[Downgrade I7 920XM to I7 740QM]

Hey guys, i'm really thinking about downgrade my i7 920XM to i7 740QM but i'm not sure how many performance i'll lost on this, whit this 740QM i'll keep playing my World of warcraft between 40~~60 Fps ?
The reason i'm considering this downgrade is because my temps are really always too high and i need to set NO TURBO at ThrottleStop to run it always under 60c, can't even run this 920XM at full performance because this high temps, to run this 920xm at x26, x25, x24, x23 at 80c i need an extra cooler and its really bad keep always openning my alienware to put it in.. And as far i remember i never get temp problems with my old 740qm, but i can't remember how was using it..

Ahh and just to consider i'll need buy a new 740qm because dont have my old anymore, but its cheap and i dont mind to buy.

Here my configs spec:
I7 920XM
8GB DDR3 1333 Kingston
240GB SSD SandDisk
1TB HDD
GTX 765M 2GB
PSU 150w to Charge my Battery
PSU 180w to play

Yes, i've some cooper coins atacched my passive cooler.
SS with throttlestop configs and temps ( with world of warcraft, youtube, steam, and some chromestuff at second plane )

So the quest is, i'll notice a ruge difference in my games with that downgrade?

 

80C is pretty OK for extreme edition processor and such OC. 740qm, mostly it will bottleneck your 765m in cpu-dependent games.
Most of the time i have temps around 70-80C while gaming/browsing/etc on my 920xm with x25 across all cores and this on stock cooling. Sometimes using HWiNFO to rump up fans to the highest possible speed.
What thermal paste do you use on your notebook?

 

Actually i'm using http://www.evga.com/articles/00638/ EVGA FROST BITE, but i dont think its good, i already used better like Arctic Silver. But maybe i just doesn't used enough this EVGA FrostBite.

Yeah, 80c is pretty fine ( i think, there's no risk to use it too many hours on that temps right?) but everytime i want to play seriously i need to open alienware put the cooler in, put cooler in a 12v font, otherwise i can't even let the turbo enable.

So you think its not a big deal this downgrade? The worst thing using this 920xm are keep mounting ans dismounting this cooler, i'm always bring my alienware with me on backpack because i'm 90% of time out of home, so thats force me keep my turbo off to using anytime without needing to open case and install cooler.

 

I think better to keep 920xm and figure out why your CPU riches such temperatures.
First of all try to buy good thermal paste, at least Arctic Cooling MX-4. As a variant, try to check heat pipes/heatsink/fan, they might be damaged or so.

On the screens you can find scores based on render test in Cinebench 15 of 740qm and OC'ed 920xm:

Spoiler

The last thing you can do, just to keep 920xm on stock clocks. It might be much cooler and still will be faster over 740qm.

 

Why do you want to run a Core i7 at under 60°C? Intel designed the 920XM so it can run reliably and at full speed at up to 100°C. That is the maximum core temperature that they are rated for, not 60°C. If your 920XM ever gets that hot, it will automatically slow down just enough to protect itself from damage. The original 45nm Core i7 was bullet proof. You can run them for hours in the high 90°C range. No worries.

How about replace your thermal paste and clean out the dust and dirt. Run the 920XM like Intel designed it to run. The XM was a monster for its day. The 720QM is a sad sack processor compared to the 920XM.

Edit - Here is a link from Intel with the max safe temperature info. Intel believes in their processors and so should you.

http://ark.intel.com/products/43126/Intel-Core-i7-920XM-Processor-Extreme-Edition-8M-Cache-2_00-GHz

 

STiHial, thanks alot for your time! You prob convinced me with this few arguments, there's a ruge difference based on this benchmark. Can you give me another thermal paste names ? this Arctic Cooling MX-4 prob will me hard to found where i live.

 

Tx alot for your reply!
For real i dont need to run under 60c, but i'm really scare to use at 80c + because i lost one motherboard and i supose that was because proc high temps, 920XM are designed to run at high temps but i dont think the same for alienware m15x motherboard. I'm not specialist you prob should know more then me.
If i set x25, x25, x25,x25 with Alienware closed i get 90c+ easy and some times it just turn off, thats why i'm always using turbo locked while i'm not with extra cooler under proc.

And i got 2 more questions if you dont mind.
There's anyway to run my proc withtout use ThrottleStop ? if i dont open this at windows start my proc seems to be locked or something like that because my gamer run extremly bad without this program on.

Its not in the topic but, there's any chance to lose performance by use low psu ? i mean i play with 180w psu, and got 2 hd's and high voltage GTX.

 

You do not know if high CPU temperatures caused your motherboard to fail. It could have been anything on the motherboard that failed and it might not have had anything to do with your CPU temperature. The Intel specification is that their CPUs can run reliably at a peak core temperature up to 100°C. Motherboard manufacturers are supposed to use components on their motherboards that can also run reliably when the peak CPU core temperature gets this hot.

Maybe your 920XM is not 100% stable at the 25 multiplier when not using your extra cooler. Why not compromise and use ThrottleStop to reduce the multiplier to 24 or 23 or 22. Using Disable Turbo and dropping all the way down to 15 is a huge loss in performance and is probably not necessary.

