I made Dell Inspiron 7405 throttle harder than before and can´t return it to original settings

[chnapo]

Hi guys, I desperately need help. The more I am trying to fix it, the worse it runs. There is Tl;dr in the end.

 

My best friend came to me with her laptop (Dell Inspiron 7405 P126G i5 1135G7 MX330 8GB RAM 512GB SSD W11) that it doesn´t run her (rather old) games well.

Testing time - cinebench. CPU first goes to max turbo, hits 100 degrees in no time, stays at 100 degrees for a while - throttling down the core clock and then slowly cools when turbo times out. Cinebench R20 score around 1800. Not bad, but i5 1135G7 should do better. Problem is that fans start kicking in AFTER the CPU is already heavily throttled (about 1GHz bellow max all core turbo). Ooookay. Thermal paste will get replaced and fans set up.

Tested the game. Game ran poorly because it was running on iGPU. Easy fix.

 

But now the CPU and fans behavior bugged me.

 

So I moved on to install notebook fan control, thinking that I will manually ramp up the fans. Then the voice came from Dell engineers: You have no power here! And it was right. Notebook fan control could not control a thing.

I googled why. On some stupid dell forum, there was a stupid advice to update all of my drivers and some software, namely chipset driver, dell power management. When browsing drivers, I also found something called Intel Management Engine Interface Driver and Intel Dynamic Tuning driver. I said to myself, words "dynamic" and "tuning" sound damn good. Also while at it, downloaded new Nvidia driver.

 

Installed all driver and software updates, windows 11 update, installed, restarted, ran cinebench, made sure the Dell power management was in the maximum performance mode (I did not know about the dell power management before).

 

Ran cinebench. My heart suddenly sunk into a black hole. CPU was hard throttled at 10w, sitting at 1.4 GHz all core. Damn, I was getting over 3 GHz before. What the hell??

Googled the dynamic tuning driver, uninstalled, CPU managed to reach 15W or 2.2 GHz. Still far from original values.

 

BTW the "Cool" mode runs fans faster than "maximum performance" mode in Dell Power Management. Wish I knew that before, would have saved myself so much trouble.

 

Uninstalled the Dell power management, CPU now reaches 18.7W for 5-6 seconds (2.4-2.5 GHz) and drops to 15W (2.2 GHz) and temps are in low 80s, fans at medium speed. Cinebench score 1300 at best. That is more than 25% drop!!!

 

Installed ThrottleStop and set it up according to a tutorial to no avail. There is no option to remove power limits as in the tutorial. Yes, I have the latest version 9.5 ...

 

I need to return the computer. I cannot return it running almost a GHz lower all core boost to someone who already complained about lack of performance (not only in the game, but also while video editing etc.). She IS going to notice.

 

I understand that Dell Engineers wanted to fix the overheating, but damn, please, first name the bloody modes correctly, second, if your CPU runs at 100 degrees celsius, it MIGHT BE A DAMN GOOD IDEA TO RAMP UP THOSE FANS RATHER QUICKLY. The solution is not to throttle the CPU with some driver update.

 

Oh yes and there seem to be no restore points on that computer.

 

Tl;dr: Fans did not ramp up when CPU was at 100 degrees fast enough. Was able to reach 28W. CPU thermally throttled. Notebook Fan Control did not help. Dell said: update drivers and bloatware. Updated. CPU got throttled to 10W. Uninstalled what I could, but CPU is still power throttled to 15-18W and runs at 73% of the original performance. No thermal throttling. What to do?

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

19 minutes ago, chnapo said:

Hi guys, I desperately need help. The more I am trying to fix it, the worse it runs. There is Tl;dr in the end.

 

My best friend came to me with her laptop (Dell Inspiron 7405 P126G i5 1135G7 MX330 8GB RAM 512GB SSD W11) that it doesn´t run her (rather old) games well.

Testing time - cinebench. CPU first goes to max turbo, hits 100 degrees in no time, stays at 100 degrees for a while - throttling down the core clock and then slowly cools when turbo times out. Cinebench R20 score around 1800. Not bad, but i5 1135G7 should do better. Problem is that fans start kicking in AFTER the CPU is already heavily throttled (about 1GHz bellow max all core turbo). Ooookay. Thermal paste will get replaced and fans set up.

