ThrottleStop on my Thinkpads | CPU undervolting and Speed Shift for T480, T580/P52s, W550s, and T15g

[@ChezDoesStuff]

Each CPU will have different ideal undervolt settings, so you'll have to experiment and iterate to find the best settings for yours. Not being able to undervolt your CPU as much as I was able to on mine isn't a bad thing, either! If anything, you can look at it as your CPU being closer to "optimal" than mine was out of the factory. :)

[@udintanjidin8386]

good video! thanks for the sharing.. I have T480 & have problem with battery 1 & battery 2 discharging order. Naturally I will want to discharge easier to remove battery 2 (external battery) which is removable & easy to replace without shutdown. The problem is, since **70 version of thinkpad (X270,T470..), they have changed the policy (low wear batt will discharge first). In my case it is internal batt (battery 1) which has low wear compare to batt 2. I research a little bit & found that lenovo change their policy about which batt to discharge first for powerbridged system & many user complain about that. But Lenovo seems not to care about the complaint. is this software able to set which battery to discharge first? thanks

[@ChezDoesStuff]

@@udintanjidin8386Have you tried updating all firmware and drivers? My laptops still discharge their external batteries first despite these having more cycles than the internal batteries.

[@unclewebb]

ThrottleStop 9.6 was just released. This should fix some of the scaling issues on high DPI screens. It also supports the 13th Gen mobile and desktop CPUs.

[@ChezDoesStuff]

Good info and WOW directly from you! Thanks for creating this. It's been a big help to the community.

[@ZJSS]

These T480 videos are awesome

[@yuhaoli9780]

Thank you so much. I am able to get my Thinkpad P51 to idle at much lower temp. It was sitting at 85 before, and now it is at 55.

[@ChezDoesStuff]

That's great! Glad it helped

[@pieropca2640]

Definitely my brother got more duration of battery life in his Thinkpad T480 Btw, we got minimum idle's of 1.4W with Windows 10, but then we have done a Windows 11 upgrade and now we see minimum idle's of 0.7W Seems that Windows 11 is more efficient than Windows 10 in terms of idle times. The specs of the laptops are: i7 8550U 8GB RAM DDR4 (Single-Channel) SSD 500GB SATA Nvidia MX150 Graphics 14'' 1366x768 HD Display PD: We saw that in ThrottleStop there is a Turbo limiter. We used it to set the CPU Turbo to 3.4GHz (Same as the i5 ver.) because the i7 has a max. Turbo of 4.0GHz D:

[@ChezDoesStuff]

That's great info! Folks often advice others to avoid the i7 because it supposedly ends up slower than the i5 once it thermal throttles, but looks like you fixed it by capping max. turbo. 0.7W idle is awesome, too!

[@sorgenoyn7664]

What is your BIOS version? I have the last one (1.47) and although it allows me to modify the offset voltage, no real change can be seen

[@t77649]

T480 with i5 8350 ran at 0.5W stock at idle. Got it down to 0.4W with increased boost speeds. Great video!

[@RayBlaxe]

is it the same settings with what you shown on the video? if i use the t480 i7 8650u version?

[@ChezDoesStuff]

No, you will need to do your own testing to see what settings work best.

[@saf751_]

I need serious help with undervolting. throttlestop doesn't undervolt on my t480. I have tried uninstalling wsl and stuff. The cpu is the i5-8350u vPro

[@qserkl4106]

Did it on the t580, thanks.

[@wubbalubbadubdub3744]

Thanks for making the video of my recommendation another decent guide! Keep them coming!

[@ChezDoesStuff]

Hope it helped!

[@jonyothan]

I was able to achieve the best i5-8350u 3dmark cpu score in the world with this process

[@ChezDoesStuff]

That's awesome.

[@one_step_sideways]

You only really need a good lottery CPU, a beefy dGPU cooler, fan control software (optional) and good thermal pads for the VRMs and PTM7950 on the CPU.

[@jonyothan]

@@one_step_sideways i didnt even need to mess with fan control just good luck on the silicon lottery i guess

[@ikerrodriguez9465]

Very complete video. Thanks! But you should edit every time you mention "micro volts" as they are "milli volts" instead.

