Acer Swift 5 2019 (SF514-54T) low clock speed under load

I have a problem with my Acer Swift 5 2019 (SF514-54T) i7-1065G7 @ 1.30GHz 1.50GHz, 16GB RAM, MX250
Under constant load CPU clock goes down to 0.7GHz making games unplayable after few seconds it goes back up. I think it is caused by preinstalled Acer power plan which I cannot change. It looked like thermal throttling so I monitored temperatures and got this weird graph from SpeedFan. At about 55°C (about 70°C acording to HWmonitor) it triggers fan which cools notebook down. Problem is that at about 40°C (55°C - HWmonitor) fan goes down to about 20% but CPUs clock and utilization goes also down. After about 20 seconds CPU goes up again. Until it triggers fan again a cycle repeats
This occurs only under constant load either from gaming or stress test. Any clues what could cause it and how to solve it?

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/6l/yq3tez4rbvdo.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/nm/7mqjp6n5wyd6.png

Excuse my drawing skills

Accepted answers

Petr123

All issues all caused by system overheating. Still don't know why it is throttling at such a low temperature. Nevertheless there is no easy fix for this problem. I hope Acer will at least release BIOS update that encrease temperature when it starts throttling(I am at V1.12 now). Until then I came up with these steps that will help you live with it. Hopefully someone will find this useful.

1) Cooling pad
2) Limit FPS / performance
3) ThrottleStop
4) Periodic Cleaning
5) Repasting / Adding cooling pads

1) Cooling pad
Blow direction of fan is very important. Right fan must blow up. Helping fan inside the notebook. (Not blowing against). I recommend buying pad that you can change fan orientation or buying cheapest pad and modify it. I did the second one. It has advantage that you can put inside nice silence fans I also added speed regulation. Cooling pad will lower temperatures significantly allowing you for example encrease clock speed etc. It is definitely must-have if you want to play some games.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/aw/28cwm5lzd1v9.jpg

2) Limit FPS / Performance
This is probably the most important step. It is easy and it has huge impact on experience. It depends if your application has this feature but most of them do. In games find Limit FPS option in settings . Than cap it for example at 60 FPS. Then youre GPU wont run at 100% all the time reducing heat significantly. Some games wont have Limit FPS option but they have V-sync which will lock FPS at monitor refresh rate so it does the same thing in the end.

3) ThrottleStop
It is amazing utility that enable you to control a lot of things about youre CPU. Usually you would do endervolting but unfortunately even slight lowering CPU voltage lead to system crash. So I had to find other way around. Most effective for me is limiting Turbo speed. You can do it in FIVR tab -> Turbo Ration Limits. There you can easily set maximum CPU clock speed (for example 20 = 2GHz, 15 = 1.5GHz). Exact number is up to you. Some games likes more CPU power some more GPU. Keep on mind that if you set your CPU clock lower than you can squeeze much more from GPU and same goes other way around.
You can have up to 4 profiles in ThrottleStop. I using 3. One with 1.5GHz then 2.0GHz and 2.5GHz.
When I start game and I see it is throttling I open ThrootleStop and set 2GHz if it is still throttling I go down to 1.5 or if it is ok I go up to 2.5.
Also on all profiles I disabled SpeedStep and enabled Speed Shift and set it at 64.
You can do much more with this utility feel free to experiment. Limiting CPU clock speed was the most effective for me.

4) Periodic Cleaning
There is gap between tha fan and heatsink. Dust here decreases cooling capability a lot. If your Acer was working ok and now it is throttling it most probably because of dust between fan and heatsink. To clean it you need to unscrew back lit. Then unscrew the fan and clean it.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/2u/vijwttdtva0k.png

5) Repasting / Adding cooling pads

Last but not least most extreme fix. To be honest for most people it is not worth it. It definitely lowers the temperatures but for some reason it fixes nothing. Before it was throttling at 63° after repasting it is throttling at 53°. And yes as russian guy pointed out heatsink is not making contact with the second chip. There is not even a thermal paste. What the hell Acer? It looks like someone measured something wrong.
I also added some thermal pads to help with heat dissipation.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/qx/r821r20k9hqw.png

Overall thank you for your advises even though there is no fix for this. It is what you get when you have 1 fan and 1 shared heat pipe for CPU and GPU in super slim 1 Kg package.

Tommasavas

Hi. I have ACER Swift 5 SF514-53t. A lot time had a lot problems with thermalthrottling.

You can play with turbo power limits https://bradshacks.com/disable-power-limits/

or you can change aluminum heatsink to copper heatsink. i did this and got low temperatures. Now I can run on 2.9 GHz with about 78 Celsius and lower, without cooling pad.

