How to lower temperature on laptop 【step by step】 ️

If it is here it is because you already have a laptop that gets very hot and you need to know how to lower the temperature in a laptop. Even if you have no notion of what the CPU frequency and TDP is, you are surely experiencing performance far from what you originally expected.

This usually happens especially in new laptops with powerful CPUs that in the end are limited in performance due to high temperatures. Today we are going to see how to adjust these parameters with Intel XTU a very useful tool if your equipment is overflowed.

Index of contents

Heating and Thermal Throttling: the main problem of a laptop

Today we have laptops that have very powerful processors, up to 6 cores and 12 threads capable of giving performance almost on par with many desktop computers. But all or almost all have a problem, and that is that the reduced space makes the heatsinks much less effective than in a normal chassis.

In this way, much higher temperatures are generated in the DIEs of the CPUs (silicon tablets where the cores are), so the system, as a protection, begins to reduce the voltage and the TDP of the processor to decrease the frequency and its temperature. We call this Thermal Throttling, and it is a protection system that comes into play when temperatures close to or equal to TJMax are reached, the maximum admissible temperature for a processor, which at Intel is 95 or 100 ° C.

It has been done sometimes that even this limitation reaches 20 or 25% due to the inefficiency of the refrigeration system. But this problem also affects other components, since this heat is also added to that of the GPU in laptops, by sharing heat pipes, so in the end the whole system limits performance drastically. Sometimes we get to be unable to touch the keyboard or the aluminum casing of a laptop because it is above 60 ° C.

Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (Intel XTU)

We've seen models that even go as high as 97 and 98 degrees when their CPUs are performing at their best, and the system automatically reduces TDP and voltage drastically to protect components. Well, what we are going to do with Intel XTU is precisely manually adjust the power and voltage that the motherboard delivers to the processor to reduce Throttling.

As you know, not all CPUs work exactly the same, since they are manufactured in large silicon wafers that can vary depending on their purity and the lithography process in their construction. This causes that not all CPUs heat up the same, work the same or consume the same, it is often called the silicon lottery. The plate manufacturers get rid of the problem always supplying a common voltage with the same offset (variation range) and the same power, and this also influences the temperature rise and throttling of the system.

Intel XPU is a tool that works under Windows that allows us to modify multiple parameters of power, voltage and frequency to the manufacturer's CPUs. With this tool it is possible to carry out stress processes, overclocking to unlocked CPUs or underclocking, which will be our case. In this way we will adjust the energy parameters until we find a compromise between performance and temperature that satisfies us.

The tool can be downloaded directly from the Intel website. It is only available in English, but everything is understood perfectly as we will see now. It is free, and the installation is just a few times to "next", so, let's start using it.

Lower CPU voltage and TDP

This tool is compatible with all Intel processors, and we will be able to do underclocking in all of them, although only in the unlocked ones (K family) we will be able to overclock. For this demonstration we are going to use the Gigabyte AERO 15 OLED XA laptop with 6-core, 12-core Intel Core i7-9750H.

Needless to say, if we are on a laptop, we must do this with the external power supply connected and a high-performance Windows power profile, to get the maximum available CPU.

This application presents us with a black interface and the corresponding list of options in the left area. In this article we will only use two of these options, the Stress Test and Core subsection of Advenced Tuning, where we can modify the power values ​​that interest us.

In any case, in its overview we can see many of the characteristics of our processor, RAM and BIOS. Let's see that the parameter "Turbo Overclockable" appears in false in the list, which means that it is not an unlocked CPU. Just below we have parameters that we will be pending throughout the process, a graph of temperatures and frequency, and a table of CPU status. In it we will pay special attention to the parameter Thermal Throttling and Power Limit Throttling.

First evaluation of the CPU Will we manage to lower the temperature?

We are going to start the process, making a first evaluation of the CPU we have. So, without modifying any parameter, let's go to the Stress section and run it. We can set a certain duration time, and choose if we want to stress only the CPU or memory. Do not worry or be afraid to do this, if any problem occurs, we will only get a blue screen and a restart for protection, although this should not happen.

We start then, and we observe that in a matter of seconds we have already reached a temperature of 90 ° C and the thermal throttling and the power limit supplied to the processor have quickly been activated. We see that at the beginning of the process it is consuming 71W at 3.8 GHz.

We are going to go a little further, and we are also going to use the HWiNFO software to monitor all the voltage and frequency parameters of the CPU. In this way we can see more clearly what is happening during a continuous stress process of about 5 minutes, very little, but enough to make things clear.

We have not modified anything yet, and we see that the voltage of the cores has reached the 1.153V maximum and the frequency at 3.8 GHz, is fine, it coincides with the above. But we have already been a few minutes of heating, and we see how the real-time frequency is only 3 GHz, and the TDP has been reduced to 53W. In this way, the CPU has protected itself by lowering the temperature to 77 ° C and eliminating throttling, beware, instantly, until tenths of a second later it rises again and limits itself again. The process will repeat itself and we will never have a solvent CPU that gives us stable performance.