Tested the game. Game ran poorly because it was running on iGPU. Easy fix.

 

But now the CPU and fans behavior bugged me.

 

So I moved on to install notebook fan control, thinking that I will manually ramp up the fans. Then the voice came from Dell engineers: You have no power here! And it was right. Notebook fan control could not control a thing.

I googled why. On some stupid dell forum, there was a stupid advice to update all of my drivers and some software, namely chipset driver, dell power management. When browsing drivers, I also found something called Intel Management Engine Interface Driver and Intel Dynamic Tuning driver. I said to myself, words "dynamic" and "tuning" sound damn good. Also while at it, downloaded new Nvidia driver.

 

Installed all driver and software updates, windows 11 update, installed, restarted, ran cinebench, made sure the Dell power management was in the maximum performance mode (I did not know about the dell power management before).

 

Ran cinebench. My heart suddenly sunk into a black hole. CPU was hard throttled at 10w, sitting at 1.4 GHz all core. Damn, I was getting over 3 GHz before. What the hell??

Googled the dynamic tuning driver, uninstalled, CPU managed to reach 15W or 2.2 GHz. Still far from original values.

 

BTW the "Cool" mode runs fans faster than "maximum performance" mode in Dell Power Management. Wish I knew that before, would have saved myself so much trouble.

 

Uninstalled the Dell power management, CPU now reaches 18.7W for 5-6 seconds (2.4-2.5 GHz) and drops to 15W (2.2 GHz) and temps are in low 80s, fans at medium speed. Cinebench score 1300 at best. That is more than 25% drop!!!

 

Installed ThrottleStop and set it up according to a tutorial to no avail. There is no option to remove power limits as in the tutorial. Yes, I have the latest version 9.5 ...

 

I need to return the computer. I cannot return it running almost a GHz lower all core boost to someone who already complained about lack of performance (not only in the game, but also while video editing etc.). She IS going to notice.

 

I understand that Dell Engineers wanted to fix the overheating, but damn, please, first name the bloody modes correctly, second, if your CPU runs at 100 degrees celsius, it MIGHT BE A DAMN GOOD IDEA TO RAMP UP THOSE FANS RATHER QUICKLY. The solution is not to throttle the CPU with some driver update.

 

Oh yes and there seem to be no restore points on that computer.

 

Tl;dr: Fans did not ramp up when CPU was at 100 degrees fast enough. Was able to reach 28W. CPU thermally throttled. Notebook Fan Control did not help. Dell said: update drivers and bloatware. Updated. CPU got throttled to 10W. Uninstalled what I could, but CPU is still power throttled to 15-18W and runs at 73% of the original performance. No thermal throttling. What to do?

Have you tried a good ol' factory reset? Ask her if it's okay to move all of her stuff onto an external drive 

[chnapo]

4 minutes ago, CHICKSLAYA said:

Have you tried a good ol' factory reset? Ask her if it's okay to move all of her stuff onto an external drive 

Oh yeah forgot to mention, there are 400GB of files and programs that are probably not backed up so factory reset is my very extremely last resort. What I am currently trying to do is to put in a different SSD and make a clean W10 install to see if the behavior changes. If that helps, factory reset will be on the table. But not as an attempt. Only if it is a 100% fix.

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

Just now, chnapo said:

Oh yeah forgot to mention, there are 400GB of files and programs that are probably not backed up so factory reset is my very extremely last resort. What I am currently trying to do is to put in a different SSD and make a clean W10 install to see if the behavior changes. If that helps, factory reset will be on the table. But not as an attempt. Only if it is a 100% fix.

I guarantee that 400gb of random junk is the issue. You should see the amount of crap on my wife's mac. There's proabably a bunch of bloatware, perhaps viruses, programs slowing it down etc. 

[chnapo]

9 minutes ago, CHICKSLAYA said:

I guarantee that 400gb of random junk is the issue. You should see the amount of crap on my wife's mac. There's proabably a bunch of bloatware, perhaps viruses, programs slowing it down etc. 