[@ChezDoesStuff]

Good catch. Thanks for that

[@SceneArtisan]

I'm looking at getting a Lenovo P50 and under-volting but all I know and feel comfortable with adjusting is to lower the voltage. I want to make sure my laptop (when I get it) doesn't get hot as the P50 is known to get very toasty. I want to under-volt it, but, yeah, in Linux even though I'm a complete newbie to Linux (I'll be using Linux Mint I think). Any advice, tips to keep things super simple and effective in lowering the under-load temps in Linux on the P50 would be appreciated. Thankies. :)

[@CATATDOOR]

Please if you have thinkpad that has xeon e-2276m try to reduce the temperature because it's so 🔥🔥

[@karim-karim24]

bro this is gold ❤

[@jasonvoorhees3282]

I have T480 i7-8550U. The power usage is reduced, which is good. But the temperature…it still peaks over 95. Many people warned against i7 CPUs for their terrible temperatures.

[@natcuber]

Did the performance increase? Maybe your processor is cooler, but it's using that headroom to run faster instead.

[@RocketNation07]

Thanks for the guide. Quick question here, whats your final core/cache number at the moment? both for Performance Plugged and Battery (I'm using T480 with similar spec to yours).

[@ChezDoesStuff]

I do not have the T480 with me to check for sure, but I recall setting 110/95 or 105/95.

[@jokjoan]

Hello. I'm not here for undervolting. I'm planning to get t580 next week and what can you say it's endurance? I am not planning to play games on it. Probably used for work like mails, sheets and lil bit of KZbin. I'm planning to buy a 72wh battery. But in your opinion, is the t580 that power hungry? Or should I go for a t590 which is known for its endurance. Both are offered to me for 350 usd.

[@natcuber]

Why not get the newer device?

[@807800]

I think I've broken my M.2 SSD on my T440S because of this. Replacing the M.2 with a new one, I started to notice a similar pattern (SSD error/ not detected) that ended up breaking my SSD. Maybe it's just my stupid setting, but honestly, I just stop.

[@wilfridocortes5043]

You're amazing dude!

[@naufalfarabbi3323]

i have t480s, when i set the max power draw to 25w, its burst to 2,8 Ghz and temp goes up to 98°C (while you got only 60-70 C), is it bc slim design?

[@naufalfarabbi3323]

Core offset -200mV, cache offset -100mV.

[@ChezDoesStuff]

Wow those are aggressive offset settings! Glad they work for you. On top of the thicker frame, I'd attribute the lower temps I saw to the dual heat pipe upgrade done to the T480 despite the lack of dGPU.

[@naufalfarabbi3323]

@@ChezDoesStuff so you running dual heat pipe for mx150 version right?

[@naufalfarabbi3323]

@@ChezDoesStuff i've done some tweaks, now with ONLY 20w power it can go 2,95 Ghz (90°C temp)

[@kcmanuel]

Does this work on T14 Gen 1 AMD? Excuse my ignorance I'm new to thinkpads

[@ChezDoesStuff]

I don't think undervolting is a thing for AMD processors. I could be wrong though.

[@hst3003]

Help...im running this on thinkpad t480s,win 11, but the ts bench time wont go lower and sometime goes up ,there is no significant change, and i cant even reach the point where i should go to BSOD. It seems that its not affecting anything. CPU cache offset also stays at 0

[@one_step_sideways]

Try downgrading the BIOS as I described in my comment. You need to downgrade the BIOS to 1.34 on your T480s and also turn off Virtualization Based Security if it's enabled (if you use WSL2 or something like that).

[@AjaySingh-uj1lk]

What's your bios version?

[@AlanHusk]

Nice stuff

[@kazuviking]

I wouldn't put those thermal pastes under a laptop video. Kryonaut pumps out in weeks, mx4 barely lasts a month.

[@kewner8556]

Any other paste you'd recommend?

[@kazuviking]

@@kewner8556Honeywell ptm7950. Its a phase change pad that turns liquid above 45C. It performs the same as liquid metal without its drawback, lasts years without needing to re-paste. It will outlive your laptop.

[@Nixkyt]

Can I also use this to over bolt to boost performance? I a good cooling mechanism so overheating does not matter

[@ChezDoesStuff]

Yes, I believe you can overvolt by sliding the settings the other way. I do not have experience with this to comment whether it'll be reliable/safe, unfortunately.

[@Nixkyt]

@@ChezDoesStuff alr Ty

[@denisstrok9898]

t480, i7-8650u here: core -130 cache -100 works like a charm, but; when connecting or disconnecting charger machine cashes.. oh, I have batt profile set to stock values, so no big issue to rinse and repeat. stresstest works fine, temps look good, no errors. did I maybe miss something?

[@ChezDoesStuff]

You might want to consider: A. Pushing a pin into the power reset hole at the bottom B. Checking to see if there are thunderbolt/USB-C port driver updates pending C. Scaling cache back to -95 or -90 and testing (also test with TS disabled just to rule Windows system issues out) Hope this helps!

