2nd Gen i3 Laptop CPU not boosting

[flippert96]

Hey all,

 

A colleague of mine is an owner of a pretty ancient Dell Latitude E5520, and I was able to convince him that upgrading to an SSD would get him a few more years out of the laptop. The upgrade went fine, and I did a fresh install of W10 Home. However upon booting, I noticed the CPU wasn't going to its boost clocks(2,1GHz) at all, instead staying at 700MHz, whilst temps were around 60c. I already did some troubleshooting, and did a bios update, and checked every setting that could affect the CPU not boosting(BIOS and windows performance settings). I also put back his old HDD to boot on his old W7 install, and noticed it didnt boost on that install either. Besides to the SSD, I also replaced the battery, and added a new stick of RAM to double the capacity(the laptop had an additional SODIMM slot). I used Cinebench R15 and Aida64 to put a load on the CPU, but both benchmarks werent able to boost the CPU.

 

Specs:

Intel Core i3 2310M

4GB + 4GB DDR3 SODIMM @ 1333MHz

Kingston A400 240GB

Intel HD graphics 3000

 

[5x5]

Are you using proper tracking software?

[flippert96]

@5x5 I find the windows task manager(in W10) performance tab already pretty reliable, but I also used both the built in monitoring tool from AIDA64(for temps) as well as CPU-Z

[5x5]

Just now, flippert96 said:

@5x5 I find the windows task manager performance tab already pretty reliable, but I also used both the built in monitoring tool from AIDA64(for temps) as well as CPU-Z

Have you tried reinstalling the OS? Could be a broken power plan

[flippert96]

@5x5The install on the SSD is already a fresh install, so I doubt doing another fresh install would fix it. I could always try it, but if someone has an alternative solution I'd prefer to not do another install (since the CPU isnt boosting, a fresh install takes like 2 hours, and then it still needs to update)

 

[Nord]

Win10 could still f* itself, even if it's a fresh install. So the re- reinstall might be worthwhile.

Other than that, make sure the powerplan is set & configured properly, like already mentioned by 5x5. -> CPU max usage to 100% and cooling to active.

 

Alternative you can just go ahead and get Intel XTU (if supported) or throttlestop and set up the CPU boosting etc. there manually.
Might as well undervolt while you are at it and boost the laptops performance even a bit more with that.

[flippert96]

16 hours ago, Nord said:

Win10 could still f* itself, even if it's a fresh install. So the re- reinstall might be worthwhile.

Other than that, make sure the powerplan is set & configured properly, like already mentioned by 5x5. -> CPU max usage to 100% and cooling to active.

 

Alternative you can just go ahead and get Intel XTU (if supported) or throttlestop and set up the CPU boosting etc. there manually.
Might as well undervolt while you are at it and boost the laptops performance even a bit more with that.

I took a look at the power plan, and everything was set to 100% and active cooling, unfortunately still no result. I thought XTU was only available for 4th gen intel CPU's and up, since I tried undervolting my own laptop CPU (i3-3217u), but back then it wasnt supported. I did some googling now though, and I'm pretty sure they added support for it now, so I'll give XTU a go. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

 

Thanks for the suggestions!

[Nord]

XTU is always a gamble. It usually “works” on everything but the question is how much it actually lets you change.
Like I’ve seen i7 8700 desktop system with Z mobos where you can't change the multiplier in windows but can edit literally everything else.

 

Personal preference would lean towards Throttlestop as it never failed me.
Though it's somewhat hard(ish) to get used to it and also a pain to set it up to boot and automatically apply the settings keyed into it.

Though XTU is definitely the “safer” choice in finding the maximum undervolt, as it usually won't save voltages once windows gets reboot. Where as Throttlestop mostly does.