Also I rotate CPU copper cooling pad. so now it cover both crystals. Only this things will help you to reduce temperatures.

ACER use copper heatsinks !!!!!!!!!

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/y6/xqau34qnpq31.jpg

All comments

billsey

You should be able to change the power plan. Can you show a screen shot of the Settings; Power? Then go to the Additional Power Settings and show us that one too.

Petr123

Changing power plan to performance was first thing I wanted to do but unfortunately there was only 1 Acers mode. Than I googled how to restore other plans tried to run commands like this:
powercfg -duplicatescheme 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c
Somehow I managed create Balanced plan but it is just a copy of Acers.
When I realize I can't restore other modes I tried to create my own high performance mode but as you can see in screenshot power plan settings are very limited so I cannot change anything significant

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/c7/2yb7389dq61b.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/39/ruwkya87vjec.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/ow/5qyaye6aql4q.png

billsey

Check to see if:

</code><code>powercfg -restoredefaultschemes

gets them back. If not it might be a connected standby feature. You can toggle connected standby in Regedit by setting the CsEnabled key from 1 to 0 at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power.

Petr123

Setting CsEnabled to 0 indeed brings back power plans.

Unfortunately it doesn't solve my problem. I did some testing and there is not much difference between modes.(tested for power saver vs high performance). Only difference I found is that at about 3:30 in stress test there is spike in GPU 0 utilization on performance and there is no spike in power saver.
some stuff I noticed:
-This issue only occurs when load is applied on CPU and GPU at the same time
-when I run only CPU stress test CPUs clock drops to 2.2GHz a stays there
-when I run only GPU stress test everything is ok
-if CPU load is not on all cores CPUs clock speed doesn't drop so low

-under stress test CPUs clock speed never recovers(it stays at 0.59GHz until GPU load is removed

-while gaming there is this cycle I showed earlier

To the test:
-for CPU load I was using HeavyLoad, for GPU load Geeks3D FurMark

start - CPU holds 2.2GHz after some seconds it starts dropping
at 3:00 CPU utilization is starting to drop
at 3:30 integrated GPUs utilization jumps up(this happens only in High performance mode not in power saver)
at 4:30 CPU is at 0.59GHz
at 8:30 I removed GPU load ->CPUs clocks goes back to 2.2GHz

High performance mode:

https://prnt.sc/qgwzl3 start

https://prnt.sc/qgwzy0 1:20

https://prnt.sc/qgx0a4 2:00

https://prnt.sc/qgx0m3 3:00

https://prnt.sc/qgx0wx 3:50

https://prnt.sc/qgx198 4:30

https://prnt.sc/qgx1mu 5:30

https://prnt.sc/qgx2lz 8:00

https://prnt.sc/qgx2xi 8:50

Power saver mode:

https://prnt.sc/qh98rk 3:30

https://prnt.sc/qh9913 4:30

https://prnt.sc/qh99js 5:30

My temporary solotion is in msconfig->Boot->Advanced options limit Number of processors than(after reboot) CPU doesn't drop so low

aworan78

Same problem here : https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/583137/acer-swift-3-sf-314-57g-cpu-throttling-when-using-nvidia-mx250-gpu

I don't have usefull powerplans too because I install fresh windows 10 over Acer bloatware one.
Does somebody have some work around to take them back from somewhere ?
Because in default windows installation there is very few parameters and any usefull one for that issue.

It is a power issue, CPU power goes down to 5 watts when using NVidia GPU and CPU after few minutes (around 3 minutes playing fifa 20 for example).
I think it is a BIOS issue, installing last one (31/12/2019) for my model doesn't fix the problem.

I have contacted Acer support but they awnser to change the laptop ...
I don't trust them a lot of users having same model with MX250 have the same issue and I found a workaround using throttlestop to make it work, so it is not a laptop hardware issue.

We need a fix from Acer (Poweplan or BIOS update or somethig else).
It is a shame to sell laptop with additional Nvidia GPU which is useless out of the box ...

Petr123

aworan78 said:

Same problem here : https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/583137/acer-swift-3-sf-314-57g-cpu-throttling-when-using-nvidia-mx250-gpu

I don't have usefull powerplans too because I install fresh windows 10 over Acer bloatware one.
Does somebody have some work around to take them back from somewhere ?
Because in default windows installation there is very few parameters and any usefull one for that issue.

