[GL702VM & similar] Solution to Performance issues / Overheating / Throttling

[mirkazemilad]

Can you help me out? I followed all the steps on throttlestop and MSI afterburner but it does not work. I still get low fps on the GL702VM model. I played with and without turbo with bad results. Every time I play with turbo, the cpu speed gets stuck on 3.08 GHz when it should be 3.6 GHz. And when I play without turbo the cpu jumps all over the place, sometimes even join to like .80 GHz or 1.3 GHz every second when my base speed should be 2.6 GHz.

Yes max turbo frequency is 3.50 GHz but for single core.
3.4 GHz for 2 cores and &..
You can't use max turbo frequency when all of your cpu cores are active.

Try to optimize your game setting using nvidia geforce experience app. And test again.

[Tri4C3]

So I wanted to make an extensive post sharing all my findings and modding results for the GL702VSK.

First of all, kudos to onjax for all the great tips he shared with the community. ASUS should share a link to this thread to anyone who's bought GL702 series (just kidding).

Alright, so I've been using CPU undervolt -0.125 mV and GPU flat line undervolt for a very long time and still getting throttling. Here are the steps that I've went for at first:

1. I decided to change the thermal paste to Gelid Extreme, and it only dropped 1 or 2 C°, still throttling;
2. I tried the cooling pad, but didn't notice any drastic differences in temps, I was playing AC:Origins at the time, CPU was throttling;
3. I've ordered "vacuum coolers" as per recommendation from this thread, and albeit using two of them, they made zero difference in temperature behavior;
4. Tried to apply the foil tape, but this seemed to detain more heat in the device, removed it;
5. Tried to run the laptop without the case, and the temps never went above 80 C° during stress tests.

All of this led me to the conclusion that there's no way around drilling the holes. I went to AliExpress and ordered 45 mm circular hole saw, needle files, 2 inch speaker covers, an epoxy glue and black paint marker. I had an old broken keyboard lying around and a wooden plank, so I first experimented with the hole saw on it, since it's a plastic too. Needle files are important here - I was trying to go for a "factory look" as much as I could, and they are used to remove any rough edges after drilling. After I was sure I had the necessary skill to do this, I went on to the laptop. I cut the 45 mm circles out of the foil tape, put them on the fans sticky side up, quickly put the laptop upside down (without assembling), then circled the results with pencil. I repeated it several times to make sure I've got the right placement for the hole patterns and moved on to drilling. After the holes were ready, I made them prettier with needle files, applied epoxy glue on both skeaker grills and case, waited 5 minutes and installed the grills. I left it to cure for around 30 hours and this is the result:

Attachment 71892

The black paint marker is needed to paint the coolers in black, since they are gray and look pretty inconsistent through the holes. It is acrylic paint, so looks pretty slick after application, but needs to be done in one sitting for all the paint to be applied uniformly. Forgot to take the pictures without the case, sorry.

Attachment 71893

Long story short, did it help? Yes, significantly. Here's a link to imgur with tiny bit more detail, but I've made this chart to help convince anyone who didn't make the hole mod yet:

Attachment 71894

My method of testing is this - I use FurMark to push the GPU and the test included in Intel XTU to push the CPU. Before the mod, the CPU would throttle at around 8 or 9 minutes of test, so I never ran it more than that. After the mod I ran it for 15 minutes and the temps were stable. I've surely tested the laptop with Kingdom Come Deliverance, which puts some heavy load on the machine (60-70% load on CPU, 99% load on GPU), and the temps never went above 89 C° with the fans set on Auto, game settings on High presets, fps capped at 95 for G-Sync (my display is overclocked to 100 Hz). The fans at Auto used to spin at 4700 RPM, going up to 5200 RPM when throttled - and now they spin at 3900 RPM, which is way more silent than it used to be. In the chart you can see that there is an overall rise of temps of other components, such as SSD and HDD, but that might be negligible since they are still both in the comfort zone. HDD and SSD temps is the whole other topic which is too big to go through, but they are.

Now, there is one other issue that I've never seen addressed in this thread except for OP's post. There is significant coil whine when the system idles, and since it's been overall less noisy now, it has become more prevalent. Disabling C1E in ThrottleStop completely stopped the buzzing noise, but you still need to set up launching it automatically in Windows tasker or "shell:startup".

