My First FORAY into XTU undervolting.

DISCLOSURE: before I go further, I have an AW 13 R3 with the specs in my sig. I bought the laptop with guidance from @Donald@HIDevolution, and I was awestruck by the OLED screen (still am). I decided to take the "reforming cooling behavior" one step further by using Intel XTU to undervolt the 7700hq that resides in my laptop. I stuck to something conservative; 75mw to be safe. I know some here have done 100mw-plus, but I was scared beyond 75. Even at 75mw, what I noticed was a lot of improvements on the CPU end. I didn't do any crazy-scientific tests (I leave those for @Mr. Fox and those who are far superior to my laptop optimizing abilities), so I stuck to Project CARS as my "crash-test dummy". The reason I used Project CARS was because it has a tendency to be a bit of a CPU and GPU virus (not furmark level, but it will happily send GPUs and CPUs sky-high...) With some not so scientific testing, I managed the folllowing:

Max core temp: 88 Deg C without XTU; with XTU: 81 Deg C.

I'm happy with 7 Deg C knockoff.

As for what I had @Donald@HIDevolution do when I ordered my laptop, I requested CLU and ICD7 (the choices at the time, there was no Thermal Grizzly, Gelid, nor Fujipoly available at the time) on the CPU and GPU. The Dedicated GPU though, still happily zooms right up to 92 Deg C, even with ICD7. Yes, I know... it's not an MXM or desktop-chip with delidding nor replaceabllity, but I'm happy I knocked 7 Deg C off the CPU on Project CARS. I'm going to test Project CARS 2 next (which was even worse on this laptop), to see what I get.

NB: stock voltage on XTU stress test: 88 Deg C; 75mw undervolt: 74 Deg C. So there is something to this (and I think Project CARS is a stress test in and of itself).

 

very nice, you could also do a gpu undervolt without any performance loss, just today did a -150mv undervolt of my gtx 1070, dropped it a few degrees while also still maintaining its 1911mhz clock, 92c on a 1060 seems rather high tho considering my 1070 was running at 61c before the undervolt

 

How do I undervolt the gpu

 

you can use MSI Afterburner, heres a good video guide for it by OWNorDISOWN

 

heres a more in depth guide by Mr Fox

 

Undervolting cannot damage your CPU, so feel free to go as low as you possibly can. Other than that I'm quite suprised about the poor cooling performance of the Alienware, a GTX 1060 shouldn't be that hard to cool down given that it's only a 75W card.

 

Make sure to change to power saver plan and restart to see if it's stable. I thought my undervolt was fine until I did that.

 

There is No, 0, -273.15 Kelvin, Nada.... absolutely any reason at all to be scared of Undevolting. It is impossible to harm the hardware from undervolting. Your laptop can easily handle -120mv

Too much undervolt will cause a BSOD, or immediate commuter shutdown; where XTU will reset voltage on reboot. No harm is ever done because of this (unless you had unsaved data open for some reason)

 

I'm going to resume my foray and go down to -100mv. I'm a bit of a chicken with this stuff.

Project CARS (and Project CARS 2) are both GPU monstrosities. Even my 1080 Classified with 2 120mm Noctua NF-F12 Industrials blowing on it goes up to the low 70s C. Other games I have such as Assetto Corsa result in much MUCH lower CPU and GPU temps. I get low 70s to mid 70s CPU without UV and mid to high 70s on GPU without UV.

 

I'm sticking to a 100mv undervolt. I know, a lot of you are going to say "GO 150!!!" but at 100mv under, CPU temps max out at 71 Deg C on XTU and at 78 Deg C with Project CARS. I'm going to see on the pCARS forums if there's any known issue towards pCARS beaning CPUs to the extent it's beaning mine.

I managed, via @Mr. Fox video to undervolt my GPU by 100mv. (HOORAY!) it worked during pCARS gameplay, but even with a 100mv undervolt the game shot the GPU straight up to 92 Deg C and slammed the clocks from 1800MHz right down to 1450MHz to 1500MHz. If Undervolting is doing not much, I'm beginning to think conclusively that pCARS and pCARS 2 just beat the tar out of GPUs and CPUs, and there's not a lot that can be done. I'm going to try other games that I have though, but pCARS and pCARS 2 may just be game-viruses.

 

very nice, im debating whether or not to keep this gpu undervolt or use a more agressive one at the cost of 100mhz lower clock, currently im at 900mv at 1911mhz clock, which is the max stock clock on my 1070, however i also have a stable 850mv at 1797mhz, whether or not that 100mhz makes a huge difference to my fps in games, that i havent tested yet aside from heaven benchmark and doom, both of which had same fps as the stock max clock

 

If it saves you a few degrees for a couple FPS it’s worrh it to me

 

Have you thought of trying another repaste? It is extremely unusual for the GPU to hit temps higher then the CPU on these systems. The only time I have seen it happen is if the heatsink is warped and not making contact. My first R4 over a year ago had a very similar problem but only 1/4 of the GPU die was making contact so.....

 

so after a little experimenting ive been able to hit 800mv at 1708mhz and its stable, and from the games ive tried it on, my fps has remained unchanged, so what i was thinking was, using that undervolt as the default, and if i want the extra performance, i can simply set the gpu back to default whenever i want. what do you guys think?

 

scratch that idea lol, that ended up being unstable, ill just stick to 900mv at 1911mhz, nice temp drop while maintaining max clock

 

The tech that was supposed to swap out my heatsink today unboxed a heatsink right in front of me. It was warped to hell. That thing was so bent it wasn't even funny, wouldn't even sit properly in the chassis. He told me it happens a lot with these Alienware heatsinks. I suspect yours is also bent because my GPU doesn't go much above 80C, doesn't matter if I replace the thermal paste or not. The GPU usually stays around the same temp while you get really great temperature improvements on the CPU.

See if your heatsink is warped and if so try to get it replaced under warranty. If not, try to carefully bend it straight.

 

oh my heatsink is fine, normally without undervolt my gpu peaks at 61c, but i wanted to see how far i could get the temps to drop, decided on 900mv tho, which enables the 1070 to run at 1911mhz while not hitting power cap like it did before

 

Don't go too aggressively low on undervolting GPU, its just horrible you need to go Maxwell like GPU core clocks to get the temps in check. Just find a sweet spot that gives you consistently stable FPS. Its always better to get steady core/shader clocks rather than going for peak clocks.
Since you're OC'ing your LCD display, you might as well turn on Adaptive Sync Control or Fast sync using nvidia inspector profile to get somewhat less lags when FPS dips suddenly to 50-60 from 100.

 

ok ill look into nvidia inspector, and yeah after playing around with the undervolting, i found out my card was actually running at 1860mhz, the 1911mhz was infact a best case senario looking at the voltage curve on stock, so i went with the 850mv @ 1797mhz, which is 63mhz lower, from what games ive tested it in, the fps seems to be not affected at all, and running heaven again, i actually got a higher score and framerate then that of stock