CPU Exhibiting odd behavior under load

[HonestyLL]

Background: 
I have a Dell G5 5590 that is exhibiting some odd behavior. 

Specs are as follows: 

• I5 9300H
• GTX 1650
• 32 GB Ram (Dual Channel)

I've done a few things to this PC in this order: 

• Cleaned the fans (spraying air cannister condensate into them by accident causing notable whining)
• Installed MSI Afterburner to attempt to give my GPU a small bump. This resulted in battery drain even when plugged in when gaming (and some really bad battery activity such as not charging to 100%).
• Uninstalled MSI Afterburner
• I removed my battery as it began to swell and used my laptop exclusively plugged in. 
• went from 8gb to 32 gb of ram
• Recently replaced SSD and reimaged with fresh windows 10 (issue still persists)

The Problem: 

Performance began to dip after Uninstalling MSI Afterburner and got notably worse when i removed my battery. 

During game sessions, I would experience extreme dips in FPS (80fps to low 15s) and would stay low for a notable amount of time. Generally this happened when more was happening on screen, however this was not the only trigger as it would happen when I hadn't moved in game at all with nothing on screen. For a time the fans would kick in, however they recently have not (though they are still functional, aka i can force them to 100% speed).

With task manager open, I noticed my clock speeds acting extremely weird, with clock speeds dropping extremely low when under load. 

During my testing for example, in a situation where multiple abilities on screen, my frames dropped from 80 to 10, and when I checked my clock speeds, they were 1.15Ghz (For context the base clock of my CPU is 2.4Ghz). My temperatures at that moment were around 60c. 

 

What I've Tried: 

• Running Aida 64 and stressing my CPU had a similar effect where my clock speeds dropped from 2.4Ghz to around 1.1Ghz under load, This was without any temperature spikes or anything, once under load the clockspeeds would simply drop. 
  • NOTE: During this test Aida 64 did not show the warning for thermal throttling.
• Fresh install of Windows, however problem still persists in games (I have not benchmarked aida 64 in this new install)

 

My Question: 
What could be the cause of this downclock underload? I will be doing more testing with Aida64 and other tools, trying to replace parts by ordering them through dell. 

Is it a voltage problem? perhaps with the battery gone my 130W powersupply is unable to supply enough power? I'm no longer sure where to look, and some help would be much appreciated!

 

Thank you so much for reading, I'm thankful for any help here!

[Alex Atkin UK]

16 minutes ago, HonestyLL said:

Is it a voltage problem? perhaps with the battery gone my 130W powersupply is unable to supply enough power? I'm no longer sure where to look, and some help would be much appreciated!

 

Thank you so much for reading, I'm thankful for any help here!

Seems likely, a failing PSU may very well in some cases be detectable by the laptop itself and force it to slow down to pull less power.  I've certainly seen this reported on HP laptops, not sure if Dell do the same.

[HonestyLL]

7 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Seems likely, a failing PSU may very well in some cases be detectable by the laptop itself and force it to slow down to pull less power.  I've certainly seen this reported on HP laptops, not sure if Dell do the same.

Ill be honest, I didnt think laptop psus could fail unless they were dunked in water (im not sure why I thought this, it makes complete sense, all electronic components could die). 
I'll definitely take a look!

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, HonestyLL said:

Ill be honest, I didnt think laptop psus could fail unless they were dunked in water (im not sure why I thought this, it makes complete sense, all electronic components could die). 
I'll definitely take a look!

I'm honestly surprised it doesn't happen more often, given they are usually sealed plastic boxes.  My ASUS laptop under load the PSU is too hot to touch, I was totally expecting it to fail just out of warranty as even the best rated capacitors have a relatively short life at their rated maximum temperature.

 

Of course one problem is if capacitors don't fail short or go pop, they can run out of spec putting more strain on the laptops voltage regulation.  So best to deal with as soon as you suspect something is wrong rather than wait for something harder to repair to fail.

Not saying its only capacitors which fail, but they are the most likely to go first and often with no obvious sign they are no longer doing their job until they go well out of spec.

