JHL90 overclock-results

Hey guys, I'm new to the forums, but ive been reading here for a couple of days. I was interested in overclocking my JHL90, in which i have only an Intel T6400 @ 2GHz.

Needless to say, it hasnt been easy. After reviewing many many websites and forum posts, it seems no one had posted the PLL number. So, i took apart my laptop and found it. Its ICS9LPRS3878BKLF. The PLL chip is located on the opposite side of the motherboard from your GPU and CPU. If you remove your keyboard it is under, approximately, where the windows and CTRL buttons are, maybe a little lower. I had to remove a piece of thin black plastic, which was attached to the case upper with a weak adhesive, to see the chip.

Programs I'm using: SetFSB, RealTemp, CPU-Z.

SetFSB is the program I use to adjust my FSB speeds, resulting in an overclocked processor. I followed the guide here: Dufus' SetFSB guide
All credit goes to Dufus for the guide.

CPU-Z is only for checking to make sure my FSB speeds are indeed increasing.

RealTemp is used to monitor CPU core temps and my GPU temp.

Before attempting to overclock my laptop, I replaced the OEM thermal paste on the CPU, motherboard chipset, and GPU in order to ensure it was of decent quality. I went to a local computer shop and bought a notebook cooler to provide a better base for my laptop to sit on than just my table. I took off 2 backplates, the one covering the CPU, and the one covering the RAM. Basically this setup has the laptop cooler constantly blowing cool air onto the cpu and its heatpipe, and it provides fresh cool air for the laptop fan.

Results: Ive been able to overclock my CPU by 377MHz and have it run stable. and not hit temps above 74 degrees Celsius. I know, this is still pretty warm, but the TJmax on my processor is 105, so i figured it was ok. Additionally, before I bought the laptop cooler, i was hitting temps of 80+ with stock clock speeds.

The Bad: Unfortunatel, there are a few bugs with this method. In Dufus' guide, if you look at step 4, it shows you to put the SATA on PLL2, for me this has been a must or my SATA controller will hang. BUT, if I set the SRC on PLL3 like it shows, my system immediately stops detecting my Realtek Gigabit Ethernet Adapter. The rest of the steps in the guide i follow normally. One other thing to note is that if i increase my FSB speeds by more than 3 steps(resulting in a about 53MHz cpu speeds) my system again stops detecting my ethernet adapter. This is only true for the wired adapter, my wireless adapter functions normally.

I just thought i would post this in case anyone else was curious about overclocking a JHL90. Be careful if you do anything I did, as it could ruin your system.

As Dufus' guide was written for the M11x, and not the JHL90, it is understandable that it isnt completely compatible. If anyone know anything more about the JHL90 system and can offer advice, or methods more suited to overclocking this system, please let me know! I would love to be able to overclock and play multiplayer games

 

Use setPLL. Slow down your RAM and overvolt your CPU for higher overclockability.

 

Hey nando4, thanks for the reply. I tried using setPLL, but my base FSB frequency is 200MHz, and the lowest step that program has for this pll is 266MHz. That huge of a jump in FSB speed always locks up my pc.

Also, since the bios is locked, how would i overvolt my cpu?

 

Refer to setpll.txt instructions to create a myPLL.lut, ie: start with 'setpll -read 0x40', see myPLL.lut for what to do next.

To overvolt the cpu perform a CPU pinmod like shown here, using table here.

 

Someone else OCing a jhl90! Yeah I had the same issues with the internal ethernet. My reaction was "who cares' and I just use wireless. The real OC limit I have is my northbridge, which in the JHL90 has TERRIBLE cooling. Even with my 9600m idle, the 9600m with be reading temps in the high 60s, and all this heat is from the northbridge, which will be way hotter than the temps that the graphics card reads. Having a fan blow over the northbridge increased my max stable FSB OC from 17% to 24%. I also modded a JHL90 bios to allow toggling EIST on and off to run dual-IDA. You can find a link to it in Nando4's sig as a "sager np2096", which is the same thing as a jhl90. Unfortunately your current CPU does not support Dual-IDA, but this is an overclocking avenue if you got a C2D.

You can get a very cheap CPU upgrade. For under $100, you can get an E8435 off of ebay, which is a 6MB penryn at 3.06ghz. It was meant for macs, but runs anyway. Its TDP really isn't 44W, but more like 38W. I got one and it runs at 3.5ghz stable as long as I keep it under 75C.

