Thermal throttling at low temps

Hi all,
I have AW 17 R4 7820HK and GTX 1080. Repasted and re-padded couple of times now, currently with LM.

Recently I noticed that CPU is downclocking during games like WoW and Tomb Raider. Reason in XTU is provided as Thermal Throttling. Temps on both CPU and GPU peak at 70 C max. Power mode is set as High Performance. GPU overclocked at +150 core, +450 mem. CPU - 4.2 or 4.4 all cores - getting the same issue with both profiles.

In Throttlestop reason is BD Prochot. I can disable BD Prochot in Throttlestop but I would like to understand why is this triggering in the first place? Temps are absolutely fine.

When doing synthetic tests such as AIDA64 - no throttling is happening.

Any suggestions or ideas from anyone?

 

Did you use foam dams or tape to prevent LM run-offs?
Take a look after disassembling the laptop. Before that, can you use speedshift at 0 in TS and see if the problem occurs again?

 

I taped around CPU and GPU. LM has nothing to do with it as it was same "thermal throttling" with using kryonaut. I cant even call it thermal throttling as the temps are in the 60s only.

 

This usually happens when a sensor goes bad on the motherboard. BD PROCHOT stands for bi-directional processor hot. It allows other sensors on the motherboard or within the power adapter to send throttling signals directly to the CPU. It uses the same mechanism within the CPU as thermal throttling so some monitoring software (XTU) reports this problem as thermal throttling but by looking at your temps, that is obviously wrong.

Contacting Dell and trying to find someone that can understand this problem will have you trying to pull your hair out. I would just use ThrottleStop to disable the BD PROCHOT signal path so bogus throttling signals like this will be ignored by your CPU. If your CPU ever gets too hot for real, it will throttle and slow down regardless if BD PROCHOT is enabled or not. Processor hot (PROCHOT) signals happen within the processor so they do not need to use the BD PROCHOT signal path.

 

What are your current settings in Throttlestop on the main page and under the TPL (Turbo Power Limits) page?

 

i have it at 100 watts for both PL1 and PL2

 

How hot does your PCH gets? BD prochot might be triggered by a too hot PCH controller.

 

i have the PCH mod with a small radiator on it. it goes to not more than 80 C.

so additionally, i noticed the following:

in HWinfo, in addition to IA: prochot, i get some other triggers too, like GT: iccmax, PL4 and RING: iccmax, PL4.

Additionally, i noticed that my battery is draining sometimes too even though im on AC power. but not during every gaming session.

I would like to thank all so far for helping me solve this. My warranty is expiring soon and I think ill have to extend it due to this..

 

The battery draining is unfortuantely normal. the 240watt psu isnt enough. I tried 3 different ones to make sure its not a fauly PSU. i slightly undervolted my GPU to counteract this.

I dont knwo what the throttle temp trigger is for the PCH in the Alienware to be honest, Mine never goes over 70c. But I have the non HK CPU version and the PCH in that one just doesnt get hot.

 

my psu is 330 as its the hk cpu but i get your point, i thought the same too.

Ill undervolt my gpu as well as cpu and see if that makes an impact. thanks

 

Latest Hwinfo64 version should show VRM temp for Cpu. Check it out. And run stock clocks for graphics and see if this change this behavior.