[HonestyLL]

4 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'm honestly surprised it doesn't happen more often, given they are usually sealed plastic boxes.  My ASUS laptop under load the PSU is too hot to touch, I was totally expecting it to fail just out of warranty as even the best rated capacitors have a relatively short life at their rated maximum temperature.

 

Of course one problem is if capacitors don't fail short or go pop, they can run out of spec putting more strain on the laptops voltage regulation.  So best to deal with as soon as you suspect something is wrong rather than wait for something harder to repair to fail.

Not saying its only capacitors which fail, but they are the most likely to go first and often with no obvious sign they are no longer doing their job until they go well out of spec.

Quick update: 
I happened to have a spare charger of the same spec as my original one (from a Dell docking station). 
The same behavior was exhibited on the brand new psu. Perhaps the psu does not supply enough wattage? I currently have the 130W power supply but I believe this model of laptop can go up to 180W. 

[unclewebb]

27 minutes ago, HonestyLL said:

Dell

Some Dell laptops go into low power mode if a battery is not detected. 

 

Try running ThrottleStop 9.6 

https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-throttlestop/

 

Open the Limit Reasons window and watch for power limit throttling. Try checking the MMIO Lock box in the TPL window. Many Dells use an embedded controller (EC) to manage the power limits.

[HonestyLL]

8 hours ago, unclewebb said:

Some Dell laptops go into low power mode if a battery is not detected. 

 

Try running ThrottleStop 9.6 

https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-throttlestop/

 

Open the Limit Reasons window and watch for power limit throttling. Try checking the MMIO Lock box in the TPL window. Many Dells use an embedded controller (EC) to manage the power limits.

Is there any other way to check this?  I'm currently using a 130GB drive to test and its pretty close to being filled with some of the games I have installed right now for testing. I can install it but if I dont need to it would be nice for me atleast. 

[problemsolver]

On 12/24/2023 at 1:06 AM, HonestyLL said:

Background: 
I have a Dell G5 5590 that is exhibiting some odd behavior. 

Specs are as follows: 

• I5 9300H
• GTX 1650
• 32 GB Ram (Dual Channel)

I've done a few things to this PC in this order: 

• Cleaned the fans (spraying air cannister condensate into them by accident causing notable whining)
• Installed MSI Afterburner to attempt to give my GPU a small bump. This resulted in battery drain even when plugged in when gaming (and some really bad battery activity such as not charging to 100%).
• Uninstalled MSI Afterburner
• I removed my battery as it began to swell and used my laptop exclusively plugged in. 
• went from 8gb to 32 gb of ram
• Recently replaced SSD and reimaged with fresh windows 10 (issue still persists)

The Problem: 

Performance began to dip after Uninstalling MSI Afterburner and got notably worse when i removed my battery. 

During game sessions, I would experience extreme dips in FPS (80fps to low 15s) and would stay low for a notable amount of time. Generally this happened when more was happening on screen, however this was not the only trigger as it would happen when I hadn't moved in game at all with nothing on screen. For a time the fans would kick in, however they recently have not (though they are still functional, aka i can force them to 100% speed).

With task manager open, I noticed my clock speeds acting extremely weird, with clock speeds dropping extremely low when under load. 

During my testing for example, in a situation where multiple abilities on screen, my frames dropped from 80 to 10, and when I checked my clock speeds, they were 1.15Ghz (For context the base clock of my CPU is 2.4Ghz). My temperatures at that moment were around 60c. 

 

What I've Tried: 

• Running Aida 64 and stressing my CPU had a similar effect where my clock speeds dropped from 2.4Ghz to around 1.1Ghz under load, This was without any temperature spikes or anything, once under load the clockspeeds would simply drop. 
  • NOTE: During this test Aida 64 did not show the warning for thermal throttling.
• Fresh install of Windows, however problem still persists in games (I have not benchmarked aida 64 in this new install)

 

My Question: 
What could be the cause of this downclock underload? I will be doing more testing with Aida64 and other tools, trying to replace parts by ordering them through dell. 