After all the mods applied, this machine is awesome. But no customer should ever go through all this trouble at this high a price to get the performance they paid for. If the original intent was to make sure that the customer would fry their machine shortly after the warranty period, it's just plain stupid. What's even more questionable is that they continue to manufacture devices with this overheating chassis - all the meanwhile this thread soon hitting 100 pages.

to place the speaker covers you removed the part as chromed plastic? with these values I am seriously tempted to do so ... What cover speakers did you buy?

[pekkakana]

Here is my simple story. I’m happy owner of ASUS ROG Strix GL502VS – very satisfied, using it for almost 6 months.
High temperatures during heavy load/sage were my only concern.

THE ULTIMATE TEMPERATURE TEST – play PUBG

I have been hitting even 98C for CPU and around/above 90C for GPU… throttling was present.
Tested 3 simple scenarios:

1/ Used ThrottleStop, undervolting -0.125 for cpu/cache result PUBG crashing. Stable -0.120 for cpu/cache affected temperatures in cosmetic way… like -2C or -3C… FPS drop? Little. I do not recommend this method because of system stability.

2/ Disabling TurboBoost affected nice temp drops but also visible FPS drops… (simple changing power management plan to 99% for CPU). I do not recommend this method because of losing to much of performance in demanding games, but its ok setup for common daily usage.

3/ Intel Xtreme Tuning, I disabled option for TurboShortBost (default is 65W for 28sec) and lowered normal TurboBoost to 25W (default is 45W) plus fans at maximum (4500rpm I think)…. Temps went down around -10C for CPU/GPU with just a few FPS in PUBG average. I recommend this method, good performance and no throttling; I use this setup for heavy PUBG gaming sessions.

Next step: modification to bottom case (ordered extra one for modifications); I plan to drill lots of small holes plus boost air flow with “Modecom Silent Fan Cf15”.

My goal is to achieve best/lowest temperatures with best/maximum performance. Stay tuned!

!!! UPDATE !!! my goal is achieved
All settings on default/stock only bottom case moification as presented on screen.
PUBG results: CPU@86C, GPU@79C max; achieved more than -10C during heavy load on full/maximum machine performance.

[Ramz33]

Yes max turbo frequency is 3.50 GHz but for single core.
3.4 GHz for 2 cores and &..
You can't use max turbo frequency when all of your cpu cores are active.

Try to optimize your game setting using nvidia geforce experience app. And test again.

I tried using the nvidia geforce experience to optimize already. It raises all my settings for a game to like ultra and high settings when I press optimize. Why should I increase my settings if I am already having fps problems? This would make my fps even worse if I optimize. I looked at the recommended specs for witcher 3, GTA V, Rainbow Six Siege and it says my pc specs is better than the recommended specs for the game. Why does it say that I have the recommended specs when my pc can barely run the game? I need help to fix this issue and get my fps back.

[TornaD-oz]

to place the speaker covers you removed the part as chromed plastic? with these values I am seriously tempted to do so ... What cover speakers did you buy?

I believe what you refer to as chromed plastic is just a chrome paint from the inner side of the case (at least on my device) - no, I didn't remove anything, I just marked where I wanted to drill from the inside and went on with it. I used 2 inch speaker grill from AliExpress, however, I later found out that the laptop was sitting on those grills as they were higher than the back "legs". So I went on and bought 3 mm thick rubber, carefully removed the original ones, glued the rubber inside and glued the legs upon it. It is now 3 mm higher from the back side and sits upon "legs" as it's supposed to.

---

I tried using the nvidia geforce experience to optimize already. It raises all my settings for a game to like ultra and high settings when I press optimize. Why should I increase my settings if I am already having fps problems? This would make my fps even worse if I optimize. I looked at the recommended specs for witcher 3, GTA V, Rainbow Six Siege and it says my pc specs is better than the recommended specs for the game. Why does it say that I have the recommended specs when my pc can barely run the game? I need help to fix this issue and get my fps back.

Open up ThrottleStop and look for the "Limit Reasons" button. Test your games and see what it reports. Check the maximum temperatures also. There can be a lot of reasons for your issues, if you need help, you have to be more specific.

Also, do you use stock Windows installation? If not, did you install the drivers from the support page?

[Ramz33]

I believe what you refer to as chromed plastic is just a chrome paint from the inner side of the case (at least on my device) - no, I didn't remove anything, I just marked where I wanted to drill from the inside and went on with it. I used 2 inch speaker grill from AliExpress, however, I later found out that the laptop was sitting on those grills as they were higher than the back "legs". So I went on and bought 3 mm thick rubber, carefully removed the original ones, glued the rubber inside and glued the legs upon it. It is now 3 mm higher from the back side and sits upon "legs" as it's supposed to.

