I have a Dell laptop which is really thin and lightweight; I have a hunch that they compromised the effectiveness of the cooling and thus the performance of the system. Wondering if any wirenons have experience of working around this.Basically, after a

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File: 1653139369239.jpg (132.11 KB, 1920x1080, amd-radeon-graphics.jpg)

Laptop cooling Cidoku 05/21/22 (Sat) 13:22:49 No.1211

I have a Dell laptop which is really thin and lightweight; I have a hunch that they compromised the effectiveness of the cooling and thus the performance of the system. Wondering if any wirenons have experience of working around this.

Basically, after a period of comfortably managing CPU-intensive tasks (not even cryptomining, I mean watching YT or audio editing in Audacity), the entire system turns horribly sluggish. I've worked out that this happens exactly when the CPU temperature reaches 97C; at that point, the CPU takes aggressive action and limits its clock frequency to 399Mhz (normally it's up to 2GHz). It maintains this throttle until the temperature is back below 87C.

Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening? It seems the root of the problem is the temperature reaching a critical point too often.

I have thought about underclocking the CPU so that it goes at a slower frequency than 2GHz; this would reduce performance, but if it stopped the performance cliff-drops (by making the CPU temperature increase more slowly), it'd be worth it.

The CPU is an AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, by the way.

Billy 05/21/22 (Sat) 18:20:12 No.1212

File: 1653157212096.jpg (32 KB, 596x447, cooling-pad.jpg)

You could try getting one of these laptop cooling pads, although I am not sure how good they actually are.

Present Time 05/21/22 (Sat) 18:32:45 No.1213

I've found that just pointing a fan at the laptop makes a massive massive difference. What OS are you using? If you're on windows, I found that permanently setting battery mode to "best battery" makes the laptop run very cool, while causing no noticeable impact for general use (firefox, anime, circuit design, etc)

Cidoku 05/22/22 (Sun) 19:22:56 No.1214

You gotta clean dust and change thermal paste, it's the only real way to deal with this. Take it to a repair guy, watch him do it and then do it yourself next time.

AzureDiamond 05/25/22 (Wed) 20:26:12 No.1215

>>1213
>What OS are you using? If you're on windows, I found that permanently setting battery mode to "best battery" makes the laptop run very cool
I'm on Linux. The equivalent to "best battery" mode is to set the frequency governor to "powersave", e.g. with this command:

cpupower frequency-set -g powersave

However, this didn't really make much difference to my issue. The laptop still heats up very quickly.

>>1214
Interesting…thanks anon, I'll look into that.

Observer 05/30/22 (Mon) 19:44:32 No.1216

I came across a similar issue, it is an old Windows laptop (not mine), and it is cold to the touch but according to the task manager, the CPU runs at a pathetic frequency of 0.5 GHz and the CPU load never goes over 25% (does that mean only one of the four cores is used? or is it because it should run at least around 2 GHz?). I have no idea how to check these things on WIndows and searching around it seems like everyone wants to convince me to download some malware bundled shareware to do things that should be trivial to do on a modern operating system. Should I just clean it and hope it makes the issue go away or is there something that needs to be checked?

Observer 05/30/22 (Mon) 22:35:25 No.1217

File: 1653950125731.png (8.12 KB, 96x72, trolsussmile.png)

>>1216
overestimating the capabilities of windows, frien? Also how the hell does that thing run it and be any usable?

Zodiac 06/01/22 (Wed) 17:13:48 No.1218

File: 1654103628065.jpg (47.44 KB, 447x589, 1630530512054.jpg)

>>1217
> how the hell does that thing run it
Barely.
> and be any usable?
It wasn't. I took it apart only to realize that it does not actually have any fans. I booted a live GNU/Linux on it, the sensors said the temperatures were normal and the CPUs were running at normal frequencies. I rebooted into Windows mentally preparing to upgrade faulty drivers or just give up but suddenly it was working normally too. Maybe it was afraid that, now that I knew the speeds the CPU was actually capable of, I would ditch Windows, but unfortunately it's not my call. I have no idea what was wrong or how to avoid it happening again in the future, but that's life running Windows, right?

Guest 06/01/22 (Wed) 23:57:10 No.1219

>>1218
>took it apart only to realize that it does not actually have any fans.
Is it supposed to be one of those fan-less designs, or it just that fucked?
>Maybe it was afraid that, now that I knew the speeds the CPU was actually capable of, I would ditch Windows
Spookware is spooky, huh? :D
>avoid it happening again in the future, but that's life running Windows, right?
Well pretty much. I'd say try convincing whoever has it to ditch win, since I hardly imagine them doing anything that would be win exclusive software or anything.