Clevo P150SM-A CPU+GPU Throttling Issues

Hello,

I have a Clevo P150SM-A and I have been having some very annoying throttling issues when playing games.

Here is what happens:
Games such as PUBG, GTA V and Redout all experience large fps drops at fairly regular time intervals.
Benchmarks (Unigene heaven, Valley, Superposition, GpuTest, Furmark) and less taxing games all run without fps drops.
However these do suffer fps drops when I put any light load on the cpu simultaneously.

I have checked Afterburner stats and the power draw from the mains and found the following:
Throttling seems to occur when drawing over 200w.
Frequency of both the cpu and gpu simultaneously drop very low (800mhz on cpu, about 500mhz on gpu).
Gpu PerfCap reason is power.
Cpu throttles even when intel speedstep is completely disabled in the bios.


I've tried the following things to try fix it:
* Reinstalled windows.
* Updated all drivers to latest.
* Brought a 330w PSU.
* Cleaned heatsinks and replaced thermal paste on cpu and gpu with Conductonaut liquid metal.
The cpu and gpu temps almost always stay below 80 degrees now.
* Installed ThrottleStop. this fixed the cpu throttle but it made the gpu throttle much more.
The gpu constantly throttled in some circumstances, also crashed occasionally.
* Turned off every single power saving feature in the bios, and fiddled with many other combinations of settings.


Specs:
i7 4810MQ
GTX 880M
8gb RAM
Samsung Evo mSATA 250gb
Everything is at stock speeds.

Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
ForceWare version 391.35
Prema bios 1.03.11PM v2
SVL7 vbios

From what I can tell this could be a faulty gpu but I'm not sure.
I don't know that to try next, please help thanks.

 

Have you undervolted the CPU to help keep power down?

 

Hello Meaker, no I haven't tried that yet thanks for the suggestion. I will try a gpu undervolt too (if possible). I probably need to shave at least 30w off when under full load. I say that because the computer draws about 230w during the moments when its not throttling.

 

The culprit is the EC of Premamod v2.
Try EC 1.03.05 from Premamod V1, maybe even the stock will work.
Just the EC. And you can leave the pm2 main bios.
You'll notice if it works or not because suddenly you won't have any throttle when cpu+gpu are taxed (if your temps are ok and you use the bigger power cord)

 

I am also having some fan related issues on my P150SM and would love to fix this since even when idling fans are running at 100% a lot of the time ....
I wille be adding some new thermal paste first, but I doubt that will be enough, there fore if you could point me in the direction where to find the premamods v1/v2 and the latest EC that would be very helpfull !

 

No the case, the EC of premamod V2 worked flawless no issues on my P157SM despite having ridiculously overpowered hardware for the notebook (4940MX + 880M OC). In youyr case I
m pretty sure this was caused by your stock EC, you probably flashed the V2 BIOS without flashing the EC (I did the same mistake).

@MaXX99 there is no fan control for that model. Clevos generally have terrible fan profiles. Only way to get the noise somewhat in check is high quality thermal paste and some heatsink mods.

 

Oh thats interesting, how do I check what EC version I have? Also I'm not sure how to go about flashing just the EC, please could I have some instructions? Thanks.

 

Oh nevermind I found the EC version in the bios its 1.03.08. That sems to be the latest version, so that would mean I did update the EC firmware when installing the Prema bios?
Edit: Its Probably worth noting that I had Prema v1 installed before installing Prema v2. Is there any chance that I had stock EC 1.03.08 before installing Prema v2? I'm just trying to figure out if I should flash the EC from Prema v2 or v1 to try fix the problem.

 

Prema normally packages EC and BIOS together. If you followed the instructions carefully both would have been updated.

 

1.03.08 comes with prema v2.
Flash 1.03.05 wich comes from Prema V1, simply starting s.bat or c.bat (for silent or cool version) from V1 files and report back.
If you don't have the files pm me

 

v2 Mod was only for 980M. If you are using 880M, then use the v1 Mod.

 

@oile
Okay thanks for clearing that up for me, I don't have the files for v1 so I'll PM you when I get the time to do it.

@Prema
Ah okay, does that mean I should flash both the BIOS and EC back to v1? Or is there some added benefit of having the v2 BIOS?

 

Pretty sure the V1 BIOS and V2 BIOS are identical except for some support for newer cards on the V2 and obviously EC. In terms of unlocked options both offer the same.

 

I have now flashed just the EC from Prema bios v1 as oile suggested. From a quick test the system was able to draw over 200w for about 10 minutes without any throttling issues. So far it appears the problem is fixed! Thanks everyone for your help.

 

Glad to see that it worked for you as it worked for me. I hope that everyone who noticed this problem will find answers here.
And as always thanks to @Prema as without him it couldn't have been possible