I guarantee that 400GB of random junk is NOT the issue, because when I received the computer, the only thing wrong about it was the fan behavior. Which was the result of the settings done by dell´s power management software. The issues came when I updated the drivers and software. Also, I can guarantee that there is no bloatware, more like 400GB of videos she works with, pics she takes for her work, some unreal engine projects etc. She is not dumb, she can build and sets up PCs herself and knows very well what not to put on her PC.

[unclewebb]

46 minutes ago, chnapo said:

There is no option to remove power limits as in the tutorial.

Post a screenshot of the ThrottleStop TPL window. You should be able to control the power limits in there as long as Dell did not lock these settings down. Clear the Disable Controls box and check the MMIO Lock box. Set the MSR PL1 and PL2 power limits appropriately. 

 

Some Dell laptops will do some extreme power limit throttling that is usually triggered by temperature. There is no way to control this type of throttling but there are a few things you can try by using ThrottleStop. The FIVR section is Not Available for the 11th Gen G7 series. You can blame Intel for that design decision. 

[chnapo]

8 minutes ago, unclewebb said:

Post a screenshot of the ThrottleStop TPL window. You should be able to control the power limits in there as long as Dell did not lock these settings down. Clear the Disable Controls box and check the MMIO Lock box. Set the MSR PL1 and PL2 power limits appropriately. 

 

Some Dell laptops will do some extreme power limit throttling that is usually triggered by temperature. There is no way to control this type of throttling but there are a few things you can try by using ThrottleStop. The FIVR section is Not Available for the 11th Gen G7 series. You can blame Intel for that design decision. 

Will post in a minute, but I must disclose that I am able to control PL1 and PL2 power limits, but the controls have no effect no matter how I change them.

[SpookyCitrus]

Ok just going to go out here and say this, you're doing a whole lot of nonsense on a laptop that is running normally as is, and pretty much the best it already will. I work with these Inspirons daily, unfortunately they don't cool well regardless, the one she has is also one of the more disappointing configurations Dell sells. The Mx330 which is only a 2GB GPU, is in all aspects a basic display GPU, nothing more. Having worked with them a lot in the past I can tell you their performance is sub par, barely better than the integrated graphics on the processor. She has a configuration with only a single 8GB stick of just guessing here 2400 or 2666mhz ram. The major problem with these especially the 2 in 1 models is the internal cooling, it's a terrible design for the heatsinks and cooling pipes, it barely works. No matter what you do, re-pasting, settings, setting fans to max speeds, turbo mode, etc. These things just run hot and are no good for anything that's going to stress the GPU and CPU at the same time for more than a couple minutes. They essentially added a GPU to a cooling system that was really only good for just the CPU to begin with.

 

As for fixing and reverting it back to normal. Besides doing a fresh install with a data transfer? If you have already gone through and set the bios to defaults/ done a CMOS reset, retraced your steps and reverted any changes you have made and it is still jacked up? You could try an in-place Windows upgrade, see if that fixes anything you may have bugged or messed up doing your tweaks in Windows. It's a long shot but worth a try, really only other thing you can do if all of that doesn't work is pray to god she has a restore point setup from before you did anything to it. If it doesn't. You're shit out of luck, you'll need to do a fresh install of Windows keeping her data. If it's just Videos and Pictures like you say that really shouldn't be a big deal, really all she would have to do is install and setup her programs. User data is very easy to keep if you know what you're doing.

 

Not trying to be rude here with this comment but if you did not do a back up of the drive prior to tweaking and messing around with her configurations, especially messing around with bios, chipset/drivers, and Windows that's your fault brother. Most people know better especially when it's someone's computer that doesn't belong to you. If you're new to tis stuff I get it, but man, if you're not... Having an image backup or clone of her drive prior to working on it would have saved you from all of this.

