Very low CPU maximum frequency

[Colin B]

UPDATE: 

While downloading important files to an external drive, all of a sudden, things seemed to be going suspiciously smoothly. Scrolling seemed instantaneous. Opening folders was snappy. What could be happening?!? I checked Task Manager and then HwInfo, both reporting nominal CPU operation. I'm over the moon thrilled right now. Given this is my college laptop, I don't really have the money to drop on a replacement right now. 

 

My VERY speculative guess on how it fixed itself: 

I was playing subnautica when I spilled the water, so the laptop definitely had active threads, memory, unsaved progress, etc. It was only once I started digging into the subnautica folders under steam in my C drive that it magically fixed itself. I don't have a deep understanding of the topic to draw genuine conclusions, but I suspect it could have realized there were issues relating to those folders/files, and reset to a save state once I started digging in those files, which somehow solved the root issue. Alternatively, this could just be coincidental timing of a super lucky event. Either way, my woes seem to be gone for now.

Huge thank you to everyone who gave suggestions and advice below. I learned a lot through this process.

 

Original Post:

I have a dell XPS 13 inch, running an i5-1135G7, 512gb SSD, 16 gigs ram, and intel Iris Xe. It runs windows 11 64 bit and is currently on bios version 3.11.0.
 

This is primarily my college laptop, but being home for break I’ve done some light gaming on it. While gaming, I spilled water on the keyboard, enough to get in pretty much everything. The laptop instantly shut off, and I dried it out as much as possible. I was able to get it to turn on into a bios update, which bios logs show failed 4x before the final success. It then shut down until I took it apart, removing every last bit of water, cleaning up with isopropyl, and removing/installing the battery. 
 

After reassembly, it ran through a series of RGB on the display and then booted to windows, which shocked me. It seemed ok but very slow. Some digging into the task manager showed me it was running at 0.19 ghz, or 8% CPU frequency almost constantly. The ram, SSD, Wi-Fi, and Iris Xe seem completely fine.

 

I removed and re-installed the battery twice more to see if that would solve things, but nothing changed. I ran an intel CPU diagnostic tool, which came back with everything as a “pass” and even showed that it recorded 2.41 ghz on the cpu frequency test, which surprised me (result image attached). Following various other forums, I messed with dell power, fan, and thermal throttling settings (setting to the most intensive I could). I also went into the bios and changed two of the “smart, adaptive power” settings (I forget the proper names, but they didn’t change anything). Using resource monitor, I found that the “maximum frequency” was pretty constant at 8%, though it occasionally jumped to 10-12% which surprised me. Lastly, I booted in safe mode, and while it was still slow, the task manager and resource monitor there showed the proper 2.41 ghz and 100% frequency. This confuses me because the speed in safe mode suggested it wasn’t any faster. 
 

One forum post I came across claimed that reverting to an older bios version solved a similar issue, so that might be a route for me to explore, as it did automatically update bios in the midst of this all. I plan to backup important files on an external drive and probably factory reset if I can’t find a good solution. 
 

Note- the laptop never physically got very hot during these processes, so besides a broken sensor, I doubt it would be thermally throttling here. I also confirmed that the fans do work normally if the laptop gets hot, which also suggests it’s not just thermal throttling. (The fans only briefly came on while in the BIOS). 

Edited December 24, 2022 by Colin B

[Applefreak]

15 minutes ago, Colin B said:

I have a dell XPS 13 inch, running an i5-1135G7, 512gb SSD, 16 gigs ram, and intel Iris Xe. It runs windows 11 64 bit and is currently on bios version 3.11.0.
 

This is primarily my college laptop, but being home for break I’ve done some light gaming on it. I spilled water on the keyboard, enough to get in pretty much everything. The laptop instantly shut off, and I dried it out as much as possible. I was able to get it to turn on into a bios update, which bios logs show failed 4x before the final success. It then shut down until I took it apart, removing every last bit of water, cleaning up with isopropyl, and removing/installing the battery. 
 

After reassembly, it ran through a series of RGB on the display and then booted to windows, which shocked me. It seemed ok but very slow. Some digging into the task manager showed me it was running at 0.19 ghz, or 8% CPU frequency almost constantly. The ram, SSD, Wi-Fi, and Iris Xe seem completely fine.

