CPU/GPU High temps with new Defiance series gaming laptop

[WillJ124]

Hey all

I recently bought a new gaming laptop from PCS and have been running Read Dead Redemption 2 on it for a couple of weeks now. Overall it's been performing well, but I've noticed that the CPU and GPU temps do get alarmingly high at times. I gather that laptop cooling is generally tricky given the compact space, so I was expected things to run fairly hot, but I'm still wondering if I need to be concerned about the temps that I'm seeing.

CPU is 42-50 and GPU is 32-40 or OFF whilst idle in Performance mode
CPU is 75-87 and GPU is 73-82 whilst running Red Dead 2 in Performance mode (Most taxing area of RD2 sees the GPU spike to 93 for a few seconds sometimes)

I've since bought myself a cooling stand to help with this and it seems to have made a difference as I no longer notice any high 90s spikes, but nevertheless I wanted to ask if these are reasonable figures for a gaming laptop

I looked into undervolting with Throttlestop to see if it'd help and while it did keep the CPU temp in the low-to-mid 70s whilst playing, I was getting performance dips in areas where I wasn't previously seeing them, so I wasn't sure if that solution was worth pursuing.

 

[DarkPaladin]

The trickiest problem for any laptop is always going to be the cooling due to the limited space + cooling solutions relying on heatsinks and fans. Before worrying about temperatures, it should be worth noting that higher room temperatures do unfortunately increase the temperatures of the system in a laptop. When it was 22c the other day, my laptop was running about 5-8 degrees hotter than usual (just something to be aware of as we approach the summer).

One more thing, could you copy & paste your laptop specs? I don't know what your CPU + GPU setup is but I can give general comments for now.

CPU:
From the numbers you gave, those temperatures look perfectly normal for both idle and under heavy load. The CPU for most laptops without the fans on will usually give out those numbers, so I wouldn't worry too much there. You've already bought a cooling pad + undervolted so I don't think there's much else you can do to lower the temperatures.

GPU:
40 degrees idle when it isn't in use is slightly warmer than I'd expect, and 82-93 is worryingly hot. For comparisons sake, my GPU idles around 32-35 degrees inactive and never gets hotter than 74 degrees at maximum load.

General Advice (In chronological order for steps to follow):

1. Try playing demanding games in the cooler rooms of the home to help keep the temperatures down a little. I do this when playing demanding games like Apex Legends, Cyberpunk 2077 etc.
2. Download HWInfo64 to monitor your temperatures while gaming. The software is pretty accurate and lets you check clock speeds in real time. https://www.hwinfo.com/download/
3. Click the battery at the bottom-right corner of the screen and move it to "Better Performance" to dynamically adjust the clock speeds. Keeping it on "Best Performance" has the CPU running at maximum clock speeds all the time when it isn't needed.
   
4. Download MSI Afterburner and run the OC Scanner. I've noticed my GPU temperatures dropped a little after using this while giving a slight performance increase
   https://www.msi.com/Landing/afterburner
5. When you mentioned undervolting, how much did you reduce it by? My laptop came with a -0.70 and I occasionally alternate between -0.70 and -0.85. All laptop's are different though and you can test this yourself by incrementally reducing it by -0.05 in Throttlestop or Intel XTU.
6. Check to see if your heatsink is individual to each component or a shared heatsink. If it's individual, then you can potentially look into doing a repaste specifically on the GPU. If it's shared, then you'll have to repaste both the CPU + GPU every time you take the heatsink off.
7. Regularly (2-3 months) use a can of compressed air or cotton buds with something like thermal paste purifier and clean off the dust in your laptop's fans to prevent dust buildup (causing temperatures to slowly creep up over time). If you open the case and see there isn't much dust buildup, then you won't have to do this part.
8. If you do decide to do a repaste of the components, I'd recommend Thermal Grizzly Kyronaut or Noctua H2-N2. Some people prefer thicker pastes in laptop's like Gelid Extreme or IC Diamond (thicker paste helps achieve improved contact with the mounted heatsink), but I haven't tried those for myself. It's also worth noting that applying thermal paste can take multiple attempts due to the paste needing to optimally spread to cover the components.
9. If you want to have the fans on maximum when gaming to keep temperatures as cool as possible, push both the FN + 1 keys simultaneously. Do be aware that the fans do get pretty loud here but it does its job at keeping the system cool.

Hope this helps!

