5 ms·

If you remove the thermal limit, and if this breaks your cpu, for example, within one year, should intel then replace your cpu? Thermal limits like this are re

If you remove the thermal limit, and if this breaks your cpu, for example, within one year, should intel then replace your cpu? Thermal limits like this are really about managing the manufacturers liabilities, and protecting the expected lifetine of the product.

userbinator 4y ago
The ultimate limit that prevents processor damage, called THERMTRIP, is not possible to disable AFAIK --- it's a purely hardware feature. The one below that, PROCHOT, can be disabled, but it's not useful to do that because it'll just hit the THERMTRIP temperature and shut down instead. Like I said, Intel warrants their CPUs to be operational at TjMax continuously, and that's the temperature they'll reach and stay at automatically if not given enough cooling. There's plenty of stories of people with computers whose heatsink has somehow detached or become so severely clogged as to be at that limit all the time, and the CPUs survive just fine. This article isn't about that; it's about manufacturers artifically limiting performance beyond that to hit a marketing target like battery life or power consumption.
- mjg59 4y ago
  What? No, it isn't. It's about something that only affects Ultrabook-style devices, and it's extremely clear that it's not to hit a marketing target because if you run Windows the drivers disable the PL1/2 limitations.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    The existence of ThrottleStop and the experience of many others shows that this is also a persistent problem on Windows --- CPU is barely getting warm, and sometimes the fan doesn't even turn on, but then gets throttled to some insanely low speed. Search "800MHz throttling" for plenty of complaints. Disabling all the DPTF and other extra power management bloat puts the CPU speed and performance back where it should be.
    - mjg59 4y ago
      IEC 62368-1 places an upper bound on the temperature of materials in electronic devices that are likely to come into contact with users' skin, and that's incorporated into EU regulations[1]. You have two ways to achieve that - add enough cooling such that it's impossible for the device to ever produce enough heat to get that hot, or throttle components that are generating heat if the device is getting close to that temperature. The former requires a cooling system that's going to be significant overkill for most users most of the time, resulting in more expensive hardware that's bigger and heavier. So, instead, you see the latter. This means that, yes, even if using official Intel DPTF drivers, systems will still occasionally thermally throttle. They may do so even if the CPU itself is not at a dangerous temperature, because the rest of the system may still be too hot and the CPU is the easiest tunable knob in terms of heat generation. So, yeah, you can still obtain better performance by disabling DPTF and overriding power limits. And in the process you'll end up with a system that will become hotter than permitted by international standards, and you'll risk various types of failure ranging from inconvenient (the adhesive sticking things like rubber feet to the bottom of the machine tending to melt) to expensive (the unexpected levels of thermal expansion cycles causing components to fail earlier). It's fine that you're not worried about these things, but it's just straight up wrong to recommend that people override those limits without being clear about potential outcomes. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52015XC0417(04)&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... (Edit: replaced IEC 60950-1 with 62368-1, which is the up to date version, and linked to EU incorporation of that spec)
      - Last5Digits 4y ago
        I feel like you're being overly charitable to laptop manufacturers. If such manufacturers always considered the thermal limits of their products when advertising their performance, then I don't think many people would complain. Since that isn't the case, however, many people get a laptop that isn't capable of performing the tasks it's advertised for. The excuse of "well, we didn't think you'd really need that much power" doesn't really cut it, when said power was strongly advertised on the box.

userbinator 4y ago

The ultimate limit that prevents processor damage, called THERMTRIP, is not possible to disable AFAIK --- it's a purely hardware feature. The one below that, PROCHOT, can be disabled, but it's not useful to do that because it'll just hit the THERMTRIP temperature and shut down instead. Like I said, Intel warrants their CPUs to be operational at TjMax continuously, and that's the temperature they'll reach and stay at automatically if not given enough cooling. There's plenty of stories of people with computers whose heatsink has somehow detached or become so severely clogged as to be at that limit all the time, and the CPUs survive just fine. This article isn't about that; it's about manufacturers artifically limiting performance beyond that to hit a marketing target like battery life or power consumption.

mjg59 4y ago
What? No, it isn't. It's about something that only affects Ultrabook-style devices, and it's extremely clear that it's not to hit a marketing target because if you run Windows the drivers disable the PL1/2 limitations.
- userbinator 4y ago
  The existence of ThrottleStop and the experience of many others shows that this is also a persistent problem on Windows --- CPU is barely getting warm, and sometimes the fan doesn't even turn on, but then gets throttled to some insanely low speed. Search "800MHz throttling" for plenty of complaints. Disabling all the DPTF and other extra power management bloat puts the CPU speed and performance back where it should be.
  - mjg59 4y ago
    IEC 62368-1 places an upper bound on the temperature of materials in electronic devices that are likely to come into contact with users' skin, and that's incorporated into EU regulations[1]. You have two ways to achieve that - add enough cooling such that it's impossible for the device to ever produce enough heat to get that hot, or throttle components that are generating heat if the device is getting close to that temperature. The former requires a cooling system that's going to be significant overkill for most users most of the time, resulting in more expensive hardware that's bigger and heavier. So, instead, you see the latter. This means that, yes, even if using official Intel DPTF drivers, systems will still occasionally thermally throttle. They may do so even if the CPU itself is not at a dangerous temperature, because the rest of the system may still be too hot and the CPU is the easiest tunable knob in terms of heat generation. So, yeah, you can still obtain better performance by disabling DPTF and overriding power limits. And in the process you'll end up with a system that will become hotter than permitted by international standards, and you'll risk various types of failure ranging from inconvenient (the adhesive sticking things like rubber feet to the bottom of the machine tending to melt) to expensive (the unexpected levels of thermal expansion cycles causing components to fail earlier). It's fine that you're not worried about these things, but it's just straight up wrong to recommend that people override those limits without being clear about potential outcomes. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52015XC0417(04)&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... (Edit: replaced IEC 60950-1 with 62368-1, which is the up to date version, and linked to EU incorporation of that spec)
    - Last5Digits 4y ago
      I feel like you're being overly charitable to laptop manufacturers. If such manufacturers always considered the thermal limits of their products when advertising their performance, then I don't think many people would complain. Since that isn't the case, however, many people get a laptop that isn't capable of performing the tasks it's advertised for. The excuse of "well, we didn't think you'd really need that much power" doesn't really cut it, when said power was strongly advertised on the box.