[@denisstrok9898]

@@ChezDoesStuff thx for the reply! what does A do?

[@denisstrok9898]

@@ChezDoesStuff bumping up cache V seem to help! :) left the CPU untouched. but also it seems since the plugged and batt profiles differed to much, it made it crash when plugging/unplugging the charger, having them more at the same V, helps! what about the iGPU, should/could I UV it too? :D

[@ChezDoesStuff]

@@denisstrok9898 A just resets the power controller by disconnecting all batteries for a brief fraction of a second. Sometimes, the power controller just gets "tired".

[@ChezDoesStuff]

@@denisstrok9898 Great to hear that you've found some progress. I tried fiddling with iGPU in the past but didn't see as much power efficiency improvements as I did by UVing the CPU, so I reverted back to default settings.

[@CatBacon-qc5ot]

Great content, do these settings apply to a T480 with an i7 8650U and an MX150?

[@ChezDoesStuff]

I think it's worth exploring what specific settings actually run stable on your machine, since each chip is different. That said, folks have commented that vPro processors seem to be locked and incapable of undervolting. Please do report back what you find!

[@one_step_sideways]

@@ChezDoesStuff vPro processors are fully capable of undervolting. They are not locked, as I tried it on my other T480 with an i5-8350U (with vPro). I wrote a comment about how to enable undervolting on ThinkPads that support it - you may want to put a like, or maybe even pin it now.

[@cybcarr]

is this works with A485 Ryzen too?

[@one_step_sideways]

No

[@PowerupDaniel]

Thank you!

[@ChezDoesStuff]

You're welcome!

[@aanfansub]

I think all of them are LOCKED by bios cause the plundervolt or whatever it calls. And everyone here think they are undervolting but they are doing nothing (the video is actually undervolting)

[@RayBlaxe]

@@one_step_sideways what BIOS version did you recommend?

[@one_step_sideways]

@@RayBlaxe Actually as it turns out, even the lates BIOS on the ThinkPad T480 supports undervolting. But if you are having any problems, you might have to downgrade to the version 1.26. You are likely going to have problems with VBS being enabled rather than the BIOS, so make sure that VBS is disabled. With my i7-8550U I got -120mV on Core and Cache stable, and sometimes depending on the mood of the laptop, even -130mV is stable. With -130mV I got an increase from 3130 points to 3600 points in Cinebench R23 at 15W TDP locked. Worth noting that it's very close to Intel i7-1165G7, which came out on a 10nm node 3 years after i7-8550U, so undervolting has improved multi-core performance by 13%. That means that the T480 will have another year of staying relevant in the future compared to if it had no undervolting, which is great, because the T480 is the last great ThinkPad and we have to wait at least 3 years until T14 Gen 5 starts hitting the used market in droves.

[@RayBlaxe]

@@one_step_sideways thankyouu

[@jasonvoorhees3282]

@@one_step_sidewaysHow do I downgrade to previous bios. Coincidentally, I was on 1.26 too.

[@jasonvoorhees3282]

@@one_step_sidewaysHow do I downgrade the bios. I was on 1.26 version too. I updated it and I think I made a HUGE mistake.

[@hYpercritesde]

fiiiiiinaly! ♥

[@hYpercritesde]

okay update, i did everything you did but it seems like my CPU doesn't let me change the values. in FIVR i see values changed after you save in the upper right corner, mines not changing at all. i still suspect vPro in charge but i don't know for sure. still a very good video, keep it up! :)

[@ChezDoesStuff]

@@hYpercritesde sorry to hear that! Speed Shift should still help things a bit, hopefully?

[@hYpercritesde]

@@ChezDoesStuff sorry for the late reply, i had the chance to test it now with speed shift and had no difference at all. but i appreciate your effort. :)

[@AlanHusk]

@@hYpercritesde mine has vPro too, the value in the FIVR changed but the max temp still no go down. Still waiting for the dual heatpipe fan to come before changing the thermal paste.

[@AlanHusk]

@@hYpercritesdetry deactive the AMT in the BIOS setting, maybe it will help

[@sergiodiaz4677]

Excelente video, lo aplique con el -50 para un lenovo t480, vamos a ver como me va

[@ChezDoesStuff]

Keep us posted!

[@sergiodiaz4677]

@@ChezDoesStuff Una maravilla este undervolt, la verdad las temperaturas mejoraron bastante, la autonomia cuando lo uso para ofimática, prácticamente es del doble, aunque para juegos tambien mejoro, y la calidad y fluidez no disminuyo como me imagine