 

[WillJ124]

Thanks for the info and yeah sure the specs are below. I've changed battery to 'better performance' for now, I wasn't aware that the CPU clock speed would be unnecessarily maxed, so that's good to know. Also I accidentally typed 'GPU' when I mentioned the spike, it's actually the CPU that was reaching the 90s

With the undervolting, I followed an online guide and tried putting Offset voltage to -100.6 under CPU cache and CPU core and reduced it by -10 incrementally. I found that anything below -120.06 would blue screen the laptop, so I settled for -100.6 whilst playing. It reduced CPU temp, but worsened in-game performance.

Chassis & Display	Defiance Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD 240Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)	Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor 10870H (2.2GHz, 5.0GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)	32GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 32GB)
Graphics Card	NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 3080 Max-Q - 16.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st M.2 SSD Drive	2TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W)
Memory Card Reader	Integrated Micro-SD Memory Card Reader
AC Adaptor	1 x 180W AC Adaptor
Power Cable	1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Battery	Defiance Series Integrated 3 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (73WH)
Thermal Paste	ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card	2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless	GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options	1 x THUNDERBOLT 3 PORT + 3 x USB 3.2 PORTS
Keyboard Language	17" DEFIANCE SERIES UK KEYBOARD
Operating System	Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language	United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media	Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software	Microsoft® Office Home & Student 2019 (1 Digital License) Change to: FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus	NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser	Google Chrome™
Notebook Mouse	INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam	INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM

 

[DarkPaladin]

The occasional 90 degree spike isn't too much of a problem for a CPU, especially with newer games becoming more demanding nowadays. An occasional spike usually just means your CPU is boosting its clock to the highest frequency during gameplay to ensure better/consistent performance when things get more intense on-screen. When playing Cyberpunk for example, my CPU would usually be around 80-84 degrees with short periods of 90-92 degrees.

A -100 undervolt does seem like a lot of performance to sacrifice for the sake of reducing the temperatures. As long as the laptop doesn't BSOD it should be fine though.

Has the system's temperatures improved at all after trying some of the suggestions?

One last thing is if you are playing CPU intensive games such as MOBA's (Heroes of the Storm), or Counter Strike, you can change from "Better Performance" to "Best Performance" to ensure consistent framerates. I usually do that before playing those games, then swapping back to "Better Performance" afterwards.

 

[Deleted member 17413]

Undervolting shouldnt be a fix for temp issues, its something you might do once you know everything is stable, otherwise you could just be masking the issue only for it to come back later ten times as hard.

My first point of call, would be the paste job. Laptops are going to run hot anyway, yours is a bit higher than it really should be, although I would of said this was more true of the CPU than the GPU (other than the occational spike you mentionned on the GPU).
Paste jobs have a bad habit of being pot luck...

 

[WillJ124]

I've stopped undervolting and uninstalled Throttlestop for the time being on the back of what's been suggested and 'cause the results were a bit of a double edged sword for me. I tried installing MSI Afterburner as well and running the OC Scanner, but I kept getting an error whenever I tried it. However after reading up a bit, I found out that GeForce Experience has some built-in features under its experimental settings to help with fine tuning performance. I ran the auto-tuning on that instead and, that combined with running battery at 'Better performance', my GPU and CPU temps have now levelled out to around 79-82 even in RD2's intense areas without any glaring drops in performance, so that seems to have resolved the issue to some degree at least. If the temps start to rise again for any reason, I'll look into the paste job for some further improvements. Thanks again for the info

 

[Emo]

I've stopped undervolting and uninstalled Throttlestop for the time being on the back of what's been suggested and 'cause the results were a bit of a double edged sword for me. I tried installing MSI Afterburner as well and running the OC Scanner, but I kept getting an error whenever I tried it. However after reading up a bit, I found out that GeForce Experience has some built-in features under its experimental settings to help with fine tuning performance. I ran the auto-tuning on that instead and, that combined with running battery at 'Better performance', my GPU and CPU temps have now levelled out to around 79-82 even in RD2's intense areas without any glaring drops in performance, so that seems to have resolved the issue to some degree at least. If the temps start to rise again for any reason, I'll look into the paste job for some further improvements. Thanks again for the info

Hi,
I almost have your own configuration (3070 and not 3080) but your temperature problems, surplus for the CPU.
Can you explain to me what you did with GeForce Experience? Thank you

 

[WillJ124]

Hi,
I almost have your own configuration (3070 and not 3080) but your temperature problems, surplus for the CPU.
Can you explain to me what you did with GeForce Experience? Thank you

Hey,

I turned on the Experimental Features option, opened the overlay, went to Performance, turned on the auto-tuning and waited for it to complete a scan. Whilst playing games with that turned on, it seemed to help level out the temps.