Low FPS on my ASUS ROG 752VM.. Took it to offical Repair shop they said 1000 Dollars.

[silverfoxiee]

Good Afternoon from Korea,

I turned on my computer few weeks ago and wanted to play Planetside 2, Planetside Arena and APEX LEGENDS all of a sudden.. on all 3 of the games I noticed huge FPS loss. So I decided to trouble shoot the problem.

I reinstalled windows, made sure all of the Windows power settings were set to maximum as well, graphic drivers updated (power settings maxed out) and this is what happens after I ran Furmark for a while, the FPS drops to 20-30... I experience the same problem with games as well they start out well and then FPS hits the bottom.



After no success on fixing it, I decided to take it to the official ASUS repair store in KOREA Yongsan. The engineer over there looked at it with his benchmark utility but ran a CPU benchmark instead. And told me that the CPU was the problem not the GPU and it was not overheating related. He said the CPU was problematic and I would need to replace the whole motherboard. The price they gave me was 1000 dollars.

My question is, is there no other way to fix this problem rather than replacing the entire motherboard.

Respectfully,

[xeromist]

The CPU is soldered to the board so if the CPU is dying you have to replace the board unless you have some very special equipment.

That said, it would be far cheaper to buy a used mainboard or system with a broken screen and swap it out yourself. If you don't feel comfortable an independent repair shop could probably do that for you.

ASUS service centers are OK when you have a warranty but I think they are too expensive to use for out-of-warranty work when most local shops can do the same work for you for less.

[silverfoxiee]

xeromist wrote:
The CPU is soldered to the board so if the CPU is dying you have to replace the board unless you have some very special equipment.

That said, it would be far cheaper to buy a used mainboard or system with a broken screen and swap it out yourself. If you don't feel comfortable an independent repair shop could probably do that for you.

ASUS service centers are OK when you have a warranty but I think they are too expensive to use for out-of-warranty work when most local shops can do the same work for you for less.

Appreciate the reply,

Well yes that is probably my best bet atm. But again why is my CPU dying I just bought this machine in 2017 and I haven't used it that much either. Some times the CPU is working properly and all of a sudden it just stops within a certain threshold at random times and doesn't want to go back up. Isnt there a possibility that this is more of a power issue than a CPU problem. Arent there power regulators built within the mainboard which could be damaged and therefore the CPU isn't receiving the power necessary? And if it is the power regulator isn't it possible to replace the damaged one(s)?

This technician just ran a benchmark and his conclusion was it was a CPU problem going off of the bench mark where the CPU freq would hit the bottom after a while.

Respectfully,

[Super_Gnome]

I doubt a benchmark is going to show a CPU needs replacing. There are a lot of things that can cause a computer to throttle (slow itself) and that will lower your FPS. Overheating because of dust build-up for example, a failing fan or cooling, or a software or driver issue. My opinion is a CPU just doesn't half work--it's all or nothing, but that's just my opinion.

I wouldn't trust a technician, either, and I speak from experience with cars. You take your car in with next to nothing wrong, and they will tell you that you need this or that, and will bleed you dry if they can.

Just my two cents, but I'd Google around and look for people with similar problems. I'd also run things to monitor temperatures, etc. and try to see what is going on. I'd also check out Tom's Hardware, and would even post something similar to your above post there--more people look at that forum than this one.

[Super_Gnome]

I just wanted to add, I'd run HWMonitor to see if your CPU cores are working normally. Also, what kind of temperatures are you getting on those cores, and on the CPU more generally? Maybe one of your cores is running at full speed, for example, because of some driver or software issue that a reinstall of windows won't change. I have had a problem like that, and it was because of Cortana in Windows, which I had to completely disable to solve the problem. I'd also look at how much memory your system is using. My rig is using up to 12 GB when running games, etc. These days, I'm reading, you probably want 16 GB installed.

Task Manager is another thing to look at. Maybe your system is needlessly running some software that needs to be turned off or uninstalled altogether.

Just my two cents.

[xeromist]

That's a good point. We don't know what the technician was going on about. So yeah if there's any other shops you feel like you can trust you would probably want to check there first before ordering parts.

