Undervolting a brand new laptop?

Helllo!

Just bought myself a MSI GS70 with GTX 970M and Core i7 4720HQ + 16GB RAM.
Since it is a relatively powerful mobile GPU and other powerful components in a quite thin chassis, I reckon things are going to get quite hot. Also I guess the battery life of the laptop isn't all that great, therefore, I am considering undervolting the CPU (or is it the GPU? I have never done this before), because I hear that this gives results in terms of heat and battery life.

Can anyone tell me the risks vs advantages of doing so, and what results should I expect?
Should I undervolt? I'm getting it either tomorrow (tuesday) or wednesday. It's a quite expensive laptop (1900 USD), so I don't want to break it on day one!

I have read the sticky. However, that is from 2008 and I want to confirm, as you probably understand

Thank you in advance for your help!

 

Pros:
Reduces temperature
Battery lasts slightly longer

Cons:
BSOD can be annoying while you're finding a stable undervolt


Use intel XTU for your undervolting. If you BSOD the settings will revert to default.
Start at around -45mV and work your way from there.
Stress test each interval at least 10mins with intels stress test.

Be weary, just because it's stable in a stress test, doesn't mean it's stable.
I was on -70mV on my 4810MQ for a week. Passed stress test and then played through some demanding games yet I would BSOD in CSGO.
Set it back to -55mV and it is perfect.

 

The 970m will run very cool. And as far as I know, no way to undervolt it without a BIOS mod if one even exists. For the CPU, in that chassis, the cooling system should be more than adequate. It can't hurt to undervolt the CPU though, but as @Plur notes, do extensive stress testing, and only bump it a little at a time. Usually -50mV as a starting point is safe, set it and run it with your most demanding games and apps for a while (save often). If it's stable, then push it another -10mV, lather rinse, repeat. Once you find your stable point, I usually back that off 10mV, so if you find -75mV is stable, then I'll run at -65mV just as a safety factor.

 

Okay, so there are no dangers whatsoever, and the drawback is only that I get BSODs if unstable? And BSODs won't ruin my pc in any way right, it's just a preventative measure by the pc?

Thanks for answering my questions

 

Correct. Undervolting shouldn't hurt anything. It is a bit annoying getting stable, but no big deal. I have a 4810mq that is good at a -85 mV undervolt. It saves a couple degrees C.

I have found though that when undervolted to far, my cpu is unstable when going from load to idle. So a good quick test is to start and stop XTU stress test a bunch of times. If you don't get a BSOD, then proceed.

 

If you BSOD, your Intel XTU settings will be restored to default... So these settings won't stick.. BSOD won't ruin your PC however when undervolting, only have XTU and your benchmark programs open to prevent any data loss..

 

While BSOD's won't hurt most components, the hard 'power off' cycle may. Especially for SSD's with no way to flush their current data to nand.

I recommend that if / when you get to a setting that works for your hardware; you do a complete bare metal re-install of your setup and then apply those settings you found previously. Assuming you had many BSOD's (to me; one BSOD is too many) during your testing to find stable settings.

Failing to do this has proven itself to be a buggy installation over time with seemingly unknown glitches and whatnot. What is worse is people arguing that a drive image is the answer; but not when an O/S or driver file becomes corrupted and is propagated to each backup...

How was it 'proven'? Easy. People have given me their hardware because they were convinced it was at fault. A clean O/S install kept a lot of those systems running for years later without a single hiccup.

Sure, some was faulty hardware.

But without taking the software out of the equation by doing a clean install, you could just be chasing your tail for forever.