[chnapo]

48 minutes ago, SpookyCitrus said:

Ok just going to go out here and say this, you're doing a whole lot of nonsense on a laptop that is running normally as is, and pretty much the best it already will. I work with these Inspirons daily, unfortunately they don't cool well regardless, the one she has is also one of the more disappointing configurations Dell sells. The Mx330 which is only a 2GB GPU, is in all aspects a basic display GPU, nothing more. Having worked with them a lot in the past I can tell you their performance is sub par, barely better than the integrated graphics on the processor. She has a configuration with only a single 8GB stick of just guessing here 2400 or 2666mhz ram. The major problem with these especially the 2 in 1 models is the internal cooling, it's a terrible design for the heatsinks and cooling pipes, it barely works. No matter what you do, re-pasting, settings, setting fans to max speeds, turbo mode, etc. These things just run hot and are no good for anything that's going to stress the GPU and CPU at the same time for more than a couple minutes. They essentially added a GPU to a cooling system that was really only good for just the CPU to begin with.

 

As for fixing and reverting it back to normal. Besides doing a fresh install with a data transfer? If you have already gone through and set the bios to defaults/ done a CMOS reset, retraced your steps and reverted any changes you have made and it is still jacked up? You could try an in-place Windows upgrade, see if that fixes anything you may have bugged or messed up doing your tweaks in Windows. It's a long shot but worth a try, really only other thing you can do if all of that doesn't work is pray to god she has a restore point setup from before you did anything to it. If it doesn't. You're shit out of luck, you'll need to do a fresh install of Windows keeping her data. If it's just Videos and Pictures like you say that really shouldn't be a big deal, really all she would have to do is install and setup her programs. User data is very easy to keep if you know what you're doing.

 

Not trying to be rude here with this comment but if you did not do a back up of the drive prior to tweaking and messing around with her configurations, especially messing around with bios, chipset/drivers, and Windows that's your fault brother. Most people know better especially when it's someone's computer that doesn't belong to you. If you're new to tis stuff I get it, but man, if you're not... Having an image backup or clone of her drive prior to working on it would have saved you from all of this.

About doing nonsense on a laptop that is running normally. I am not doing nonsense and the laptop isn´t running normally, let me explain:
1. Running at 100 degrees celsius without fans kicking in isn´t "normally". It´s not THAT bad and THAT unique, but in my book, that needs to be fixed.

- logical first steps to fix are to update the drivers and OEM software that takes care of thermals and performance. I see (or better said, saw) few reasons to back up an image of her 400GB worth of data just to update the drivers. Not messing with bios at all. Second step that I did not manage to get to is to replace the thermal compound. I have seen as much as 15 degrees worth of difference just by replacing a thermal paste on a relatively new laptop! You wouldn´t believe how crappy it sometimes can be from factory.

 

2. After updating the drivers and software, laptop lost more than 50% of its original performance. That is unacceptable, especially for someone who uses it for work. If she wanted crappy performance, she would have bought a pentium, not an i5.

- logical steps are to try and revert changes that were made

 

3. After reverting as many changes as possible, laptop is still lacking 28% of its original performance (instead of gains I hoped for, back with unrestricted TDP that it originally had aside from intel restrictions). Still hard to live with if you use the performance it provides on daily basis.

- logical step is to consult the forums as I have done all I could

 

I know the laptop has poor cooling. But if the fans ramped up properly and there was a better thermal paste, it would run much closer to its potential performance, which is good 20% higher than the original performance. Who could have known that updating the drivers will cut it to half without being able to recover it easily. Future me? for sure. Past me? not.

I have done CMOS reset, tried to uninstall as much as I could from what I have installed, checked the bios but no changes were made there, tried defaults. Everything except a clean install.

 

Why did I come here? Well, not to hear that I messed something up, that I already stated. Not to hear that I need to do a fresh install, even kids know that fresh install fixes 99,9% of problems. I am here in hopes that someone has had similar problems with throttling on a model as similar to her as possible and has already figured out a solution. Maybe someone will say that I should try a particular setting in Throttlestop or disable a certain service in W11. Also not trying to be rude, but I am not here to hear a general statement of my situation and basic solutions. I am not THAT new to the stuff and yea, I work with laptops a lot, have fixed bad thermals on vast majority on them, had never ran into an issue like this, that the throttling would get WORSE and could not be reverted. Thank you for your time though, that you have spent reading and responding, I appreciate it bro.

 

Also the clean install is the path I am willing to take as I mentioned, but only after finding out if it helps.

