Eluktronics max 17 only pulling 100w under load

I started noticing stability issues and frame drops earlier this week, thought maybe system was overheating and needed to be repasted.

I ran unigine valley, saw the gpu performing as usual in hwinfo, pulling 115w.

The moment I load the cpu, wattage for the gpu tanks to 40, both cpu and gpu even out at around 40 watts.

The gpu stays under 60c so its not throttling

Laptop is in beast mode, plugged in, no power saving options selected.

I've installed new control center, new graphics drivers, reset bios, I have no idea why its sipping power. Im in contact with support for a bios update to see what that does.

Anyone got ideas?

 

Have you tried running ThrottleStop and doing the "Disable and lock turbo power limits" thing?

Odd that the CPU and GPU are both behaving the same way, but only when the CPU is placed under load.

I wonder if Brother @B0B ever encountered this during any of his adventures?

 

Tried that throttlestop thing, no dice. I've contacted eluktronics for a bios update to see if that helps.

To elaborate further the wattage split isnt perfectly even. The cpu takes the lion share depending on the power mode.
Office mode:cpu 25w/gpu 60w
Gaming: cpu 45w/ gpu 40-50w
Beast: cpu 60w/gpu 30w

But the whole system stays under 100w, maybe its the power brick? Has anyone experienced power brick issues before?

 

Yes, It could be the power brick if it is starting to fail and switching to battery power under load. Running on battery will limit clock speeds and power limits. That is controlled by the EC firmware. On the older power bricks that had an LED it was easier to tell because the LED would go black under load (meaning it was no longer outputting power). Having an AC adapter fail is not a super frequent thing, but it is not totally uncommon. I think I have had two that failed in the past decade. They can also get weak due to fatigue/wear.

It is not likely that a BIOS update will fix the problem since it seems to be specific to your system rather than across the board.

 

I have my doubts about the bios update as well, but it cant hurt.

You gave me a good idea though, I disconnected the battery to test the power brick, same stress tests, exact same behavior. If its not running off battery during heavy loads, then maybe its software related?

Gonna make a system image and do a fresh install and see how things go.

 

That most likely rules out the AC adapter. If the AC adapter were bad it wouldn't likely stay running without the battery.

 

Well I got a replacement power adapter, same behavior.

but tell me, am I an idiot?

Stress testing the system I'm using prime95 and Valley, valley performs fine, gpu pulls max power. Start up prime to load the cpu, and heavens fps drops in half, gpu pulls half its rated wattage, stays under 70c. Without the gpu loading the heatsink, the cpu stays under 80c, system only uses 100w.

Am I an idiot for using prime 95 on a laptop?

Cause I downloaded Aida64, ran cpu and gpu stress test, system pulls over 200w

I think prime was keeping the cpu from sending enough instructions to keep the gpu running, I think I was creating an artificial bottleneck.....

 

Nope, you're not an idiot. Interesting how that played out. But, it seems you learned something valuable and shared it with all of us, so that's cool. Thanks for sharing it.

 

Hi, sorry to hijack your thread. Is it possible there is an issue with the battery?

I removed my battery recently due to some cells bloating but now my CPU max wattage is stuck at 40W in TS and does not boost above 3ghz.

 

No I figured out the issue was Prime95 bogging down the cpu so much that it couldnt send enough instructions to the gpu for it run at full power, battery is fine.

Need to know a little more, what power mode are you running in control center? Which program are you using to stress the cpu and what temps? Does plugging the battery back in fix it?(which would be weird since my max 17 ran the same with and without the battery but hey it cant hurt to try)