It is a power issue, CPU power goes down to 5 watts when using NVidia GPU and CPU after few minutes (around 3 minutes playing fifa 20 for example).
I think it is a BIOS issue, installing last one (31/12/2019) for my model doesn't fix the problem.

I have contacted Acer support but they awnser to change the laptop ...
I don't trust them a lot of users having same model with MX250 have the same issue and I found a workaround using throttlestop to make it work, so it is not a laptop hardware issue.

We need a fix from Acer (Poweplan or BIOS update or somethig else).
It is a shame to sell laptop with additional Nvidia GPU which is useless out of the box ...

I dont think bringing back powerplans will solve the issue. You can still do it with changing CsEnabled in regedit(see above) but I tested that the best performance is in balanced powerplan anyway.

I think it is throttling because of some other components are overheating not CPU or GPU. I am guessing it is caused by VRM failing to deliver power to CPU and GPU at the same time so it is overheating and throttling whole system.

I also updated BIOS from V1.07 to V1.12 nothing changed

What is your workaround with Throttlestop? I was lately playing with it but it did not fix my problems. I tried to underclock cpu but notebook starts to crash when I make Voltage offset more then -20mV so there is no significant difference in power consumption. I was also playing Speed Shift SST and disabling Turbo to reduce power but it starts to throttle anyway.

stm27

I think I may be experiencing the same problem. I'm perhaps less technically knowledgeable than others on this threat, so I have not tried any of these solutions. But my (otherwise great) new Acer 14" Swift 5 keeps shutting down after about a half hour of video chatting (Skype and Google Hangouts). This seems to be related to some overheating problem. I hope someone figures out a solution. Thanks!

Xiwen

Same problem here, especially when running video conferencing . The video quality just degrade completely !
Acer, this need to be fix

Commodore_1995#

On December 31, Acer launched this version of the bios:

Update ME to 13.0.21.1314 for Security update. Data: 2019/12/31 Version: 1.12 Vendor: Acer Tamanho: 6.9 MB Download

SupremePrimo

ORIGINAL

Друг у меня такая же модель swift 5 sf514-54gt
Когда я его открыл, снял радиатор с трубками, я удивился проекту Acer.
Охлаждение было смещено и паста была не в том месте. Фото прилагаю. Я исправил эту проблему.

TRANSLATED

Friend I have the same model swift 5 sf514-54gt

When I opened it, took off the radiator with pipes, I was surprised at the Acer project.

The cooling was shifted and the paste was in the wrong place. Attaching photo. I fixed this problem.

Edited the thread by translating from Russian to English

Acer-Samuel

SupremePrimo

А вот здесь mx250 и его память. Есть недочеты.

SupremePrimo

ORIGINAL

А про bios который не видит nvme вообще молчу. Купил adata gammix s11 1tb.
Bios его не видит, 2 часа разбирался. Узнал что если если нажать в bios main : ctrl + s появится доп функция. XXXXX.
Windows нормальный свой не поставить, так как стоит optane, хочу удалить этот optane, чтоб поставить полноценный windows, полным электропитанием.

TRANSLATED

And about bios who does not see nvme, I’m generally silent. I bought adata gammix s11 1tb.

Bios does not see him, for 2 hours he understood. I learned that if you click on bios main: ctrl + s, an additional function will appear. XXXX.

Windows does not have to install its normal one, since optane is installed, I want to remove this optane in order to put full-fledged windows, full power.

Edited the thread by translating from Russian to English

Acer-Samuel

SupremePrimo

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/ta/if4q3ztssilx.jpg

А

ORIGINAL

биос который не видит nvme.Купил adata gammix s11 1Тб.
Биос его не видит, причем в стандарте wd sata m2, а сам разъем nvme. 2 часа разбирался. Узнал что если нажать в биосе main: ctrl + s появится доп функция. XXXXX.
Я хочу удалить этот оптан, чтобы поставить полноценные окна, полное электропитанием.

TRANSLATED

A BIOS that does not see nvme. I bought adata gammix s11 1Tb.

The BIOS does not see it, and in the standard wd sata m2, and the nvme connector itself. 2 hours to understand. I learned that if you click on the main: ctrl + s BIOS, an additional function will appear. XXXXXX.

I want to remove this optan to put full windows full of power.

Edited the content by translating from Russian to English

Acer-Samuel

Petr123

All issues all caused by system overheating. Still don't know why it is throttling at such a low temperature. Nevertheless there is no easy fix for this problem. I hope Acer will at least release BIOS update that encrease temperature when it starts throttling(I am at V1.12 now). Until then I came up with these steps that will help you live with it. Hopefully someone will find this useful.