I think you've learned pretty quickly that JHL90s have terrible cooling. The whole copper plate to aluminum base, to single copper heatpipe to ALLUMINUM RADIATOR shared with the GFX/Northbridge cooler idea is horrendous. My original T9400 (2.53ghz) CPU would run prime95 at 100C without any OC. Some things I did to improve it was to wrap wires around the CPU cooler screws to tighten it, which dropped temps by around 5C. The main thing I did was I took an old P1 HS and put it directly ontop of the CPU cooler with a fan under it. This helped tremendously and allowed big overclocks. The copper plate that sits directly over the cpu is pretty rough. Mine even has a nick in it on a part that has contact with the CPU die. It could definitely benefit a lot from being sanded flat, but the screw holes protrude out making it difficult to sand evenly, so I haven't tried it yet (look up "heatsink lapping" if you are interested in this).

My current plan is to completely ditch the terrible stock cooler and make my own with a milling machine at college. My grandpa has a spare lenovo cooler which has very good copper radiators that I think I could attach to something I mill.

I really don't know how much power the JHL90 can send to the CPU without having to worry about the voltage regulators. I noticed that when OCing my original T9400 over 2.65ghz that my 9600m's max OCs started dropping. I Vmodded the 9600m for a while and found that when Vmodded (reached like 740/540 clocks), I could not OC the CPU at all without dropping my GPU overclocks. I do not know if the voltage regulators were having trouble, or if it was just some overcurrent protection kicking in due to all the extra power draw. Right now I am using a DIY vidock so the 9600m draws basically nothing, but I am a bit concerned. I plan on doing another disassembly and searching for the CPU voltage regulators at some point, look them up, and get some idea of what wattage they can put out safely. Oh and if they can put out a lot, overvolt my new CPU to get 3.8ghz.

Oh and if you want to overvolt the GPU Here's the 2 resistors you play with:



Penciling one lowers the voltage, penciling the other raises it. I think the one on the right is for increasing the voltage, but I can't remember exactly. Note that this will overvolt both the GPU and the Vmem. Don't worry about overdoing it really. I remember I penciled as much as I could and got only like a 7% voltage increase.

 

Hey man, thanks for the reply. I have a few questions.
1. Does the bios mod unlock anything other than EIST?

2. Have you found a way to manually control the system fan? I noticed that the default fan controller is horrible. It really only responds to the cpu temps at 60C+, and i honestly believe it would let my GPU catch on fire if the cpu temps stayed low enough.

3. does this thing support 1066 memory?

4. how did you get an external GPU?

 

No, the bios mod only unlocks EIST and nothing else, so it's not very useful for you since you don't have an IDA multiplier anyway.

The service manual lists a bunch of memory offsets and ports to set the system fan, but I don't know what the ports mean so I really don't get how to set anything. The good news though is that the fan does react to GPU temperatures. The fans go to around medium speed at 70C and full blast at 95C. Not as granulated as the CPU, but it does react to the GPU.

If by 1066 you mean DDR3, no, DDR2 is 200pin, while DDR3 is 204pin. I'm not aware of any 1066mhz DDR2, but if it did exist I see no reason why it wouldn't work.

I'm using an external GTX 460 via a DIY ViDock. nando4's post above has a link to the thread or you can just google "diy vidock".

 

for your external gpu, are you using multiple mPCIe slots, or does the jhl90 come with an expresscard slot?

P.S. thanks for the modified bios. got rid of that pesky EIST

P.S.S. I installed the bios mod, but for some reason it appears that EIST is still enabled. according to both throttlestop and cpu-z my multiplier is still going back and forth between 6x and 10x. Anything else i need to do?

P.S.S.S. Lol. Ok playing with some of the throttlestop options, i disabled c-step. Now its stuck at 10x.

 

Yeah the modded bios is nice in that you can toggle EIST, so you can leave it on if you wanna run on battery. Also good to hear that the bios I made works on other people's laptops too. I was worried some that it might go bad and require crisis recovery for no reason on everyone else's laptop but mine and get people mad at me.

The JHL90 does have an expresscard slot. The expresscard is pci-e port 1, and there are 2 mpci-e slots which are ports 2 and 3. There is another slot that looks like a mpci-e slot, but it is not wired for pci-e. port 4 is used by the ethernet controller making using an x4 link impossible unless you have some magical equipment that can hijack the link off of the chip. Port 5 is some motherboard stuff, and 6 is not wired to anything.

I'm using the expresscard slot and an mpci-e slot for the x2 link. I have my wireless card in port 3.

Oh and try setting register 0C to 8D, and 0D to 68 in setfsb (these are my default values for 1066mhz fsb). If it works it will give you 2.66ghz, which your cpu should be capable of despite only being a core 1. You will likely have to step up to that frequency since I find that raising or lowering clockspeed by more than 16% can result in a lockup. Try like 58 instead on the 0D register before the jump to 68.