Is it a voltage problem? perhaps with the battery gone my 130W powersupply is unable to supply enough power? I'm no longer sure where to look, and some help would be much appreciated!

 

Thank you so much for reading, I'm thankful for any help here!

Update all the things first. Gazillion different things that could cause this.

[HonestyLL]

TLDR: 
It seems to be a power draw issue. These components seem to be drawing more power than my 130w PSU can supply from the wall without supplements from the battery. See my explanation below for more info.

 

 

 

Update on the situation: 

1. After installing Aida 64 it looks like under load the CPU does turbo up to around 3.00 Ghz (this is not its maximum but given later edits I believe this makes sense)
2. My CPUz benchmark scores are slightly under what I expected based on comparison data online. but the CPU still clocks high enough. 
3. I have been able to replicate the previous behavior in Valorant spesifically. 

Based on testing from points 1 & 2, I noticed predictable and normal behavior from my system when under synthetic loads such as the mentioned Aida 64 and CPUZ. However when in a CPU bound game like Valorant, the issue still persisted. I began to suspect a power draw issue as my GPU might be taking power budget away from the limited 130W PSU that shipped with the unit. As my settings turned to low, I saw a noticeable improvement in my framerate consistency aswell as CPU clockspeed and CPU usage. The higher the GPU demand with quality turned up to medium, I began to see the same issues of low clock speeds underload and large dips in framerate. Under sustained high fps limits in game i began to see large dips in FPS like before again. 
From the looks of it, I believe the issue is the powersupply is insufficient for these components to clock to higher speeds, as this is only a 130w unit. 

 

Further testing is required as it could be a dell low power mode that was engaged when the battery was disconnected (this needs more testing), and a higher wattage PSU (180w) needs to be tested before any true final conclusions are made. 

 

Thank you so much to everyone who responded it helped so much! I will also continue to test as I would like this laptop to be a backup/secondary gaming laptop for myself or friends. 

[HonestyLL]

1 minute ago, problemsolver said:

Update all the things first. Gazillion different things that could cause this.

Yeah, Hence why i've been plugging away at testing. I've done all windows and dell updates via Windows update and Dell Support Assistant. The system feels alot snappier compared to before the drive swap and reinstall. 

[problemsolver]

18 minutes ago, HonestyLL said:

TLDR: 
It seems to be a power draw issue. These components seem to be drawing more power than my 130w PSU can supply from the wall without supplements from the battery. See my explanation below for more info.

 

 

 

Update on the situation: 

1. After installing Aida 64 it looks like under load the CPU does turbo up to around 3.00 Ghz (this is not its maximum but given later edits I believe this makes sense)
2. My CPUz benchmark scores are slightly under what I expected based on comparison data online. but the CPU still clocks high enough. 
3. I have been able to replicate the previous behavior in Valorant spesifically. 

Based on testing from points 1 & 2, I noticed predictable and normal behavior from my system when under synthetic loads such as the mentioned Aida 64 and CPUZ. However when in a CPU bound game like Valorant, the issue still persisted. I began to suspect a power draw issue as my GPU might be taking power budget away from the limited 130W PSU that shipped with the unit. As my settings turned to low, I saw a noticeable improvement in my framerate consistency aswell as CPU clockspeed and CPU usage. The higher the GPU demand with quality turned up to medium, I began to see the same issues of low clock speeds underload and large dips in framerate. Under sustained high fps limits in game i began to see large dips in FPS like before again. 
From the looks of it, I believe the issue is the powersupply is insufficient for these components to clock to higher speeds, as this is only a 130w unit. 

 

Further testing is required as it could be a dell low power mode that was engaged when the battery was disconnected (this needs more testing), and a higher wattage PSU (180w) needs to be tested before any true final conclusions are made. 

 

Thank you so much to everyone who responded it helped so much! I will also continue to test as I would like this laptop to be a backup/secondary gaming laptop for myself or friends. 

