Laptop GPU not going to idle, raising temps on gaming laptop?

[TheVainOrphan2000]

TL:DR, After a power cycle, the GPU in my laptop doesn't seem to idle properly anymore, meaning the temps are constantly higher, at least without unplugging, and replugging-in the laptop

 

SPECS:

Model No: Acer Nitro 5, AN515-45

CPU: Ryzen 5800H
GC:RTX 3070 Laptop
RAM: 32GB DDR4
OS: Windows 11, 64-bit

 

Quick background, I've had this laptop for just under a year, and it's been working fine, temps are usually good when performing light tasks like web browsing, using Word/PowerPoint etc. it usually tops out at around 45°C, which is good because the fans wont spin up past 1500RPM (the lowest speed). obviously temps would rise once running a game (maxing out at like 93°C on DOOM: Eternal etc).

 

This was until around a month ago, when I realised that after a power cycle the fans were louder, and using the NitroSense monitoring tool, I could see why: The idling temps were now 55°C+, rising to over 65 when doing ANYTHING... this would raise the fanspeeds to over 3000+, which I'm used to while gaming but not when literally doing nothing intensive. I tried everything I could think of short of reinstalling Windows, i performed a DDU of both the iGPU and dGPU, closed every startup program that could've been causing it, but to no avail. It was a week or two later I noticed in NitroSense that the GPU monitoring was actually showing a temperature, and graphing it. there was 0 usage, and the Nvidia GPU activity window in the tray was showing the GPU as inactive, but there it was, still being graphed, and suspiciouslyඞ my CPU temps were now 10-20°C higher. 

 

Whilst trying to figure out a solution, I figured out a temporary fix: If i unplug the laptop, wait for the dGPU to go idle, then plug it back in, then it stays off. This 'solves' the issue, as the temps will return to normal as NitroSense now shows no GPU temps/usage. Occasionally, it will get stuck on when opening certain applications, like games or even Chrome can start the GPU up and it wont idle again, although turning the laptop on, or even waking it from sleep will cause the dGPU to just sit there increasing the temps when nothing seems to be using it. I have no idea what i could've changed or what could be causing this, so if anyone has any ideas how I could diagnose this weird behaviour, or maybe a fix (someone must've noticed this before). I'd be greatly appreciative.

 

a couple of other things i've tried was disabling hardware acceleration is discord (although the issue persisted even when discord wasn't open during the issue so I wasn't expecting that to help), setting the GPU preference in the Nvidia control panel to Auto-select (that was what it was originally on, but i decided to change it anyway to no avail).

 

Oh, here's a pic of the weird behaviour, the area I've circled blue is what it looks like waking the laptop from sleep (or turning on), and the graph above shows the correlated CPU temp increase. dashes in the red and orange in the GPU graph is what it looks like when the dGPU is idle. As you can see, I've performed my unplug/replug  technique, although its kinda annoying and probably not good for the charging plug to be used over and over again. 

 

UPDATE: in case anyone has found a similar issue, the 'fix' for this was a Windows update, a fairly large one which seemed to solve the problem.... probably means the issue was with how Windows 11 was managing the power so....

Edited November 11, 2023 by TheVainOrphan2000