---

Open up ThrottleStop and look for the "Limit Reasons" button. Test your games and see what it reports. Check the maximum temperatures also. There can be a lot of reasons for your issues, if you need help, you have to be more specific.

Also, do you use stock Windows installation? If not, did you install the drivers from the support page?

What should I be looking for when I press limit reasons? And my problem is that I good fps when I first start the game, then the fps declines after the first minute or even seconds. My pc had better fps when I first bought it a year ago (I have the GL702VM model) and now it just doesn't even feel like a gaming laptop. My pc came with windows 10 and I updated whenever I got a notification for a new version. Also, what do you mean the drivers from the support page? Do you mean the nvidia drivers on the ASUS support page for this model? If yes, then I have not because downgrading to older drivers had caused issues for me in the past. Like some game having graphical glitches, crashes on startup, or just not being able to run it. If you mean other drivers on the support page like the chipset driver and other stuff, I have tried that and it did not fix my issue.

[TornaD-oz]

What should I be looking for when I press limit reasons? And my problem is that I good fps when I first start the game, then the fps declines after the first minute or even seconds. My pc had better fps when I first bought it a year ago (I have the GL702VM model) and now it just doesn't even feel like a gaming laptop. My pc came with windows 10 and I updated whenever I got a notification for a new version. Also, what do you mean the drivers from the support page? Do you mean the nvidia drivers on the ASUS support page for this model? If yes, then I have not because downgrading to older drivers had caused issues for me in the past. Like some game having graphical glitches, crashes on startup, or just not being able to run it. If you mean other drivers on the support page like the chipset driver and other stuff, I have tried that and it did not fix my issue.

Limit reasons will show you what limits are reported by your CPU, GPU or motherboard, that is, if you see PL1 (like me) during FPS drops that means CPU has hit Package Power Time Window and can no longer maintain Turbo, which results in multiplier dropping to 1 and then crawling back up - FPS drops to 20 and goes up with CPU clocks.

By drivers I mean the drivers from the support page of your device, NVIDIA drives should be obtained directly from NVIDIA unless you're looking to downgrade.

From what I gather, maybe you have the thermal issues? How hot are your CPU and GPU in C degrees? How low does the FPS drop, to 1-2 or around 20?

[Ramz33]

Limit reasons will show you what limits are reported by your CPU, GPU or motherboard, that is, if you see PL1 (like me) during FPS drops that means CPU has hit Package Power Time Window and can no longer maintain Turbo, which results in multiplier dropping to 1 and then crawling back up - FPS drops to 20 and goes up with CPU clocks.

By drivers I mean the drivers from the support page of your device, NVIDIA drives should be obtained directly from NVIDIA unless you're looking to downgrade.

From what I gather, maybe you have the thermal issues? How hot are your CPU and GPU in C degrees? How low does the FPS drop, to 1-2 or around 20?

The CPU temp is usually around 75-85 and the max is 90C degrees. When I start a game I would get maybe around 70 fps and it would drop down to 30 fps and just stay there.

[pekkakana]

!!! UPDATE !!! my goal is achieved
All settings on default/stock only bottom case moification as presented on screen.
PUBG results: CPU@86C, GPU@79C max; achieved more than -10C during heavy load on full/maximum machine performance.

Heavy gaming during weekend (PUBG, HUNT, EscapeFT) - just few occasional thermal throttling accidents were registered (once per hour avg). IMHO, I only saw it in statistic but did not notice any influence from my user side: I did not experience any throttling side effects.


Temps were fine - CPU@86C max and GPU@79C max as earlier tests shown.

[FastM]

Heavy gaming during weekend (PUBG, HUNT, EscapeFT) - just few occasional thermal throttling accidents were registered (once per hour avg). IMHO, I only saw it in statistic but did not notice any influence from my user side: I did not experience any throttling side effects.


Temps were fine - CPU@86C max and GPU@79C max as earlier tests shown.

I understand your logic for wanting to keep things at default, but why not just undervolt a little? Personally im not comfortable letting the hardware heat up like that all th time. What scares me the most is the effect on the surrounding components, Not to mention you can get better performance out of the machine with undervolting applied..