Try buying a Kill-a-Watt meter so you can see how much power your laptop is drawing from the wall. Your power supply might be having trouble fully powering your laptop when it is overclocked. When this happens, the power supply has a safety feature that will disable the power supply. At full load, this can cause your laptop to instantly shut down.

Many different Dell laptops have used throttling which slows their laptops down excessively. A laptop that is not capable of running at its full rated speed is not fun. That is why people use ThrottleStop. Without ThrottleStop, some laptops will run so poorly that they will be unusable.

 

Agreed...tone down your OC. My 920xm would reach thermal shutdown pretty quickly at 24x on all cores until I modded the bottom tray and used 12V fans mounted on a Coolermaster Notepal U3 alongside Conductonaut liquid metal paste. Then it would still run hot but it would hover around the low 90s (testing was done with Prime95). With no cooler or mods and using Gelid GC Extreme, the laptop would shut down within seconds of running Prime95.

I also recommend one of those power consumption meters. You'd be surprised how much power the 920xm draws just by itself when overclocked. Expect around 100W of power being drawn just by the CPU itself when overclocked enough and at 100% load on all cores. The M15X was not designed to be able to dissipate that much heat, so just tone down the OC or run it stock. It will still be faster than a 740qm at stock clocks and should not run dangerously hot.

 

You will be MUCH better off using throttlestop to create different performance profiles. With the XM you can tweak TDP and TDC values to keep temps in check as well as the multipliers to change the speed.

Tweaking the TDP/TDC can really help regulate your temps at a given speed under load as it basically allows you to cut away excess unneeded heat. You simply test under load and lower away on the values slowly until you see the multi value throttling a little.

Using this method and you will be able to get perfectly coolable temperatures at performance levels still quite a bit above even the 840qm which was the fastest non XM chip. 740qm is rubbish and chances are if you mimicked any of those chips performance settings but did the above trick you would get better temps due to the flexibility of tweaking an XM gives you.

Have a play around but do not downgrade.

 

OP you are getting good advice. I have been unable to harm my 920XM even though I was not kind to it!

On a side note. Get a 210w or 240w (slim 240w is my favorite) and turn off the AC Adapter warning in BIOS. You won't need the 150w for charging as it will work perfectly while charging your battery.

 

Thanks alot for your reply!
i've never changed TDP/TDC values and have no idea how this works, so do you mind to explain a little what i should to do ? i know what is TDP ( thermal design power ) but i've no idea what this really means and how it can help. Actually i'm using 55 for both and i think this value i get from INTEL site.

Thanks for your reply too!
Do you really think i need to change my 180w adpater ? i'm asking because a 210w adaptar on Brazil are about 240 USD and its alot for me now.
And what is different between my 180w and this 210w , because my 180w doesn't power battery.

And a last question, what about to upgrade to a GTX 9XX séries ?
I'm asking because GTX 980M cost about 1050USD on Brazil, and for this price i can buy a brandnew alienware on US. ( in Brazil most cheap alienware cost 5.200 USD FROM DELL STORE, yeah taxes on Brazil are freak you pay 5 times for 1 exported product )

 

Don't get 980M get the 970M as it runs much cooler as well as cheaper. Also you can overclock it up to 30% which add quite the performance boost.

Throttlestop. Have you read the throttlestop thread? It offers a comprehensive guide how it works. If still problems I will try to write up something simple to follow.

 

y, already read this http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-throttlestop-guide.531329/ , but I still do not understand how TDP and TCP works, thats why i never change from 55 (original value from TS.)

 

Ok man. I am a bit short on time at the moment but holidays soon so I shall do a write up for you. The 920xm is incredibly tough. The very chip I still run I stuck +200mv onto it and under air cooling I stuck it onto 4.2ghz all cores and played the entirety of Wolfenstein new order pulling somewhere around 150W haha (I was running dual PSUs so yeah total power draw with 680M then was close on 300W). Then I managed to take a screenshot of 4.52ghz. The chip is still working fine today (without a voltmod now).

You can very safely run the 920xm at 98C at 100% load doing encoding work. I used to do also do this using handbrake. I loaded up projects that ran for 18 hours sometimes and temperatures stabilised at around 97 or 98C without any hint of throttle. This was before I did the voltmod so yeah incredible abuse. I cannot imagine a modern intel chip taking such abuse and either survive or not throttle.

edit: I should also stress the M15x platform is also able to take incredible abuse so we should give it a large part of the credit due. I remember killing 2 motherboard in the Clevo W860cu laptop after simply overclocking the 920xm in it - hence my move to M15x! Rock on!

 

go for liquid metal compound as liquid ultra or thermal grizzly conductonaut

 

Idk if you'reinterested but I can swap a 740QM + cash for your 920XM if you want to go that route.

 

Ahh man, 4.2Ghz is a dream to me. REALLY! My max was 3.1ghz each core and that's make my m15x really hot, can't even use my keyboard cus that make my fingers sweting...
Actually to play i'm using 2.6ghz each core, 20/20/20/20 reaching 90c some times, but not always. Its cool, but i cant find any difference playing 27/26/25/24 and playing 20/20/20/20 prob because my gpu bottleneck...
Sorry about abuse asking too many things but, if u dont mind can i ask how did you uses 2 psu ? can i use my 150w and 180w at same time and this will make any difference to me with my actual hardware?

Thanks for offering but the guys here convinced me to hold this 920xm..