CPU being throttled at 38°C, help please!

Hello there,

I own a Toshiba A200-Ah9( http://www.toshiba.ca/web/product.grp?lg=en&section=1&group=223&product=7031&part=6475). It was brought in for repair at an authorized repair centre for a fried motherboard and the motherboard was swapped.

I received back the laptop around the end of 2008 and was not used since. When i decided to use it, i found that the performance on the laptop is terribly slow, to a point that it struggles to handle having multiple windows opened. I installed RMClock just to take a look at whats going on with the CPU and it seems the cpu is detecting a "Overheat within the CPU core", so it is being throttled down to 50% performance. The interesting thing is that the cpu is running at 38°C idle and the fan is going full blast blowing out cool air. I thought it was a problem with the OS, but because of the 50% throttle it took 5 hours to re-install windows 7.

The processor is shown as being Intel Xeon 2 Allendale, T5300 @ 1.73Ghz, except it is running at around 450mhz. I don't recall having a Xeon processor as it is supposed to be a Core 2 Duo.

I have no idea what could be the problem, and I haven't attempted to disassemble the unit yet. If anyone could provide some suggestions on courses of action that would be great.

Thanks.

 

Faulty CPU, or faulty motherboard.

Maybe try re-seating the CPU.

Or try using throttlestop:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=452692

Did you try updating the BIOS?

 

Hey there,

Yes I've tried updating the bios. The version I currently have is the latest for this specific model.

I'll give throttlestop a try later and report back with results.

 

Can you check the Sspec written on the chip?

Maybe they did put a Xeon in there.

 

1- Xeon is a server CPU. I think you have a Core 2 Duo T5300.

2- run memtest (google it). It will allow you to test your ram. You can also find memtest on (Linux) ubuntu live CD.

3- Have you tried to re-install windows? I think there is a conflict between the different softwarein in your harddrive.

 

I will attempt to open up the laptop tonight to take a look inside, maybe i need to reapply thermal or something but the temperature seems ok.

My results from running Throttlestop seems to show the cpu running at 100%.


I've installed CPU-Z and there seems to be some discrepancies between RMClock and CPU-Z of the make and type of processor within the laptop. Strange though that the temperature reading did not appear at the time this screenshot was taken.

2- I ran memtest and the results came back positive, it did not encounter anything out of the ordinary
3- I did a fresh re-install of my OS, unfortunately the performance remains sluggish

 

I would take it apart and re-seat the CPU.
Maybe also test it with another CPU.