Acer Switch 7 Thermal Throttling at very low temps

AJustice

Bought a recertified Acer Switch 7 a bit ago. I've experienced no problems other than this, the system seems to thermally throttle at very, very low temperatures.

While plugged in, temps have rarely exceeded 58c when I notice the clock speeds of the CPU drop significantly, from it's regular speeds around 2800 all the way down to about 300mhz. The GPU clock appears unaltered.

One would assume this means the system is overheating and needs to cool down, but on unplugging the ac adapter, it instantly speeds up again without the temperature lowering, although at battery speeds, not adapter speeds.

Although I can live with the battery speed, the plugged in adapter speeds are significantly faster, and pulling up review after review, many point out the system does throttle, but not nearly at the level I'm experiencing.

I've also tried undervolting, which seems to increase the time the system runs on the adapter, but only by a few minutes. I can only assume this is a software/bios setting that I need to fix, but I am at a loss of the best way to do it.

JackE

Is ControlPanel's power plan is set to balanced mode? Jack E/NJ

AJustice

Yes. The High Performance setting isn't available with standard Acer setting.

I brought back the High Performance setting using RegEdit, but it appears to have significant conflict with the Acer software as the performance is significantly worsens compared to Balanced.

Seems no matter what I try, once I hit between 58 to 61c, the CPU clock speeds drop by significant margins. The problem also is after a few minutes to cool down, plugging the adapter back in does not return it to full speed, but instead triggers the drop down to 399mhz again, despite the temperature being far below the throttle point.

JackE

Undo whatever you did in RegEdit if possible. Then open ControlPanel again. Go back to choose a power plan settings. Click 'show additional plans' dropdown. What do you see? Jack E/NJ

AJustice

This is all that shows under advanced power settings. Now, I did do one other thing, I deleted Intel's Thermal framework drivers. Once I did that, I gained back significant clock speeds without the instant drop to 399mhz. And I mean instant, the moment the adapter was plugged in it plummets.

With them installed, I got a TDP setting which lets you adjust the clock speeds on battery and on adapter, from .8ghz, 1.8ghz, 2.0ghz. However, switching this around seemingly did nothing, if anything the Intel Thermal Framework software seems to be fighting with the Acer bios settings and I would again drop to 399mhz once the adapter was plugged in.

JackE

No. Not the advanced 'edit power plan' screen. If you click on 'choose a power plan' in ControlPanel's left pane, you should be presented with a 'choose or customize a power plan'. It is now set for 'balanced' mode along with a 'power saver' option. Below that should be a dropdown 'show additional plans' Jack E/NJ 

AJustice

There are no High Performance or Power saver plan settings, and trying to create one does not bring them up. I was able to re-enable them using the Registry Editor like I mentioned before, but the High Performance setting had considerable worse performance than the Balanced setting.

I've also checked to make sure the adapters are the correct levels. One I tried at 65w though the type C, and the other was a 90w through the barrel port. Both gave sufficient power and only slowed down once the CPU hits around 58 to 61C at max

JackE

>>>Bought a recertified Acer Switch 7 a bit ago. >>>

From acerrecertified.com? Is this Win10S? It seems quite limited? Jack E/NJ

AJustice

No, it's actually Windows 10 Pro. Depending on the manufacturer, a lot of laptops cut out the performance settings in their system software. I bought it from the official Amazon Acer re-certified store. Considering the cost of the tablet new, which I didn't think was worth it, the Amazon price was an extreme discount, making it worth it. 

That is if it works fully.

New development. Followed this guide using Throttlestop software. https://bradshacks.com/actually-hardcore-tweaks-laptop-faster-more-efficient/. It's a different laptop, but the same i7 8550u with similar throttling issues.

Finally got it to go past 64c before I got a BSOD Kernel error. Now it appears to just be a bios issue. Software wise, I'm keeping the system to dropping below acceptable. I'm undervolting it, so it's not running too hot or on too much power. Almost there, I think if I tweak it a bit more I might find the sweet spot, and if I do I'll post it.

JackE

>>>official Amazon Acer re-certified store.>>>

Amazon link? Jack E/NJ

billsey

With my Switch 7 BE there is just the one power plan offered. If you want to recreate the other two plans normally shown it's best to just do them manually, rather than a registry edit. The registry edit will put the plan name in the list but will not populate the value with the defaults for those plans. I'm in the low 40s for temperature right now, and the processor speed is bouncing around between 800MHz and 3.2GHz as background apps ask for processor time. Does yours stay down when something is active?