[chnapo]

Guys I have a fix, (my thorttlestop was poorly configured, found that out when I was about to post screenshot for chickslaya, some MMIO was not locked - found that randomly because the values were similar to what I saw with behavior so even though I don´t know what MMIO means, it was blocking my TDP). Thank you all for your time and advice. Now able to sustain 3.0 GHz all core at 24W and that is before paste.

[unclewebb]

@chnapo

MMIO stands for memory mapped input output. Many 11th Gen G7 CPUs respond well when you use ThrottleStop to lock out the MMIO power limits. Intel CPUs do not need two separate sets of power limits. Once the MMIO limits are locked, then the MSR power limits can be used to control the CPU. 

 

Good to hear you solved your problem. 

[chnapo]

On 10/13/2022 at 7:22 PM, SpookyCitrus said:

Ok just going to go out here and say this, you're doing a whole lot of nonsense on a laptop that is running normally as is, and pretty much the best it already will. I work with these Inspirons daily, unfortunately they don't cool well regardless, the one she has is also one of the more disappointing configurations Dell sells. The Mx330 which is only a 2GB GPU, is in all aspects a basic display GPU, nothing more. Having worked with them a lot in the past I can tell you their performance is sub par, barely better than the integrated graphics on the processor. She has a configuration with only a single 8GB stick of just guessing here 2400 or 2666mhz ram. The major problem with these especially the 2 in 1 models is the internal cooling, it's a terrible design for the heatsinks and cooling pipes, it barely works. No matter what you do, re-pasting, settings, setting fans to max speeds, turbo mode, etc. These things just run hot and are no good for anything that's going to stress the GPU and CPU at the same time for more than a couple minutes. They essentially added a GPU to a cooling system that was really only good for just the CPU to begin with.

 

As for fixing and reverting it back to normal. Besides doing a fresh install with a data transfer? If you have already gone through and set the bios to defaults/ done a CMOS reset, retraced your steps and reverted any changes you have made and it is still jacked up? You could try an in-place Windows upgrade, see if that fixes anything you may have bugged or messed up doing your tweaks in Windows. It's a long shot but worth a try, really only other thing you can do if all of that doesn't work is pray to god she has a restore point setup from before you did anything to it. If it doesn't. You're shit out of luck, you'll need to do a fresh install of Windows keeping her data. If it's just Videos and Pictures like you say that really shouldn't be a big deal, really all she would have to do is install and setup her programs. User data is very easy to keep if you know what you're doing.

 

Not trying to be rude here with this comment but if you did not do a back up of the drive prior to tweaking and messing around with her configurations, especially messing around with bios, chipset/drivers, and Windows that's your fault brother. Most people know better especially when it's someone's computer that doesn't belong to you. If you're new to tis stuff I get it, but man, if you're not... Having an image backup or clone of her drive prior to working on it would have saved you from all of this.

So bro, check this out. This whole lot of nonsense was pretty useful after all. After replacing the thermal paste, laptop can do 3.4 GHz all-core and even managed 3.8 for a short burst. That´s not bad compared to 2.8-2.9 GHz all core boost that was before driver updates that ruined the performance (that would have come sooner or later anyway). It can now cool 34W instead of 28W. 6W of extra cooling and 0,5 GHz extra sustained boost does a significant difference in such a small form factor. CB score went from 1800 to 2160. That´s exactly 20% extra performance, more than you can achieve by overclocking a desktop these days.

[SpookyCitrus]

8 hours ago, chnapo said:

So bro, check this out. This whole lot of nonsense was pretty useful after all. After replacing the thermal paste, laptop can do 3.4 GHz all-core and even managed 3.8 for a short burst. That´s not bad compared to 2.8-2.9 GHz all core boost that was before driver updates that ruined the performance (that would have come sooner or later anyway). It can now cool 34W instead of 28W. 6W of extra cooling and 0,5 GHz extra sustained boost does a significant difference in such a small form factor. CB score went from 1800 to 2160. That´s exactly 20% extra performance, more than you can achieve by overclocking a desktop these days.

Cool, glad you were able to get it working properly again and were able to even improve it.