Intel XTU no longer lets me undervolt after PC factory reset.AN515-54

DeadShot

Alright so what happened was I reset my AN515-54 (acer nitro 5) and after installing XTU to undervolt, it no longer lets me use that setting. Like the voltage slider is grayed out. I was able to undervolt -140 before resetting to factory settings. I upgraded BIOS to 1.31 and still no luck.

GAMING6698

@DeadShot
Intel disabled undervolting for his mobile intel CPUs.

GAMING6698

@DeadShot
Intel disabled undervolting for his mobile intel CPUs.

DeadShot

GAMING6698 said:

@DeadShot
Intel disabled undervolting for his mobile intel CPUs.

Throttlestop works though?

GAMING6698

@DeadShot
Throttlestop will not work because you upgraded bios.

DeadShot

GAMING6698 said:

@DeadShot
Throttlestop will not work because you upgraded bios.

It does, I am currently using throttlestop for undervolting. It works because it brought my temps down and I checked using Cupuid

GAMING6698

@DeadShot
Then new bios coming soon to disable undervolting for your laptop.

If you want to take advantage of undervolting in future also then from now onwards never update your bios.

DeadShot

GAMING6698 said:

@DeadShot
Then new bios coming soon to disable undervolting for your laptop.

If you want to take advantage of undervolting in future also then from now onwards never update your bios.

undervolting is so good why is it being disabled

GAMING6698

@DeadShot
Found this-

There is no one catch-all here, but the reasoning behind disabling undervolting is Plundervolt, an exploit discovered by the University of Birmingham. You can read the research team's findings in its research paper, which can be found here. In summary, Plundervolt exploits Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX), which is a set of instruction codes that undervolting programs like Throttlestop and XTU use to manipulate CPU voltages. According to Intel, all of its desktop and mobile processors from 6th generation Core processors onwards are affected, as are Core X-series and recent Xeon E chips.

Intel has since addressed the exploit by allowing OEMs to disable undervolting via a firmware update. You can read Intel's response and the details of the CVE-2019-11157 vulnerability here. Going forward, it would seem that all new Intel devices do not support undervolting. Anecdotally, the Surface Book 3 15 does not support undervolting, which uses an Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor. The same should apply to upcoming Tiger Lake laptops, too.

DeadShot

GAMING6698 said:

@DeadShot
Found this-

There is no one catch-all here, but the reasoning behind disabling undervolting is Plundervolt, an exploit discovered by the University of Birmingham. You can read the research team's findings in its research paper, which can be found here. In summary, Plundervolt exploits Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX), which is a set of instruction codes that undervolting programs like Throttlestop and XTU use to manipulate CPU voltages. According to Intel, all of its desktop and mobile processors from 6th generation Core processors onwards are affected, as are Core X-series and recent Xeon E chips.

Intel has since addressed the exploit by allowing OEMs to disable undervolting via a firmware update. You can read Intel's response and the details of the CVE-2019-11157 vulnerability here. Going forward, it would seem that all new Intel devices do not support undervolting. Anecdotally, the Surface Book 3 15 does not support undervolting, which uses an Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor. The same should apply to upcoming Tiger Lake laptops, too.

Wow, why can't manufacturers keep the CPU voltage low? If I dont undervolt my CPU temp will go beyond 85c during gameplay. I mean I dont really understand what plundervolt is but I know that nothing bad has happened to my laptop so far after undervolting since April, 2020.