Yup, it's in your manual. It's called Hybrid Power. I'm assuming it runs in that mode on a 130W power supply causing all the issues you mentioned since Hybrid Power relies on the battery that is missing in this case.

If you use the 180W power supply that Dell makes for it, it will work fine.

[Alex Atkin UK]

8 hours ago, problemsolver said:

Yup, it's in your manual. It's called Hybrid Power. I'm assuming it runs in that mode on a 130W power supply causing all the issues you mentioned since Hybrid Power relies on the battery that is missing in this case.

If you use the 180W power supply that Dell makes for it, it will work fine.

Such a scam for them to provide a PSU that cannot actually power the system though.

[problemsolver]

48 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Such a scam for them to provide a PSU that cannot actually power the system though.

Well, there are advantages because the 130W power brick is smaller & lighter which is nice for portability. Also, there's a general assumption you'll have a working battery, in which case the 130W brick works fine. Once you remove the battery from a laptop (as the OP did), you've fundamentally changed the product & have deviated substantially from the engineers' design.

The battery can serve as structural support &weight balancing also, so there's quite a bit to it.

 

On a side note, the original Droid phone could run without a battery, straight off a charger, but almost all smart phones nowadays cannot run at all without a battery. Laptops are headed that direction (and some are already there.)

[HonestyLL]

1 hour ago, problemsolver said:

Well, there are advantages because the 130W power brick is smaller & lighter which is nice for portability. Also, there's a general assumption you'll have a working battery, in which case the 130W brick works fine. Once you remove the battery from a laptop (as the OP did), you've fundamentally changed the product & have deviated substantially from the engineers' design.

The battery can serve as structural support &weight balancing also, so there's quite a bit to it.

 

On a side note, the original Droid phone could run without a battery, straight off a charger, but almost all smart phones nowadays cannot run at all without a battery. Laptops are headed that direction (and some are already there.)

Well the issue I have is that the battery was malfunctioning and swelling so it had to be removed, and I can no longer get an OEM replacement from dell. Either way I'll probably be looking into getting a new charger and battery, I'd like the idea of getting this computer working close to new again!

Thanks for the info, I didnt read the manual when I first got the laptop because at the time its performance was WAYYY better than anything i've ever used and was too excited to read it LMAOO

[HonestyLL]

2 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Such a scam for them to provide a PSU that cannot actually power the system though.

Yeah I didnt really expect that but, I guess it makes sense when the product originally relied on hybrid power vs pure wall power. However I'm wondering if that's why my battery began to swell is because it was being strained from game loads from the hybrid power function, and once the swelling began my performance took a hit. 

Besides the problem, I think its a pretty interesting situation, and it was fun solving it!

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 minutes ago, HonestyLL said:

Yeah I didnt really expect that but, I guess it makes sense when the product originally relied on hybrid power vs pure wall power. However I'm wondering if that's why my battery began to swell is because it was being strained from game loads from the hybrid power function, and once the swelling began my performance took a hit. 

Besides the problem, I think its a pretty interesting situation, and it was fun solving it!

Most likely, its a horrible way to design it as it guarantees the battery will wear out faster.  Quite apart from the fact it makes the chance that your battery wont be fully charged when you need it a whole lot higher.

[problemsolver]

4 hours ago, HonestyLL said:

Yeah I didnt really expect that but, I guess it makes sense when the product originally relied on hybrid power vs pure wall power. However I'm wondering if that's why my battery began to swell is because it was being strained from game loads from the hybrid power function, and once the swelling began my performance took a hit. 

Besides the problem, I think its a pretty interesting situation, and it was fun solving it!

Yup, a swelling battery can actually break the motherboard, crack the track pad (especially if its glass)  etc. The "best case" scenario is it just cracks the case. So definitely understand that you didn't really have a choice.

[HonestyLL]

23 hours ago, problemsolver said:

Yup, a swelling battery can actually break the motherboard, crack the track pad (especially if its glass)  etc. The "best case" scenario is it just cracks the case. So definitely understand that you didn't really have a choice.

yeah. I'm pretty lucky I caught it early. only one cell was swelling and the second one had started.