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Lenovo X1 Extreme
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I use ThrottleStop as it has other purpose beyond just monitoring temperature. For the most part I don't care as the notebook runs as designed.
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It's a feature developed by ROG so likely no. You could try and force the notebook to use the iGPU as opposed to the dGPU. Sorry I cant advise further as my W10 notebooks only have iGPU or dGPU in isolation, elevating the rear of the notebook by an inch may help to reduce the fan noise.
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A couple settings to experiment with if you wish to maybe have the computer run quieter.
BIOS: Config Tab—>Power—>Adaptive Thermal Management—Scheme for AC
Try changing from Maximize Performance to Balanced
Lenovo Vantage App: Hardware Settings Tab—>Smart Settings—>Intelligent Cooling
If you move the Intelligent Cooling switch to off you can then manually select Performance or Cool & Quiet for optimization. You may find manually selecting one better suites your needs.
Undervolting: You can also use Intel XTU or Throttlestop undervolt.
Notebook Check has a guide for Intel XTU
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-XTU-Undervolting-Guide.272120.0.html
Anybody here tried to install Ubuntu Linux 18.10 on the X1E with everything working? I was trying to see if I could use Linux as the main OS if there is no noisy fan issue. Based on initial evaluations, some basic functions work but not all. 4K screen is just so lovely. Can't imagine I would switch to a model with FHD. Touching screen is working, Hybrid switching doesn’t work, Intel GPU doesn’t work, wake from suspend doesn’t work, brightness setting from function keys doesn’t work, connection to 4K TV via HDMI 2.0 works but sometimes no sound from the TV. If it does, sound very nice. Unlikes in Windows 10, suddenly unplugging the HDMI cable does not lead the windows opened on the TV screen to automatically move back to the screen on the laptop. I guess the system is not stable. Connection via USB-C to HDMI Adapter led to garbages on TV screen. I guess I can consider it basic functions working?
As for fan noise under Linux, it is better than under Windows 10 (less frequent, less noisy more often, and get less noisy in a shorter period of time) but still I hear fan noise. Sometimes fan spins up even when idling. Playing youtube videos on external 4K TV or laptop screen alone (when not connected to 4K TV) also activates noisy fan but not as noisy as when it is under Windows 10. In Linux, moderate sound level could cover up fan noise but not in Windows. I will try the methods recommended above for Windows and report back.
Given the noise experience, not sure if I should use a laptop with Nvidia 1050 Ti. Currently, Lenovo Canada does not sell X1E with 4K screen but lower end CPU. It also does not sell P1 with 4K screen.
As for fan noise under Linux, it is better than under Windows 10 (less frequent, less noisy more often, and get less noisy in a shorter period of time) but still I hear fan noise. Sometimes fan spins up even when idling. Playing youtube videos on external 4K TV or laptop screen alone (when not connected to 4K TV) also activates noisy fan but not as noisy as when it is under Windows 10. In Linux, moderate sound level could cover up fan noise but not in Windows. I will try the methods recommended above for Windows and report back.
Given the noise experience, not sure if I should use a laptop with Nvidia 1050 Ti. Currently, Lenovo Canada does not sell X1E with 4K screen but lower end CPU. It also does not sell P1 with 4K screen.
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Thanks.
BIOS: If I need the power later on, do I have to change it back to Max Performance?
Lenovo Vantage App: Intelligent Cooling is set by default.
Undervolting: Will I damage or shorten the life of the computer if I make some mistakes in the settings? There is a warning at the top of that page.
Anyone have the 1080p screen on the X1E? I dunno if I want to shell out $400 extra for the 4k screen.
Are the 1080 pixels gigantic on the 15" screen, or not too bad?
Are the 1080 pixels gigantic on the 15" screen, or not too bad?
BIOS: If you limit the power scheme in BIOS it will in all likelihood override any software setting and would probably have to be changed back in BIOS.
Intelligent Cooling should detect what you are doing and use whichever scheme Lenovo feels will provide the best mixture of cooling and fan noise. But sometimes you may wish to override this and choose the cool and quiet mode manually. See what works best for you.
Undervolting: There is always some inherent risk in changing OEM parameters, thus the warning. But a small undervolt is a minimal thing and when I was playing around with it to see how low I could go, I eventually crashed the machine. Which caused it to reboot and over-ride the settings I had chosen. But again, tweaker beware. What works for most, may not work for you. No guarantees in life or in modding.
