference since CPU VRs aren't cooled at all like you said.
EDIT: I just remembered that I have a fan in my room that shows temperature when you turn it on, and it shows 29 degrees.
"Well". 29° C is not low anyway. I remember some tests where it has been shown how ambient temperature has a direct influence on CPU/GPU temps. So, if room was 22 °C, your system temps should be about 7 degrees lower.
Before disabling HT, I would try undervolting: it's the simplest, safest solution, with no performace reduction. Undervolting (and disabling HT, but that is a bit of weird solution) should reduce CPU power draw and accordingly CPU VRs temperature. You should see some improvements.
Increasing fan speed will reduce mainly CPU and GPU core temps, as said.
From what I understand from the other post, K5 Pro Thermal paste can be used as thermal pads replacement, because it's more viscous than normal thermal paste, so you can use it for GPU VRAM chips and GPU VRMs. But CPU VRMs are not cooled in our laptop, so it would be useless in your case.
Try starting with a -50 mV undervolting, and do some tests. It's not the best time to do so (because of ambient temperature), but you can try playing games straight, to combine business with pleasure.
This are mine (sorry for bad focus-old photo), with the little passive heatsinks. Just to say, in some test with keyboard popped out and a little third fan pointed on the VRMs, I could cool them of about -20 degrees, and I can mantain about 85-90 W of long-term CPU power draw without throttling. Of course that was just for test, then i closed my laptop :rolleyes:
I tried also to "link" the VRM chokes (R36 modules) to the copper heatpipe (the gap is few millimeters), but then I had higher and bad core-spreaded CPU temps, because the pressure on heatpipe tended to bend it a little bit, preventing the right plane pressure between CPU die and copper heatsink (this is one of the reasons why I pointed on your first repasting with pads, it takes very little to preventing right contact).
Plus, since I have no battery inside and sothere is plenty of space, I want to try to put a little third fan inside the laptop, between the vents, to blow air to the CPU VRM heatsinks. But this is a bit too far.
