Well, RDR2 on an underpowered laptop...

TukangUsapEmenq · October 26, 2020

Well, after a year of thinking 'should I do it?'. I really waited to play this for like, all the time since it's released.

It ain't much, but it's honest work of my baby.

Spoiler

1280x720, the lowest ever settings I can do to it, with some additional little grass LOD tweaks from LowSpecGamer.

940MX OCed with +135 MHz core clock, and +495 MHz memory clock. Didn't add that much, around 3-5 fps with increase of temps of 3-5 degrees (so it's 1:1 benefit, technically). But hey, it's there anyway, in some cases I can reach 30fps or more, which actually still comfortable to play. Temps are actually stable at 69-72 degrees.

I put the power plant to "Better perfomance" instead of "Best perfomance" so my i5-7200U won't turbo-boost constantly at 3.1GHz (it doesn't use CPU that much anyway), reducing albeit some of the temps by 2-3 degrees. Temps are kind of fluctuating from 78 even touching some at 89 degrees. Probably because of how the heatsink designed, the CPU had to take the GPU temps either. Poor one.

Both CPU and GPU thermal pastes are recently changed (again, it's the third time for a month) since the CPU temps before are just way too inconsistent before (even on the fan ramping up to max). Turns out the paste are not so-enough on the CPU, and it didn't spread nicely. MX4, fyi.

Spoiler

That cooler fan (it's an AC powered fan) actually helps dropping both the CPU and GPU temps to 2-3 degrees, and keeping my wrist to cooking up. There's an additional Deepcool N17 (I don't think it's useful somehow) below the laptop.

And, yes. I played it out of the external drive (it's having the exact same speed as SATA drive anyway) since I got only 120GB of internal storage yet (and I don't want to put it inside. I killed 3 of these already.)

And I won't play it occasionally here. It would kill another battery (again) if I do so.

Yet. After all that, just wondering. How can I make the temps kind of cooler somehow? I won't expect a huge drop as it would be not possible anyway, but it's nice if there's some another temp drop even only of the slightest. Well, not putting on troubleshooting subtopic as I'm just wondering and I thought this is enough anyway.

And so just wondering if I can actually using external GPU indeed.

Levent · October 26, 2020

Well, your options are limited when it comes to improving laptop thermals. Its either using better thermal paste or straight up cutting up your laptop (which I dont suggest). If you have a PCIE 1X slot, you might be able to use an eGPU but its something thats not worth it on a laptop like yours.

TukangUsapEmenq · October 26, 2020

2 minutes ago, Levent said:

Well, your options are limited when it comes to improving laptop thermals. Its either using better thermal paste or straight up cutting up your laptop (which I dont suggest). If you have a PCIE 1X slot, you might be able to use an eGPU but its something thats not worth it on a laptop like yours.

Yeah, and I'm kind of regret of getting a laptop instead of PC somehow. But I needed it more for college unfortunately.

Got a thought to just copy the game to my brother's PC, pull some Cat 5e cable, and just stream it out of it lol

Already using MX4 thermal paste, which is just pasted (again, after twice of no-good temp results) hours ago.

Chionele · October 27, 2020

16 hours ago, dhannemon13 said:

Yeah, and I'm kind of regret of getting a laptop instead of PC somehow.

Well I mean, laptops are PC's...

Anyhow, those temps are just fine and expected from a laptop, and apart from all the things you've already done there is nothing you can really do to get them lower in a manner that would make any sense.

Mark Kaine · October 28, 2020

On 10/26/2020 at 1:56 PM, dhannemon13 said:

Yeah, and I'm kind of regret of getting a laptop instead of PC somehow. But I needed it more for college unfortunately.

Got a thought to just copy the game to my brother's PC, pull some Cat 5e cable, and just stream it out of it lol

Already using MX4 thermal paste, which is just pasted (again, after twice of no-good temp results) hours ago.

Hey we have the same gpu *high fives*

As for your temp problems assuming the laptop isn't really dusty or something

Works like a charm, good for 5-10C easily!

And protip do not plug it into your laptop ever as it may damage it or just draws too much power either way, use a USB cable and a phone charger to power it.

And another tip: if you want you can try to lower the resolution even more I'm sure you could get around 30fps or so out of the thing...

(press alt+enter for full screen goodness)