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I have not seen the 1080 display on the X1E, only on the carbons at Costco. They looked fine to me, but I personally prefer the 4K displays. But they come at a cost, monetarily, weight and I guess refresh rate. So what I prefer isn't best for everyone.
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Here is the setting that Notebookcheck felt were optimized for XTU if that helps any.
What values from HWMonitor do you want me to report?
I did some simple tests.
Test1: Just browsing macrumors and having HWMonitor on. GPU Value was 50c, Min was 47c and Max was 61c. Don't know what 01AY969 is but the voltage was 17.146V for Value, Min and Max.
Test2: Test1+connection to 4K TV. Within the 10 minutes period, GPU Value varied between around 57c-61c. Max stayed from 61c to 63c. After disconnecting the 4K TV from the laptop, within the 10 minutes period, Value varied between 54c and 61c.
Test3: With the laptop alone and watching 3 different 4K videos one after the other. GPU Value varied between 52c and 61c. Max stayed at 63c.
Test4: Watching the same 3 4K videos in the same sequence, full screen, on the 4K TV. GPU Value varied between 64c and 68c. The Max value increased to 68c.
Interestingly, I have not heard any noisy fan noise for an hour. Even in Test4, I had to put my ear near the keyboard to hear the fan noise. In the past, even the laptop was about 1.3*arm distance, I could hear jet engine like noisy fan. The area above the function keys is hot right now but I can put my fingers on it without feeling too uncomfortable.
Note that under Windows 10, best battery saving mode (at bottom right of the screen) is selected like before.
Perhaps I should have waited for an hour in between tests to allow the laptop to cool down? The overall increase in temp in subsequent tests could partly be due to built up of heat from previous tests.
So, do you think the culpit is the Max Performance setting in the Adaptive Thermal Management? Perhaps try some Matlab and CAD software on tomorrow to see how it goes?
P.S. I recall that after I changed the BIOS and moved to Windows. I went to Lenovo Vintage and there were some software updates including an update of Nvidia video driver.
I did some simple tests.
Test1: Just browsing macrumors and having HWMonitor on. GPU Value was 50c, Min was 47c and Max was 61c. Don't know what 01AY969 is but the voltage was 17.146V for Value, Min and Max.
Test2: Test1+connection to 4K TV. Within the 10 minutes period, GPU Value varied between around 57c-61c. Max stayed from 61c to 63c. After disconnecting the 4K TV from the laptop, within the 10 minutes period, Value varied between 54c and 61c.
Test3: With the laptop alone and watching 3 different 4K videos one after the other. GPU Value varied between 52c and 61c. Max stayed at 63c.
Test4: Watching the same 3 4K videos in the same sequence, full screen, on the 4K TV. GPU Value varied between 64c and 68c. The Max value increased to 68c.
Interestingly, I have not heard any noisy fan noise for an hour. Even in Test4, I had to put my ear near the keyboard to hear the fan noise. In the past, even the laptop was about 1.3*arm distance, I could hear jet engine like noisy fan. The area above the function keys is hot right now but I can put my fingers on it without feeling too uncomfortable.
Note that under Windows 10, best battery saving mode (at bottom right of the screen) is selected like before.
Perhaps I should have waited for an hour in between tests to allow the laptop to cool down? The overall increase in temp in subsequent tests could partly be due to built up of heat from previous tests.
So, do you think the culpit is the Max Performance setting in the Adaptive Thermal Management? Perhaps try some Matlab and CAD software on tomorrow to see how it goes?
P.S. I recall that after I changed the BIOS and moved to Windows. I went to Lenovo Vintage and there were some software updates including an update of Nvidia video driver.
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I waited for an hour and conducted Test4 again. Before I connected the X1E to the 4K TV, the idle Value was 32c. When I connected it to the TV, the value immediately jumped to 41c. When I played the same three videos again, the temperature started from around 58c and then varied between 52c and 58c. Again, no jet engine like noisy fan. I could only hear the fan noise when my ear was close to the keyboard.
