Acer nitro 5 an515-55 undervolt settings locked

pLowstone
pLowstone Member Posts: 2 New User
Guys, when I look with the Throttlestop program, the part I will do Undervolt seems to be locked. What should I do? Should I do the bios own settings or something?

Answers

  • SilvaGi
    SilvaGi Member Posts: 277 Practitioner WiFi Icon
    Intel locked your 10th gen due to a hack called "plundervolt". Only 9th gen and under work. You can though underclock to reduce temps
    Please Click Yes if Ive answered your question.
    Current: Custom Desktop Build (5800X, 16GB, 3070ti)
    Previous: Aspire 5 A515 44 R8RH
    (R5 4500u, 8GB, AMD Radeon Vega 6 iGPU)
    Previous: Nitro 5 AN515 55 (i7,16GB,1650ti)
    Thanks SilvaGi!

  • pLowstone
    pLowstone Member Posts: 2 New User
    edited May 2021
    SilvaGi said:
    Intel locked your 10th gen due to a hack called "plundervolt". Only 9th gen and under work. You can though underclock to reduce temps
        This is a great injustice. Isn't there a way to get around this? A safe way?
  • sri369
    sri369 ACE Posts: 2,755 Pathfinder
    pLowstone said:
    SilvaGi said:
    Intel locked your 10th gen due to a hack called "plundervolt". Only 9th gen and under work. You can though underclock to reduce temps
        This is a great injustice. Isn't there a way to get around this? A safe way?
    What are you trying to achieve here? If you are planning to reduce temps, you can safely do so by reducing the top speed slightly - I reduced mine by 20 degrees by simply limiting turbo speeds to 3.8 (from 4.5). No noticeable drop in performance in games or my day to day work - only thing visibly reduced is the temps from 90s to high 60s/low 70s.




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  • SilvaGi
    SilvaGi Member Posts: 277 Practitioner WiFi Icon
    @pLowstone Unfortunately there's nothing you can do as Intel have locked it at the hardware level. No work a rounds...
    What you can do though is underclock to 3.8Ghz ( which is what I did with my 10750H on previous an515 55) and you generally wont go past 80-85C which I think is a safe temp. If you need to reduce temps you want to do a combination attack. Repaste with thermal grizzly kryonaut, clean fans proper, cooler pad that suites and underclock. You will however void warranty with repaste and rebuild style clean of fans. So its not for everyone. If you ever get another laptop consider a mobile H series AMD ryzen CPU as they are undervoltable (so I've been told).

    Please Click Yes if Ive answered your question.
    Current: Custom Desktop Build (5800X, 16GB, 3070ti)
    Previous: Aspire 5 A515 44 R8RH
    (R5 4500u, 8GB, AMD Radeon Vega 6 iGPU)
    Previous: Nitro 5 AN515 55 (i7,16GB,1650ti)
    Thanks SilvaGi!

  • mirh
    mirh Member Posts: 12

    Tinkerer

    It's not locked out at the "hardware level".
    It's a simple hidden value in the bios to toggle the so called "Overclocking Lock" on.

    I wish OEMs could see the incredible value of letting the user handle that.
  • sri369
    sri369 ACE Posts: 2,755 Pathfinder
    mirh said:
    It's not locked out at the "hardware level".
    It's a simple hidden value in the bios to toggle the so called "Overclocking Lock" on.

    I wish OEMs could see the incredible value of letting the user handle that.
    And make sure that says "warranty void"... that is locked so the users may not end up burning up their laptops.
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  • mirh
    mirh Member Posts: 12

    Tinkerer

    That setting has been unlocked for years before 2020, and CPUs already have a trainload of protections to avoid thermal damage.
    Hell, I could even argue that now that people cannot even undervolt anymore (on such insanely hot processors none the less), this is going to increase
  • Leostat
    Leostat ACE Posts: 3,043 Pathfinder
    edited May 2021
    The laptop already will have a factory underclock applied I think. It's usually between 50 and 100mv, and I think it's tuned laptop to laptop.

    After the 9th gen Intel's, aggressive chip selection and power control caused a larger than acceptable ammount of them to start failing in a non recoverable way (xmg did a post on reddit  , upto 100% CPU wrecking by going too low and booting!) I used to run the 8750h and ran into how screens at anything over (or under?) 100mv , on the 10th gen the laptop CPU itself gets bricked, I'm guessing somthing gets pushed too hard and just fails

    On top of that there are a number of vulnerabilites they are trying to mitigate based off tweaking the voltage, I know it sucks but there is reasoning behind it :( , by disabling it you protect against plundervolt and a bit against spectre / meltdown, but if you calould just re enable it so could malware! (You could argue it's only enterprises that have to care about that though)
  • mirh
    mirh Member Posts: 12

    Tinkerer

    edited May 2021
    I could argue I have yet to see or hear any real world attacker having used speculative executions flaws. Also, it's not like you cannot already disable all other mitigations straight from the OS (and those are the vulnerabilities that could be very theoretically exploited from a browser, unlike voltage control that already requires administrator privilege).
    Also, while you mention XMG, I just checked on them and at least on the products they build and ship themselves, they do allow toggling (intel explicitly confirming this). And everybody that has tested it, even on 10th gen, is super happy.
  • Leostat
    Leostat ACE Posts: 3,043 Pathfinder
    edited May 2021
    My understanding was that have done similar to Acer and disabled it in later uefi's , Apologies Id missed that they had re enabled it  :) , the updated guide is here 

    https://download.schenker-tech.de/Documents/guides/BIOS_and_Tuning_Warning_and_Guide_Intel-Comet-Lake.pdf

    They even comment on the high risk! 

    I was going off the raw data from a few months ago here ( http://download.schenker-tech.de/media/survey/comet-lake-undervolting-survey_raw-data.xlsx ) where almost everyone had issues , and almost everyone reports that the successful ammount of undervolting is  between 50 and 100mv, which is already applied to the laptops from Acer . I get it's annoying to be able to erk out that extra 10mv from it but is it worth potentially bricking the laptop?

    And I agree with the comment about the attacks, I hate that it got pushed out via forced update, had I had the choice I wouldn't have patched Vs spectre v1 and kept that close to 10% performance boost! 

  • mirh
    mirh Member Posts: 12

    Tinkerer

    edited May 2021
    Then, yeah, I guess like their laptops didn't even see much improvements from undervolting with Comet Lake.
    But they were relatively far from 100°C to be begin with (with the only exception of the very heavy blender test). Not so much instead for my Nitro that touches it on every mildly intensive task. 

    Also, very anecdotal reports from people on youtube claim you can do drop 10° and 100mV with ease.
  • Leostat
    Leostat ACE Posts: 3,043 Pathfinder
    edited May 2021
    Doh sorry about the broken link there. My bad!

    Theres no doubt the undervolt helps , it was deffo needed on my predator haha! it just a bit riskier on the 10th gen comets so i understand why acer are a bit hesitant . If you run hwinfo and a benchmark you should hopefully see the cpu not hitting the full 1.4v if there is a factory overclock. Its why im looking forward to the reviews fo the 500SE with the 11th gen chip in, im curious if they have finally got the temps under control