Undervolting a Laptop

Does any have any firsthand experiences on undervolting a laptop and if it is a good idea. I don't know much about it but I plan on reading up on it. Anyone have any thoughts.

Also the reason I am doing this is because my computer runs games better on balanced power mode rather then high performance power mode. High performance mode causes my cpu and gpu temps to go higher then in balanced mode and I am guessing this is what is causing the random stutters and worse performance in high performance mode.

Also any thoughts on removing the battery as I know it is constantly receiving power to charge it even thought it is fully charged. The reason I might do this is because my old laptop was near the end of it's life, removing the battery helped a lot in running the OS and games in general faster and it overheat as much. Just wanna make sure there are no errors/problems caused by the laptop not reading a battery(like reoccurring errors on the event viewer).

Feel free to add your thoughts/experiences.

 

If removing the battery helps then that suggests the power brick is a dud. Leave it in.

The only danger in under voting is too little may cause the system to crash.

You may need to clean/re paste if temps are too high (usually the cause of stutters)

 

About undervolting :
Yes it help about overheat issue, but not so much ( 3 degres diff maximum ).

Is it safe : i think Yes, only issue (that will happen if you undervolt to much) , is instability and random reboot, in my experience, on W8, each time i had a BSOD, the PC cannot restart ( winloader.exe failure ) i had to reboot on the Windows CD, let him try to repair.....and fail(windows didn't manage to repair your installation ), then just reboot, and it all work great !
Undervolting is easy with XTU, just run 1 hour burn to be sure ^^

The best thing to do against overheating is cleaning and repasting !

Elipsus

 

The difference depends on the voltage drop, cooling and each chip.

If you are running an ssd make sure write back caching is disabled for stability testing as this ensures data won't be corrupted.

 

Well before I even try to undervolt I have to fix my ram issues. My laptop keeps BSODing due to the ram. It says its a memory management issue and I uploaded the dump file to some sites and they say that it is an issue with the ram. Which makes sense because I decided to go with the 1866mhz ram which is supposed to work with my computer 9380sm3 but I have read from other areas that the Kingston 1866mhz has some problems with my computer.

 

Have been running my 4900MQ at -80mV undervolt for a month now and have encountered no issues thus far. Temps average 4-5C lower, so while not a whole lot, it definitely makes a difference.

I also game on balanced mode and everything works like they should. In fact I don't think I've ever used high performance mode in any of the laptops I've owned, and they've all worked fine.

 

I see. It's just some places mention to put your laptop into high performance mode when gaming. But this causes overheating and slowdowns in the end.

 

Did you get 1866mhz 1.5v modules or 1866mhz 1.35v modules as all haswell notebooks have to use 1.35v modules since none will be able to provide 1.5v.

 

^YES

Got into a huge argument with a reseller on this issue, and was basically told "we've been selling these for over 10 years now so we know what we're doing". Needless to say did not buy from that reseller.

 

Sorry what do you mean by yes?

 

I meant spot on about the 1.35v part.

 

Yep, some 1.5v sticks can manage 1.35v at their stock speeds but some can not. Since they are not rated for 1.35v it's down to the silicon lottery.

 

It is 1.5V Kingston 1866mhz PNP ram. I will do a 8 pass memtest86+ as advised by the windows 7 forums to check to see if it is a bad ram or bad slot.

 

It's not bad ram as such since it's not rated for 1866mhz 1.35v operation.

 

I wonder if I am the only one with 32GB (8GBx4) of CL10 1866MHz 1.35v.

I was in fear of having stability issues because people always saying 4 dims = more issues but I had 4 in my NP8150 and now this one and thus far still good.

FWIW the clevo MB actually says 1.5v on it which I found odd but 1.35v is the better. 1.5v technically should work but it does put more strain and heat on things (this from Intel Eng.) so you should be okay.

I think at the end of the day it comes down to quality ram or not, and luck on if you get a dud stick lol

 

Nope, 1.5v can be delivered from desktop but not mobile chips.

 

Yeah I have the 1.5v. Not sure what to do, I guess I can call Mythologic and ask them if they can exchange the memory since I have been having it since like the 4th day from when I got the laptop and it is still under 30 days since arrival. Thinking back I wish I had not even tried for 1866mhz memory, I should have just gone the safe route and gone with 1600mhz. After submitting my BSOD info to some sites that look up your problem, they all said it was prob related to the ram. Makes sense since all the BSOD are memory management BSODS.

 

1.35v sticks should be fine for 1866mhz if you get the o es rated for it.

 

Have you had any problems with the 1.35V ram. I am in the process of probably buying a new ram. I am pretty sure I am going to go with 1600mhz ram as I don't want the risk of BSODs happening again. But I would still like to know how long you have had the 1.35v 1866mhz ram working.

 

1.35v 1866mhz should work no problems.

 

Contact Mythlogic and see what they can do. They're pretty good about keeping their customers happy even after the sale so I think they'll take care of this. FWIW though they cautioned me on using 8GB sticks at 1.35v, because they were concerned about stability issues. I'm happy to say that so far so good, 2 months in and 0 problems related to ram (knock on wood). And I'm running tighter timings with CL9 sticks instead of the usual CL11 to boot.

As meaker said, make sure you get the sticks rated for 1.35v. Over at the Asus ROG forums there are reports of BSOD issues with 1.5v ram that were fixed by using 1.35v, so hopefully this will the case for you.

 

Well the system only supplies 1.35v so yes 1.5v modules come down to the silicon lottery.

 

They told me to try installing all the drivers in order and see if that fixes the problem. So I have done that and hopefully the BSOD does not happen again.