[Super_Gnome]

I just wanted to further add that while Asus hardware is about the best you can get, the software is a whole other story. That the case, you may think your drivers are up to date when they are not. Windows updater does not always alert you, Intel Driver & Support Application also will not also alert you. In fact both will say you are up to date, falsely, when you are not. Asus Armoury Crate, on the other hand, is garbage too, but is likely your best hope for drivers. You might also go to your support page, but updates are not always there either. After checking all of these, if it were me, I would go to Asus support, and connect to their chat and explain that you are not sure if your drivers are up to date. The clowns there sometimes have updates that have not been posted to the support page--so there you go. Hopefully we get to the bottom of this before you plunck down $1000 needlessly.

Lastly, I would use another computer if I had one and wait a few weeks or whatever, and just see if Asus or someone comes up with a driver in the meantime. Sometimes a Windows or other update creates new problems that will cause your CPU to overwork itself, and Asus will not be on top of that for a few weeks.

Again, just my two cents, but I know these things from almost ten years of using Asus hardware. Again, the hardware is usually the best, but the software (and set up for updating) is well, often plagued with a host of issues that Asus is slow to solve.

[silverfoxiee]

Thanks for the support guys.

I just Recorded a video with whats happening with hwmonitor in the background as well. Perhaps you guys can make something out of it. It seems like a power problem. But again I am no expert .. This is only a part of the video it ran at 60+ fps for 5-10 minutes and then this is what happened.

I have tested it with a different adapter as well same problem.

You can watch the video here. 3.46 is where the fps drops.

[silverfoxiee]

Ok Ive done more research. Maybe this is the answer to my problem. I typed cpu stuck at 0.78 Ghz into google https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/Dell-xps15-9560-cpu-stuck-at-0-78-Ghz/td-p/6222936

this is a quote from a guy who posted a fix on dell. Similar to my problem. I am going to give it a try
Fixing your Dell XPS CPU stuck at minimum frequency
XPS Discussion
Backstory
Since Christmas I have owned a Dell XPS 15 running Debian. It was unbelievably slow and laggy at first and I eventually chalked it up to an intel_pstate bug causing my CPU to be stuck at 800Mhz as I thought was confirmed by this thread that links to this kernel.org bug discussion.

However, over this timeline, I also installed Windows just to update the Thunderbolt firmware for my great USB-C experiment that I posted on here.

On a whim, I opened up task manager on Windows and noticed that the CPU on Windows was also stuck at 797Mhz. Okay, so not an intel_pstate Linux bug. wtf?

BIOS resets and BIOS + firmware updates to latest did not resolve the problem.

Stumbling upon the fix
I've been searching around all sorts of forums, bug reports, and subreddits for any mention of the Dell XPS and stuck or throttled frequencies. After a couple weeks of searching, I finally stumbled across this Dell Community thread.

You need to shutdown the PC, then open the bottom lid up (unscrew 10 torx t5 screws and 2 philips ph1 under the XPS plate) and disconnect the battery for 10-15 seconds, then reconnect it back. On my notebook it returned the speedstep back.

Verdict
In a last act of desperation, I purchased a Torx screwdriver set and tried the fix. And it worked! Both Windows and, with intel_pstate reenabled, Linux now scale the CPU correctly between 800Mhz and 3.20Ghz.

I also think my GPU must have been throttled because, as a photographer, I use Darktable under Linux and it was very, very slow even when I was using the ondemand governor for Linux. It's now super snappy!

It has to be because of something that shows up in my BIOS logs that a user on the same Dell Community thread mentions:

...it was suggested that either a "bad" power supply or a "thermal" event may trigger this "safe" mode...

I did have a log entry of a bad power supply connected in early December. Clearing the logs did not fix it, only disconnecting the battery. It must be a hardware flag of some sort.

TL;DR
Use the service manual as a guide to remove the bottom of the laptop, disconnect the battery, press power for 5 seconds, and viola - fixed.

[RedSector73]

silverfoxiee wrote:

I see performance power limit kicked in on HWmonitor which isn't their prior to FPS drop. Wondering if power options were adjusted to maximum performance might stop this ?

Anyway sound like you fixed it. congrats.