 

I removed and re-installed the battery twice more to see if that would solve things, but nothing changed. I ran an intel CPU diagnostic tool, which came back with everything as a “pass” and even showed that it recorded 2.41 ghz on the cpu frequency test, which surprised me (result image attached). Following various other forums, I messed with dell power, fan, and thermal throttling settings (setting to the most intensive I could). I also went into the bios and changed two of the “smart, adaptive power” settings (I forget the proper names, but they didn’t change anything). Using resource monitor, I found that the “maximum frequency” was pretty constant at 8%, though it occasionally jumped to 10-12% which surprised me. Lastly, I booted in safe mode, and while it was still slow, the task manager and resource monitor there showed the proper 2.41 ghz and 100% frequency. This confuses me because the speed in safe mode suggested it wasn’t any faster. 
 

One forum post I came across claimed that reverting to an older bios version solved a similar issue, so that might be a route for me to explore, as it did automatically update bios in the midst of this all. I plan to backup important files on an external drive and probably factory reset if I can’t find a good solution. 
 

Note- the laptop never physically got very hot during these processes, so besides a broken sensor, I doubt it would be thermally throttling here. I also confirmed that the fans do work normally if the laptop gets hot, which also suggests it’s not just thermal throttling. (The fans only briefly came on while in the BIOS). 

So the real question is, can you still game on it? If yes, the clocks reported are wrong, you could not game at that speed very well.

[Colin B]

12 minutes ago, Applefreak said:

So the real question is, can you still game on it? If yes, the clocks reported are wrong, you could not game at that speed very well.

I’ve not tried to run games, but everyday tasks, and just every basic operation is very obviously running dramatically slower. 

[Naijin]

1 minute ago, Colin B said:

I’ve not tried to run games, but everyday tasks, and just every basic operation is very obviously running dramatically slower. 

Make sure you run it in the high performance power plan.

It's still electronic and water could have shorted something. Be glad it still works and you're able to save data. If it doesn't fix with the high performance power plan and it's still slow as ever, it's probably not worth the repair cost.

[Applefreak]

3 minutes ago, Colin B said:

I’ve not tried to run games, but everyday tasks, and just every basic operation is very obviously running dramatically slower. 

Can you please go into bios and disable all energy saving modes (C-States). Also check your battery settings. I remember someone her had an issue like that and fixed it by choosing different energy settings for the battery (the battery has it's own sensors that may have gotten wet).

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Download throttlestop and just max the multi there to lock cpu to its highest allcore boost

[RiffTheRaff]

First check your power plan and if the maximum processor state is somehow set to a very low level.

1

After that check your processor sensor data with hwinfo and check the values for thermal throttling and check the temps of your CPU.

After that all you could test with throttlestop if you can somehow get better values, but be careful and keep a eye on your CPU temps while playing with throttlestop.

I have a tablet where a thermal sensor is delivering wrong values and throttlestop has helped to get some performance back.

[Colin B]

5 hours ago, RiffTheRaff said:

First check your power plan and if the maximum processor state is somehow set to a very low level.

1

After that check your processor sensor data with hwinfo and check the values for thermal throttling and check the temps of your CPU.

After that all you could test with throttlestop if you can somehow get better values, but be careful and keep a eye on your CPU temps while playing with throttlestop.

I have a tablet where a thermal sensor is delivering wrong values and throttlestop has helped to get some performance back.

Thank you for the help. Hwinfo is awesome, I’m just using it for the first time now. I also tried throttle stop and it didn’t seem to do anything messing with the multiplier and prochot. Seems to max out all cores at 200 mhz, no temperature issues at all. 

[RiffTheRaff]

Have you tried to disconnect your battery and start only with AC power?

I found a online post where disconnecting the battery for some time solved a similar problem: Solved: Dell XPS 13 9350 slowed to almost unusable in one day - Dell Community

[unclewebb]

On 12/23/2022 at 11:24 AM, Colin B said:

I also tried ThrottleStop and it didn’t seem to do anything

Exit HWiNFO and post some ThrottleStop screenshots including the FIVR, TPL and Limit Reasons windows.  When Dell laptops get stuck at an extremely low speed, it is almost always a BD PROCHOT throttling problem. Did you clear the BD PROCHOT box on the main screen of ThrottleStop?

 

Some Dell laptops use an embedded controller (EC) that can lock the turbo power limits to 0. This can also cause throttling to the minimum speed. Check the MMIO Lock box in the ThrottleStop TPL window. This box is near the top right of the TPL window.   

 

BD PROCHOT throttling problems can magically come and go. Next time you have a slow and sluggish laptop, use ThrottleStop to properly diagnose this problem.