Laptop speed degradation over time

[Shubham Yadav]

I'm using a lenovo Y510p as my laptop for the past 3 years and it has started to crap out on me. I decided to investigate the matter and found out that my CPU benchmarks much much lower than it used to do 3 years ago. 

 

3 years ago: 

Cinebench R15: 580 pts

Geekbench 3(32-bit): single core: 3300, multicore: 11500

 

Now:

Cinebench R15: 299 pts

Geekbench 3: single core: 2300, multicore: 8800

 

i have run the tests multiple times  and seen that nothing is running in the background when I run them. I'm thinking my CPU has worn off with time. But 3 year seem to be too small of a time for so much degradation in performance. 

 

P.S. : The laptop has been repaired multiple times and now runs windows 10 instead of 8 which it came with. Also lenovo didn't release drivers for windows 10 and said it was not recommended to update this laptop to 10. So they might be the reasons. I'm not sure though. 

 

P.P.S. The laptop still runs on a 5400 RPM HDD. So would it be wise for me to upgrade to SSD or sell this and buy a decent laptop/desktop? 

[Hans Christian | Teri]

I'd say those are pretty impressive ratios for a 3 year old mid tier laptop.

[Slottr]

 

[arch_linuxos]

3 minutes ago, Shubham Yadav said:

snip

I also have a Y510p SLI. I have two SSDs in it and it still works very quickly for everything, but games definitely struggle a little. You might notice, though, that I now have a desktop. I almost never even turn on the laptop anymore because there's just no comparison. I'd highly recommend building one. SSD will definitely make it snappier and be cheaper though.

[MrDrWho13]

6 minutes ago, Shubham Yadav said:

I'm using a lenovo Y510p as my laptop for the past 3 years and it has started to crap out on me. I decided to investigate the matter and found out that my CPU benchmarks much much lower than it used to do 3 years ago. 

 

3 years ago: 

Cinebench R15: 580 pts

Geekbench 3(32-bit): single core: 3300, multicore: 11500

 

Now:

Cinebench R15: 299 pts

Geekbench 3: single core: 2300, multicore: 8800

 

i have run the tests multiple times  and seen that nothing is running in the background when I run them. I'm thinking my CPU has worn off with time. But 3 year seem to be too small of a time for so much degradation in performance. 

 

P.S. : The laptop has been repaired multiple times and now runs windows 10 instead of 8 which it came with. Also lenovo didn't release drivers for windows 10 and said it was not recommended to update this laptop to 10. So they might be the reasons. I'm not sure though. 

 

P.P.S. The laptop still runs on a 5400 RPM HDD. So would it be wise for me to upgrade to SSD or sell this and buy a decent laptop/desktop? 

An SSD will definitely improve speed but not so much game processing power.

[AoeAoe]

Most likely thermal throttling from dust buildup. Use some decent software to see how much you throttle (most laptop cpus tend to throttle quite a bit).
Disassemble it, take down cooler (pretty easy on most notebooks nowadays), reapply thermal paste and use compressed air to get rid of dust that accumulated over the years.

 

Cpu degradation isn't really a thing, especially after 3 years.

[arch_linuxos]

1 minute ago, AoeAoe said:

Most likely thermal throttling from dust buildup. Use some decent software to see how much you throttle (most laptop cpus tend to throttle quite a bit).
Disassemble it, take down cooler (pretty easy on most notebooks nowadays), reapply thermal paste and use compressed air to get rid of dust that accumulated over the years.

 

Cpu degradation isn't really a thing, especially after 3 years.

From having the laptop, the cooler/thermal paste is actually pretty involved and definitely voids any warranty.

 

Dust-wise, definitely clean it out though, and make sure the bottom filter is clean too. Take off the back panel.

[Shubham Yadav]

5 hours ago, AoeAoe said:

Most likely thermal throttling from dust buildup. Use some decent software to see how much you throttle (most laptop cpus tend to throttle quite a bit).
Disassemble it, take down cooler (pretty easy on most notebooks nowadays), reapply thermal paste and use compressed air to get rid of dust that accumulated over the years.

 

Cpu degradation isn't really a thing, especially after 3 years.

I have tried it once and it's really ugly inside this laptop. I don't think that would be easy. Also I'm just a college student and don't have access to all those tools. Anyway, thanks for the advice. 

 

Can you recommend a software to check throttling?

