How can I avoid reaching 90ºC (CPU) in my notebook? (Turbo Boost control?)

[rambomhtri]

Hi,

I have a notebook lenovo Y510P, which comes with Windows 8.1 x64, i7-4700MQ (2.4GHz up to 3.4Ghz, quad-core & hyper-threading), 8GB of RAM, nVIDIA GT 755M.

First of all, my temperatures are "all right", and I mean they are exactly the same as pretty much any other $1000 notebook with a powerful i7 like the one I have.

Well, when I use a program that only uses 1 core at its maximum power, the i7-4700MQ goes from 2.4GHz to 3.4GHz using Intel's Turbo Boost and I reach like 76ºC. So 1 core at maximum speed (3.4GHz ) and performance puts the temperature of the CPU up to 76ºC. So this is fine.

Now, you got to know that when an i7-4700MQ reaches 90ºC, it cuts Intel's Turbo Boost down (from 3.4GHz to 2.4GHz) so the temperature goes down. You also got to know that the maximum temperature this i7-4700MQ supports is 100ºC before it shuts down the notebook (because beyond 100ºC, there could be serious damage due to the high temperature), so it's pretty obvious why this is set to cut down Turbo Boost at 90ºC.

So the problem comes when I want to squeeze out the i7-4700MQ (and that's why I bought an i7 notebook, to use the power of an i7). When I render videos or images, the i7 uses all its power, that is 4 cores at 3.4GHz with hyper-threading. But I have a really big problem here, and it's that it reaches 90ºC in less than a minute. So, all the power the i7 can provide gets cut out in less than a minute due to the high temperatures.

The result is that when I render a video, the i7-4700MQ is at full performance and speed for about 50 seconds (4 cores at 3.4GHz), and then the rest of the time of the rendering process it's 4 cores at 2.4GHz. That's about 4% of the video rendering at 3.4GHz, and 96% of the video rendering at 2.4GHz. So it's really a waste of time and power.

So, I'd love to set the maximum speed of Intel's Turbo Boost when the 4 cores are at full speed. May be, if I set that speed to 2.8GHz, if I render a video, the i7 could be all the time at 2.8GHz (4 cores at 2.8GHz) and just reach 86-88ºC, and the full rendering of the video gets done at 2.8GHz, which would be much faster and actually taking advantage of the i7 power and the notebook's limitation when cooling it down.

So, how can I set the Intel's Turbo Boost maximum speed?

Instead of the official 3.4GHz speed, I'd like to set it to 2.8GHz (or the speed that gets the CPU under 89ºC). But if there's only 1 core at full speed, I want it to go to 3.4GHz, not 2.8 GHz.

Thank you!

[rambomhtri · Accepted solution]

All right, I've just found Intel's Xtreme Tuning Utility, and it's exactly what I was looking for. Thank you Intel for creating such a great software!

Solved!