Undervolt OMG support

[Draggy1599]

Hey, I’m literally new in all this. I wanted to know if it’s safe to undervolt my laptop’s i7-8750H and wanted to know the cautions and warnings b4 I do anything I’d regret

[5x5]

It is safe in 99% of cases.

Use Intel XTU and follow NBC's guide
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-XTU-Undervolting-Guide.272120.0.html

 

Generally, when you hit the wall, you'll have a crash or freeze - just dial it back by 20mV and it'll be fine.

[Statik]

3 minutes ago, Draggy1599 said:

Hey, I’m literally new in all this. I wanted to know if it’s safe to undervolt my laptop’s i7-8750H and wanted to know the cautions and warnings b4 I do anything I’d regret

Undervolting can't really do any damage. Sure it might crash your laptop but a simple boot back to bios would fix that. I'm not a pro with any of this, but you might run into issues with undervolting being blocked in your bios due to Plundervolt exploits, but I'm not entirely sure how those restrictions work.

 

Also keep in mind while you might be stable with better temps, you will lose performance.

 

For example I went from a stock 3800x in testing to a 1.2V undervolt, and my temps were amazing (56C max), but my R20 score dropped by 300

[nick name]

15 minutes ago, Statik said:

-snip-

 

Also keep in mind while you might be stable with better temps, you will lose performance.

 

For example I went from a stock 3800x in testing to a 1.2V undervolt, and my temps were amazing (56C max), but my R20 score dropped by 300

I'm not sure I've seen anyone talk about Intel using clock stretching.  What you see with Ryzen 3000 clock stretching is reduced clock speeds during periods of insufficient power to maintain stability.  

[Statik]

1 hour ago, nick name said:

I'm not sure I've seen anyone talk about Intel using clock stretching.  What you see with Ryzen 3000 clock stretching is reduced clock speeds during periods of insufficient power to maintain stability.  

I'm going to be totally, honest, I just googled clock stretching and felt like this

[nick name]

57 minutes ago, Statik said:

I'm going to be totally, honest, I just googled clock stretching and felt like this

Lol.  Well at least you have a better understanding of why your CPU loses performance running lower voltages.  

 

I use an offset of -0.5V -- anything beyond that causes the worst core in my CPU to lose performance.  It's not much, but that's where it starts. 

 

If you set a low fixed voltage then any higher speeds are going to "run", but at a reduced level.  You can see that happen if you use HWiNFO and watch "effective clock speeds" and compare that to the multiplier during a Cinbench 20 run.  

[Statik]

14 minutes ago, nick name said:

Lol.  Well at least you have a better understanding of why your CPU loses performance running lower voltages.  

 

I use an offset of -0.5V -- anything beyond that causes the worst core in my CPU to lose performance.  It's not much, but that's where it starts. 

 

If you set a low fixed voltage then any higher speeds are going to "run", but at a reduced level.  You can see that happen if you use HWiNFO and watch "effective clock speeds" and compare that to the multiplier during a Cinbench 20 run.  

That's interesting. I might have to look into that. I've always liked the idea of undervolting my 3800x to get it to run a little cooler, but I just didn't know where to start.

 

I just remember running it stock speeds at 1.2V and seeing that baby not even break 60C, and I was diggin' it.