Adjusting power and voltage to improve performance and temperature

During the process, we have kept the fan profile in gaming mode, as it comes from Gigabyte Control Center

We have seen enough already and we have a clear profile of how the example CPU behaves, so we will try to improve this if possible. In principle, a performance improvement is not guaranteed, but a greater stability, better temperatures and a more adjusted energy consumption are necessary.

We will go to the "CPU" section within "Advanced Tuning" to display all the options available and capable of being modified. Despite the fact that there are many of them, it will only be enough for us to modify two of them:

• Core Voltage Offset: this is the voltage compensation that the board carries out in the CPU, or what is the same, how far the supplied voltage can oscillate. When we are overclocking, we always raise this offset, so that the board supplies higher supply voltages. And when we are undelocking, what you should do is lower this offset to negative values so that the supplied voltage is better. Turbo Boost Power Max: Similarly, this parameter indicates the maximum power that will reach the CPU when it is at the maximum possible performance. The more power, the higher the frequency, presumably, but the higher the temperature will reach. So we will have to decrease this value.

What we are going to do first is to gradually lower the Core Voltage Offset and subject the CPU to prolonged stress while doing so. If the thermal throttling is very high, we may have to lower this offset quite a bit. In this way we limit the attention to which the CPU works and help to lower the power saturation.

We have been going down in steps of 10mV until we reach a maximum of -0.150V. In the previous image we have made a capture at -0, 100V where we see something very interesting. And it is that, in addition to having improved temperatures, the CPU frequency has also improved to 3.2 GHz, indicating that the lower power is favoring the CPU. Note that in HWiNFO the maximum voltage of 1, 098V appears almost 0.080V less than before.

During the process, we may experience blue screens or crashes. It is normal if we set parameters below the allowable ones for the CPU, so we restart and start again.

Final parameters chosen to lower temperature on laptop

Similarly, we are going to lower the maximum boost power provided by the motherboard, in this way we will limit consumption and lower the maximum frequency at which the CPU can work. It is preferable to have a CPU always working at 3 GHz a CPU than to have it giving peaks of 4 GHz and the rest of the time at 2 GHz due to heating.

In our case, the maximum TDP that comes from the factory is 52W, while the TDP specified in the CPU sheet is 45W maximum. We have excess power there that will only generate temperature in the CPU. Intel indicates in this same sheet that we can lower it to 35W.

In the previous screenshot, the results that we have considered good are shown, with -0, 150V offset and 37W maximum power. In this way we have eliminated all the throttling of the CPU by paying it with a frequency drop to 3.1 GHz maximum. Notice that the temperatures are much better now according to what the program shows.

CPU evolution during the process

Simultaneously with the parameter modification process, we have kept the CPU at maximum stress with Aida64 Engineer, to see how thermal throttling and temperature evolve.

We have started from the factory configuration, which gave us values ​​of up to 26% throttling, we must say enough. We have been going down values until the red graph has become a flat or almost flat line that was the target. We see a drop in temperature just as the throttling ends, indicating that we are entering comfortable values ​​for the CPU.

After a reasonable time with the stress process still active, we have decided to revert the parameters that we have considered good. So we can see how this translates into the graph. Again, thermal throttling has started to appear on the CPU, which was obvious.

Comparison in CPU performance

At the beginning of this example, we benchmarked the CPU with Cinebench R15 and scored 1064 points. We already start from a fairly warm CPU after a stress process, in order to simulate a demanding use of the CPU for a time.

The second test is carried out after setting the values ​​of 37W and -0, 150V in Intel XTU. In the same way we did the test after a process of stress to the CPU. Notice that we got a little more score, 1071 points. Considering the drastic drop in power, having equal or superior performance indicates that this really works.

Save profile to Intel XTU for always use

When we are satisfied with the results we have obtained, it is time to store the configuration profile. For this we are going to go to the section "Profiles" and we are going to store it with any name. Now every time we start the computer this profile will load and we will have the PC working just as we want. To do this, the program must be started with Windows.

Conclusions on how to lower the temperature on a laptop

This is the end of our tutorial on how to use this Intel XTU tool to underlock our team. You must take into account the parameters that we have chosen, they do not have to work for you, everything will depend on what CPU you have, its TDP, its frequency and the silicon that you have touched.

In the same way, it will also depend on the motherboard and the cooling system that the laptop or desktop computer has. Normally it is a process with which it is intended to eliminate thermal throttling from a PC to improve its continued performance, so there are many factors that influence. Maybe you just have a few millivolts of CPU to have a great result, while others will reach the minimum power limit of their CPU and still have problems.

Now we leave you with a few hardware tutorials that may be interesting to you:

Tell us about your experience with this application and if you have managed to improve performance or lower the temperature on your laptop. Remember that you can always change the thermal paste, thermalpads and place a base with fans under the equipment for better temperatures.