E5470 i7-6820HQ overheating, how to throttle?

I have a Dell Latitude E5470 with Intel Core i7-6820HQ CPU. Under load it shuts down quite fast. I seems that any throttling there might be is not working as intended or not as agressively as it should.

• Should the computer be able to throttle the CPU and GPU back by itself before having a heatstroke?
• How can I control and make the throttling more aggressive to avoid shutdowns?

The CPU is running at 2,7 GHz and with TurboBoost even 3,5 GHz. With Turbo, Windows 10 power mode set to max performance and CPU limit 100% the machine will heat the CPU to 100 C in a minute under 100% CPU load, Windows gets a thermal event and does a shutdown (no bluescreen or crash but controlled shutdown).

So far I've had the thermal paste re-done, switched Turbo off and undervolted the CPU with ThrottleStop by -140,6mV. In BIOS the following are enabled: SpeedStep, C-States, Hyperthreading. Now it's not reaching shutdown limit as fast but would reach with a 5+ minutes of running Prime95 torture test. Also playing old Far Cry 2 makes the computer shut down because it's loading the GPU side more.

I did a throttling configuration of my own with ThrottleStop: When CPU heat reaches DTS 7 (93 C) I have it switch to another profile with Speed Shift value 250. This keeps the heat in 92-95 range and doesn't shutdown at least from 10 minutes of Prime95 torture. I haven't yet tried with a GPU side load test.

 

Screenshots of Prime95 running and reaching my throttling limit:

 

Are you sure the undervolt is effective ? Did you use high performance thermal paste or just something like Artic MX4 ? Did you turn on ThrottleStop ?
There is a cool tool in case you want to manually control your fan :
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ual-custom-control-of-the-laptop-fans.827106/

Sadly I don't think you can do more, the heatsink is pretty small for such a cpu :/

 

I had the laptop seller replace the paste, not sure how good it really is. Undervolting improves the situation but there's a need for additional throttling. But! I was helped by ThrottleStop author, an adjustable PROCHOT setting in a new beta version fixed everything! I can even keep TurboBoost on now.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-throttlestop-guide.531329/page-1133#post-11005152

 

That would explain a few things. There is an old saying, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Some Dell laptops use thermal pads. If you blindly replace a thermal pad with thermal paste, you can end up with a situation where the contact pressure between the heatsink and CPU is no longer what it used to be. This will result in poor cooling and CPU temperatures that shoot up immediately under load.

If you ever want to find out, pull your laptop apart and make sure the job is done properly.

The Turn On - Turn Off button in ThrottleStop only controls Clock Modulation and the Set Multiplier function. Those are not being used so the state of that button does not matter.

 

It sounds to me like you should check the following:
Is the CPU fan(s) spinning and increasing speed as the CPU heats up? (Bad fan / not plugged in to motherboard)
Make sure the heatsink screws are tightened all the way? (Loose heatsink = uneven or no contact with CPU)
Make sure the thermal paste is even and covering the entire contact surface? (bad thermal paste job could cause hot spots on the CPU)

 

E5470 was definitely paste, not pads for the CPU. Mine had been overheating faster and faster, and a re-paste helped, as did a clean installation of Windows 20.04 and avoiding any Dell-provided drivers for the Intel video or DPTF.

I can't remember if mine ever had the motherboard replaced, but if so it was in the first year or so; whether it was the factory paste or something the repair guy did, it was like chalk - no resistance to taking the heal sink off and very crumbly. If it's from the factory, that would be after about 4 years ~4-5 months (or maybe a bit longer, since mine was a refurb.)