[SLAYR]

12 minutes ago, Shubham Yadav said:

I have tried it once and it's really ugly inside this laptop. I don't think that would be easy. Also I'm just a college student and don't have access to all those tools. Anyway, thanks for the advice. 

 

Can you recommend a software to check throttling?

Hwmonitor (if intel only), msi afterburner,

 

look at the cpu temperature.

 

and compressed air is really easy to obtain stores comperable to walmart sell it, or you can get it online for $5-$10. The only other tools you might need are screwdrivers, or something to pry up plastic bits with, if you look up a teardown for the specific laptop it should mention what tools are needed.

[AoeAoe]

Worked at HP service centre and we never voided warranty for thermal paste replacement, but on the other hand we mostly dealt with high-end goods (workstations that cost 5000-1000 eur, high end laptops).

Be careful with compressed air, you can actually do more harm than good with impropper application (getting fan stuck by chunks of accumulated dust that you blew from sides of vent duct). Make sure that you don't blow compressed air into the fan from outside.
No jokes, bigger chunk of dust (mush) can get to between bottom plate and fan which is mounted on it and it can completely stop the fan (after that you have to take it apart anyway).
I've seen that happen frequently, safe (but less effective) way to get excess dust from fan is to use vacuum cleaner to pull it out.

[Shubham Yadav]

So, you guys were right. The CPU is running way too hot. I have attached the profile at idle. At load in cinebench R15, the cpu runs at 2400 MHz for like 15 seconds, reaches 97 degrees and throttles down to 798 MHz for the rest of the run. 

 

I think either the CPU fan is straight up not working or there is a lot of gunk in there. 

 

I still have my warranty left. So I will just let them do it for me. Will get the thing cleaned and an SSD put into the thing. 

[SLAYR]

19 minutes ago, Shubham Yadav said:

 

I still have my warranty left. So I will just let them do it for me. Will get the thing cleaned and an SSD put into the thing. 

 

A dirty laptop will not be covered by any warranty (unless you have the best warranty ever), it is considered negligence, warranties cover things like hardware failure.  

[Shubham Yadav]

18 minutes ago, SLAYR said:

A dirty laptop will not be covered by any warranty (unless you have the best warranty ever), it is considered negligence, warranties cover things like hardware failure.  

It's more of an extended laptop service than a warranty and I'm pretty sure it's covered. 

[AoeAoe]

I think I worked a Y510 before (or something pretty similar), seem to remember taking it down as pretty easy (C shaped pipeline, 3screws in triangle on CPU, 2 screws for GPU). If you wanna try compressed air I strongly suggest to open it up and blow from inside out while holding down the fan.

I also understand that you don't wanna risk losing warranty, perhaps consider taking it <there> and having it cleaned up.
Either way, if it's throttling that heavily you better do something about it.

[Riley-NZL]

11 hours ago, SLAYR said:

A dirty laptop will not be covered by any warranty (unless you have the best warranty ever), it is considered negligence, warranties cover things like hardware failure.  

I work for an Authorised HP repairer, although you are correct that it's not a warranty issue, we quite often blow/clean out people's computers free of charge as it takes literally minutes. It would be worth asking your repairer if they will give it a quick clean for free. I doubt they will go as far as re-doing Thermal paste etc for free however.

 

It also depends on the cause of the fault, if its the CPU fan has failed (unlikely as this will normally give you an "cooling system has failed" message on your computer), then it would probably be covered under warranty, if it's just dust build up then no.

 

If you do pay to get it cleaned and SSD upgraded, I would ask them to re-apply thermal paste, the paste used by OEM's is pretty bad and tends to dry out into a powerdry like substance after a few years.

 

[Shubham Yadav]

3 hours ago, Riley-NZL said:

I work for an Authorised HP repairer, although you are correct that it's not a warranty issue, we quite often blow/clean out people's computers free of charge as it takes literally minutes. It would be worth asking your repairer if they will give it a quick clean for free. I doubt they will go as far as re-doing Thermal paste etc for free however.

 

It also depends on the cause of the fault, if its the CPU fan has failed (unlikely as this will normally give you an "cooling system has failed" message on your computer), then it would probably be covered under warranty, if it's just dust build up then no.

 

If you do pay to get it cleaned and SSD upgraded, I would ask them to re-apply thermal paste, the paste used by OEM's is pretty bad and tends to dry out into a powerdry like substance after a few years.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'll go there in a few hours and update on the thread. By today, my system should be 2x faster.