RB15 Advanced 2019 Getting Hot at Idle (not thermal paste related)

I bought this a few months ago and followed the guides to do some BIOS mods which actually reduced the heat output at idle by a ton. It was cool to the touch except when gaming. Then something happened, still unsure as to what but when idling the entire laptop is hot (not just CPU/GPU).

It seemed to happen over night but haven't been able to pinpoint what's causing it. Idle is around 70c whereas it was around 30c after doing the BIOS changes. Before than it was running hotter around 40-45c but still nothing like what it is now.

The heat output doesn't change much at full load either which makes me think something is causing the CPU to do something it shouldn't be. Running stress test on Intel XTU raises the temps by about 5-7c.

Anyone have any ideas on what to check? These temps would be acceptable when doing full load but it's annoying trying to do work while my hands are heating up.

 

You're saying that when you're at idle, with 0% CPU usage, it's still hot?

I'm not familiar with the BIOS mods, but maybe the C-States/P-States are dorked up?

 

Correct. Well as close to 0 as you can feasibly get while doing nothing. ~8-10% just having Chrome open for example.

Not sure if these numbers help at all. I have never really needed to look into C-States and what each of them are for, etc.

 

Any ideas? Getting <2 hour battery life just browsing internet...Definitely something wrong here.

 

If you have any gpu monitoring software running this will significantly drain your battery life. The one I always used was MSI afterburner, keeping this closed would always double my battery life to around 4-5 hours.

Synapse 3.0 also keeps the clock speeds higher and runs the fans more aggresively, I keep this uninstalled on my Razer blade pro.

I know you mentioned it's not thermal paste related, but my liquid metal dried up on my previous blade and spiked my idle temps from around 30C to 70C on idle. Just a few suggestions.

 

The reason I say it isn't thermal paste related is that wouldn't affect battery life at idle if it truly was idle. Went from 4-5 hours down to about 1-1.5 hours. I'll remove Synapse.

 

Yeah that makes sense, you mentioned your hands feeling warm even at idle. If it was poor thermal paste there would be high idle temps and no heat transfer to the chassis.

Since you mentioned battery life, I am assuming you're not connected to a charger and this is more of a portable workstation. I know for a fact that Razer has always had a problem with "sleep mode" on the blades ever since the beginning. It has issues with sleep mode and stays on even with the lid closed, doesn't occur every time but often enough to decrease battery life. I always use hibernate on my Blade advanced and Blade Pro. This is about all I know, I've never experienced your exact issue on my razer blades. I've owned every one from 2013 and they've always idled at around 40C. I have never attempted a BIOs mod, other than updating with Razer official BIOs which does help with temps.

 

Yea the thing is it was almost like this before modding, then after modding it was great for several weeks. Good battery life, then something changed...maybe Synapse did it. It might've correlated with the 1909 update as well. Not sure. I have noticed now when returning from sleep the screen randomly blanks out until I reboot.

 

Zero difference. Still running hot/battery lasting about 1.5 hours.

 

70c idle!? Do you have the fans covered? I know the stock thermal paste is toothpaste tier but I've never heard of thermals that bad ...

 

As was said earlier it may be related to C-States/P-States but no one has mentioned anything about the screenshot I uploaded. Battery life is effectively what would be happening if I ran a stress test on just the battery for about an hour but the CPU/GPU usage is <20%. Also, like I said running a stress test barely increases temps pretty much indicating it's operating wrong. Only thing I haven't tried is charging it then leaving it sitting at the BIOS screen for over an hour.

 

I've C/P states turned off by default (because I'm not a tree hugger) and I struggle to see idle over 50.

 

Tell us your BIOS settings.

 

Those are all the settings currently.

 

Can you output a CSV from HWInfo or whatever? Is System Idle Process taking up 98+% of CPU time at idle?

Are you getting the high temps in the BIOS from a cold boot?

Something might've gotten jostled and your heatsink/pipe might not making optimal contact with the die.

 

I find the VR Current Limit = 800 and TDC Enabled off is lots more heat for very little gain.

 

I'm of the opinion that the settings in the BIOS unlock guide are a bit on the aggressive side.


Try undoing the windows registry changes, and reverting all of the BIOS tweaks back to their original (default) values with the exception of the IMON slope @ 50. I haven't tried it on an RB15, but that's how I run my stealth and it allows more power while still behaving exactly as before when not using that extra power. So no IMON offset, no loadline adjustments, no TDC stuff, nothing. Just IMON slope.

Behavior should revert to stock with the single exception that the CPU wattage will be 2x (with the slope at 50) what the computer thinks it is. So if the EC thinks it's limiting CPU power to 35W, it's actually limiting it to 70W. If you see a reported CPU package power consumption of 14W, it's actually consuming 28W. (you can of course pick a different IMON slope if you want a different limit).

 

I don't even know if I have the original settings anymore. Am I OK to just reflash to stock to wipe them back to factory and then just start over from there?

 

You should be. I'd flash your backup bin and reset your BIOS settings to default for good measure.

 

As a owner of a few Razer Blade devices (since back to 2015 version) I always have had an idea which has been growing year by year:

As soon as a newer version of the notebook gets released, they turn down the cooling curve and somehow up the consumption. My 2019 RB got updated one month ago through Synapse and since then the fan curve became ****, I had to force it to 100% through the manual control to keep temps down while doing litterally anything game-coding compiling related.

This has happened with every single Razer notebook.

I even tried to repaste with some Grizzly Kryonaut and yet the temps are higher than usual.