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I have a few more days to decide if I keep it or return it and get another unit. I considered X1C6 but users said battery lasts about six hours so similar to the X1E? X1 Yoga maybe good but it can take only 1 SSD. In reddit, some also have noisy fan issue but one person said that after exchanging, he got a quiet one. One person opened it and found poor thermal paste. The main issue is burst of loud fan noise. If there were no noisy fan issue, it is perfect. Too bad Lenovo Canada doesn’t sell 4K screen with lower end CPU. Here all 4K models come with the highest end CPU. Why?Probably perfect if they sell 4K unit with lowest end i7. It is like the King of laptops to me. I don’t miss the MBP. Certainly much less hot than Razer Blade 15. 4K screen is excellent. No backlight bleeding nor coil whine in my unit. Can’t go to FHD. Keyboard and trackpad are excellent. Haven’t taken it out long enough to determine battery life. Atmos sound is nice. Trying to get the X1E working in Linux was hell due to hybrid GPU and various issues. Spent about five days to get it work. Most functions are working now thanks to help from nice and talented people on the internet. Just minor unimportant quirks about using external TV. Always noisy fan when watching YouTube videos regardless if watching the videos on laptop screen or external 4K TV. Any suggestions? Perhaps browser or codec issues?Dual boot with two SSDs are working. Will install some computationally intense software and see how bad the fan gets.
Conneciton to projectors at school work out of the box. Different 4K scalings between the laptop LCD screen and the external 4K TV screen work out of the box under Windows 10. However, it does not work under Linux.
Thanks all of you who suggested me to try laptops out rather than continuing to ask all sorts of questions about different laptops.
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For W10 why don't you use ThrottleStop, undervolt the CPU and reduce the Turbo limits in FIVR, you will then achieve the result your looking for 4k a display with a CPU that is less power hungry.
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Thanks. Will try. Why some values are 39 while others are 40 or 41? Are they set arbitrarily or after performing some tests? Seems to be the higher the core number, the less the max limit? Is there a relationship between the two?
After I changed the Power option inside the BIOS to Balance as suggested by @SDColorado in Post#278, the situation greatly improved as reported in Post#283. Thanks @SDColorado . I am waiting for IT at school to give me license keys to use Matlab and Solidworks for further testings to see how the fan behaves in such programs. Noisy fan happens constantly when watching youtube videos under Linux and also during software installations.
After I changed the Power option inside the BIOS to Balance as suggested by @SDColorado in Post#278, the situation greatly improved as reported in Post#283. Thanks @SDColorado . I am waiting for IT at school to give me license keys to use Matlab and Solidworks for further testings to see how the fan behaves in such programs. Noisy fan happens constantly when watching youtube videos under Linux and also during software installations.
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Basically more cores that are fully loaded, the slower the CPU runs to maintain temp. Mine are set to default for the 2.2 8750H. As you reduce the value it will in turn lower the Turbo boost and reduce operating temperature.
Just be mindful as you reduce the Turbo your also reducing performance, you can also set up a low power profile with ThrottleStop. Just need a little trial & error, if anything goes awry just close TS, delete the TS .ini file and fully shutdown the notebook (hold shift down)
nb. don't run ThrottleStop & XTU at the same time or you'll have problems as they will clash to control the CPU.
Q-6
This, unfortunately, is a limitation of Linux video drivers. Videos are not hardware accelerated by browsers in Linux. All browsers have intentionally disabled it in Linux due to driver issues. There is a Chromium PPA you can use to enable hardware acceleration of videos but I guess that is enabled only for Intel GPUs
Just in case, where is the TS.ini file?
So at least for the 8gen Intel CPUs, we bought powerful laptops but try all sorts of ways to slow them down to reduce noise. So, what is the point of buying laptops with high end CPUs these days? If I want to do computationally intensive CUDA-stuff, I might need to spend another sum of money to build a workstation.
[doublepost=1540761883][/doublepost]Is it recommended to change to a model with i7-8750H 6cores 2.2-4.1 GHz or i5-8400H vPro 4cores 2.2-4.1GHz? My current cpu is i7-8850H vPro 6 cores 2.6-4.3GHz.
Ideally I try to use this laptop to do some CUDA computations until I need more power. Until then, save about another 5-6K on a workstation.
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ThrottleStop creates the ThrottleStop.ini file in it's parent directory.