1) Cooling pad
2) Limit FPS / performance
3) ThrottleStop
4) Periodic Cleaning
5) Repasting / Adding cooling pads

1) Cooling pad
Blow direction of fan is very important. Right fan must blow up. Helping fan inside the notebook. (Not blowing against). I recommend buying pad that you can change fan orientation or buying cheapest pad and modify it. I did the second one. It has advantage that you can put inside nice silence fans I also added speed regulation. Cooling pad will lower temperatures significantly allowing you for example encrease clock speed etc. It is definitely must-have if you want to play some games.

2) Limit FPS / Performance
This is probably the most important step. It is easy and it has huge impact on experience. It depends if your application has this feature but most of them do. In games find Limit FPS option in settings . Than cap it for example at 60 FPS. Then youre GPU wont run at 100% all the time reducing heat significantly. Some games wont have Limit FPS option but they have V-sync which will lock FPS at monitor refresh rate so it does the same thing in the end.

3) ThrottleStop
It is amazing utility that enable you to control a lot of things about youre CPU. Usually you would do endervolting but unfortunately even slight lowering CPU voltage lead to system crash. So I had to find other way around. Most effective for me is limiting Turbo speed. You can do it in FIVR tab -> Turbo Ration Limits. There you can easily set maximum CPU clock speed (for example 20 = 2GHz, 15 = 1.5GHz). Exact number is up to you. Some games likes more CPU power some more GPU. Keep on mind that if you set your CPU clock lower than you can squeeze much more from GPU and same goes other way around.
You can have up to 4 profiles in ThrottleStop. I using 3. One with 1.5GHz then 2.0GHz and 2.5GHz.
When I start game and I see it is throttling I open ThrootleStop and set 2GHz if it is still throttling I go down to 1.5 or if it is ok I go up to 2.5.
Also on all profiles I disabled SpeedStep and enabled Speed Shift and set it at 64.
You can do much more with this utility feel free to experiment. Limiting CPU clock speed was the most effective for me.

4) Periodic Cleaning
There is gap between tha fan and heatsink. Dust here decreases cooling capability a lot. If your Acer was working ok and now it is throttling it most probably because of dust between fan and heatsink. To clean it you need to unscrew back lit. Then unscrew the fan and clean it.

5) Repasting / Adding cooling pads

Last but not least most extreme fix. To be honest for most people it is not worth it. It definitely lowers the temperatures but for some reason it fixes nothing. Before it was throttling at 63° after repasting it is throttling at 53°. And yes as russian guy pointed out heatsink is not making contact with the second chip. There is not even a thermal paste. What the hell Acer? It looks like someone measured something wrong.
I also added some thermal pads to help with heat dissipation.

Overall thank you for your advises even though there is no fix for this. It is what you get when you have 1 fan and 1 shared heat pipe for CPU and GPU in super slim 1 Kg package.

Igb557

I have the 54GT model with MX350 and i5 CPU. I thoroughly tested it for half an hour under 100% load with Prime95 and limiting the cooling by placing the laptop on my bed for temperature do go up. The temperatures reached 85°C but the CPU maintained the constant clocks at 1.80Ghz-1.90Ghz. Actually quite impressed by it. On my desk with good ventilation the temperature was around 70°C and the same clock speeds. I hope this is useful.

Tommasavas

Hi. I have ACER Swift 5 SF514-53t. A lot time had a lot problems with thermalthrottling.

You can play with turbo power limits https://bradshacks.com/disable-power-limits/

or you can change aluminum heatsink to copper heatsink. i did this and got low temperatures. Now I can run on 2.9 GHz with about 78 Celsius and lower, without cooling pad.

Also I rotate CPU copper cooling pad. so now it cover both crystals. Only this things will help you to reduce temperatures.

ACER use copper heatsinks !!!!!!!!!

Tommasavas

............

Petr123

Tommasavas said:

Hi. I have ACER Swift 5 SF514-53t. A lot time had a lot problems with thermalthrottling.

You can play with turbo power limits https://bradshacks.com/disable-power-limits/
or you can change aluminum heatsink to copper heatsink. i did this and got low temperatures. Now I can run on 2.9 GHz with about 78 Celsius and lower, without cooling pad.

Also I rotate CPU copper cooling pad. so now it cover both crystals. Only this things will help you to reduce temperatures.

ACER use copper heatsinks !!!!!!!!!

Thank you for the tip with power limits. I have been using it past few months and it has indeed significant impact on performance. Combining this with other techniques (cooling pad, limit turbo clock speed, .. ) makes gaming and other resource intensive application possible.

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