troubleshooting the 5-9300H undervolting for a Rog Strix G laptop
troubleshooting the 5-9300H undervolting for a Rog Strix G laptop
I recently reset my laptop and after reinstalling ThrottleStop, noticed that my FIVR control panel and my ability to adjust voltage settings disappeared. Following a guide from a year ago, I’m confused about why these changes didn’t work. I’ve been searching online and it seems my BIOS version has changed from 305 to 307. I’m seeking assistance with a possible workaround for thermal throttling and restoring the performance improvements I once experienced. I might try reverting to an older BIOS, but I’m concerned about damaging my computer. Any advice or suggestions for better performance would be greatly appreciated.
Since the new bios contained the voltage lock, there's nothing you can do about it without having to roll back.
If you're not ok with doing that anymore - the risk of the brick is understandable - then you're looking at the basics:
-Opening up the laptop and cleaning/dusting the fans.
-Repasting the cpu/gpu
-Get the back end of the laptop elevated. It is not necessary to buy a cooling pad; the fan(s) that you see on some of them don't really do that much, but it's the elevation and increased breathing room that aids bottom ventilation the most.
Hopefully your particular laptop has bottom vents...
If you want to 'dig deeper':
-Windows power plan to Balanced. If it's already on balanced, try changing the processor max power state to 99%...
Since the new bios contained the voltage lock, there's nothing you can do about it without having to roll back.
If you're not ok with doing that anymore - the risk of the brick is understandable - then you're looking at the basics:
-Opening up the laptop and cleaning/dusting the fans.
-Repasting the cpu/gpu
-Get the back end of the laptop elevated. It is not necessary to buy a cooling pad; the fan(s) that you see on some of them don't really do that much, but it's the elevation and increased breathing room that aids bottom ventilation the most.
Hopefully your particular laptop has bottom vents...
If you want to 'dig deeper':
-Windows power plan to Balanced. If it's already on balanced, try changing the processor max power state to 99%. It may reduce power consumption while keeping performance.
If successful, you might be able to go a little further, 98%, 97%, 96%... 95% is pretty much guaranteed to hurt performance, so you won't have far to try with this one.
If you want to 'dig even deeper':
-Undervolt gpu. This one can help because in most laptops, the cpu and gpu share the same heatsink. It may also aid the gpu's performance; running cooler and bumping power limits less frequently leads to longer sustained boost clocks.
You'll have to use Msi Afterburner's Curve Editor. You can also save profiles if you wish - I recommend making use of that.
Voltage control is limited for Nvidia gpus. There are several voltage points in the curve that you can select and enforce by locking it with the L-key, and then click Apply.
Before you start fiddling with that, you should play a game or whatnot and see how much voltage the gpu normally. See what the highest value is, and you can work from there.
Go back to the Curve Editor, select and lock a point or 2 below what the highest requested voltage was. Doing this does come with lower boost clocks, but you can offset this a little by pressing the Up and Down keys in the Editor.
You can go to lower voltage points if you wish.
Is there a 'best voltage point' and core frequency offset? I'm sure there is, but it's going to take some time for you to figure out - silicon lottery, each sample is different, and all that jazz.
Gpu undervolting is convoluted as heck. I think the Gpu Boost algorithm plays a part in that. Cpu undervolting is way easier to work with.
That's why I put this option at the bottom.
I'm still playing around with it myself. So far, I've managed to figure out how far I can push the core clock until I run into the Vrel limit, which throttles the gpu due to either not enough voltage, or core clock offset too high.
Now I still got to figure out which point on the curve yields the most performance with that offset.