All depends on your usage, eqaully as a rule more performance is going to equal more heat and therefore more cooling. Personaly I want it silent for basic productivity and to tear as fast a possible through any analysis I want it to perform. This is why I accept I need a larger notebook with a relatively high spec, that hit's all the number without throttling.
My current 17.3" can run at 3.9GHZ indefinitely and not overheat or it can be totally silent. You dont need a desktop as you can use an external GPU via TB-3. All notebook's are compromised by nature the bigger question is what are you willing to give up?
TBH fans spooling up during watching YouTube is pretty much right off the bottom of my list
Have you disabled Flash in Edge?Q-6
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ThrottleStop creates the ThrottleStop.ini file in it's parent directory.
All depends on your usage, eqaully as a rule more performance is going to equal more heat and therefore more cooling. Personaly I want it silent for basic productivity and to tear as fast a possible through any analysis I want it to perform. This is why I accept I need a larger notebook with a relatively high spec, that hit's all the number without throttling.
My current 17'3" can run at 3.9GHZ indefinitely and not overheat or it can be totally silent. You dont need a desktop as you can use an external GPU via TB-3. All notebook's are compromised by nature the bigger question is what are you willing to give up?
TBH fans spooling up during watching YouTube is pretty much right off the bottom of my list
Q-6
1.8kg is the max weight I would accept as a laptop as I also need to carry other stuffs.
Have you disabled Flash in Edge? Probably no. I just use it as is. What does disabling Flash do? When do we need Flash these days. When I used it, it was when I was making a homepage using dreamweaver about 18 years ago. Haven’t paid attention to it since then.
Then that's the limiting factor and you need to accept the current limitations of the technology. Flash can also be used for video playback, if it gets picked up it's going to effect temperatures...
Q-6
If I need to slow down the X1E on purpose to reduce sound noise, isn't it better to just buy the just released MacBook Air with 16GB and use the money to build a powerful workstation for computationally intensive task? The 13" size may be a bit small though.
Too small for me to use as a daily driver. I tried that route before. But everyones preferences are different. However if you are looking to build a powerful workstation for computationally intestive tasks, perhaps the X1 Carbon or one of the 14" computers out there would be a better fit? Depends how much you desire MacOS vs Windows or vice versa I suppose. But if you are spending the majority of your time in front of a large display of a workstation, you may find the 13" is plenty.
That said, if you find yours may be louder than normal, maybe exchanging yours for another would be the best match if you are otherwise pleased with it and see if youn find the replacement to have the same issue.
Am I correct that the new Air can drive 4K display at 60Hz and have a battery life of about 10 hours? If they were in store, I would just buy it on tomorrow and test it myself. Based on experience, can we speculate that the 10 hours battery life is realistic? Also, as it is very thin, I don't know if it will have noise issue (one video mentioned that it is fanless?). I will have to deal with that bloddy butterfly keyboard though.
I may need to build a powerful workstation for CUDA work later but no need of the power at the moment. So, the X1E is kind of a workstation that is portable and powerful for current teaching and research work. The keyboard is nice and the 4K screen is beautiful. Windows 10 is not as scary as I thought. I can live without Mac OS. I need to take it out for long hours to determine the battery life. Of my one day test, I used it for about 5 hours and there were still battery left. Probably the battery life is not as good as the new Air. If I build a workstation, it will be another $5-6K.
Thanks to your suggestion, the noise issue of the X1E is greatly reduced. Not sure if I should keep it, exchange for the same model, get one with i5 CPU but 4K screen (now this option is available) or just get an Air. Somebody on the internet mentioned that he exchanged but his subsequent two X1E ended up worse than the original. Mine has no coil whine, perfect screen. Perhaps just poor application of thermal paste from Lenovo or just the limitation of current technology.
Poor thermal paste is a curse of the industry, there has been issues with it with Apple computers as well. The good thing is that unlike Apple, repasting will in no way effect your warranty unless you completely screw it up, so you can always do it yourself or have a tech do it for you. I have seen some reports from redoing it that have had a significant improvement in temps.
If you have have on-site or a local depot, you could also talk to Lenovo about just replacing the fans. Those might even be user replaceable.
Speaking of thermal paste, as some of you may remember, I replaced the thermal paste of my MBP 2010 17" and cleaned the fans but it still sounds like a jet engine. Even I am just posting on MacRumors without watching videos or doing anything else, the fans are running crazily loud. Do you know what happens?
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