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Some people said under volting lowers the performance while others said the opposite. So who is correct?
Undervolting lowers the voltage, so the cpu runs cooler thus allowing it to run at full speed longer without needed to lower the frequency. It doesn't slow the processor down, quite the opposite sets the framework for it to run faster.
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My XPS 15 has been able to be undervolted and tested at -160mV.
Every processor responds differently, going beyond -150mV introduces instability, being conservative by nature, I felt it was safest to run -140mV as I want a stable system as opposed to squeezing out the most performance.
 
Every processor responds differently, going beyond -150mV introduces instability, being conservative by nature, I felt it was safest to run -140mV as I want a stable system as opposed to squeezing out the most performance.

I read that a lot. -150mV and beyond is where things get tricky. I ran Prime95 for a good half hour without problems - we will see in my day-to-day operations if it holds.

Gotta say though, my temps going from 97/98 to 94/95 under full load with Throttlestop alone is pretty sweet. Going to do a re-pasting of my CPU and GPU as well.
 
I read that a lot. -150mV and beyond is where things get tricky. I ran Prime95 for a good half hour without problems - we will see in my day-to-day operations if it holds.

Gotta say though, my temps going from 97/98 to 94/95 under full load with Throttlestop alone is pretty sweet. Going to do a re-pasting of my CPU and GPU as well.

I generally look to find the lowest point of stability then increase the voltage by 10mV as it ensures stability nor is 10mV going to add up to much regarding cooling.

TS FIVR.jpg

This notebook can go as deep as -155mV, however as it has a TDP down feature -140mV is the sweet spot. Use TS built in test TS Bench (1024M) if no errors the CPU is stable, if you see errors decrease the Offset Voltage.

Q-6
 
I'm gonna post here, since it's related to X1E as well, but there's gonna be some Apple bashing as well. Reason I'm not posting in MBP subforum is because I really don't want any pc vs mac wars, they are boring and irrelevant.

As most of you know, I'm using X1E. But with X1E I have to use mac as well. Because of iOS development. Now I used cloud for that, but when I'm out of office, it gets annoying and troublesome because of lousy internet connections. So my company issued me a brand new MBP 13", 2018 just 3 weeks ago. Nothing fancy, basic 256/8GB model. I don't use it as my primary device, so no need for vm's or anything of a sort. Just fire up Unity3D/Xcode and use it from time to time.

Now in those 3 weeks, I probably used it about 10 times the max.
And my spacebar is stuck. I tried compress air, I tried pushing hard on the key, well, nothing worked. So one more MBP for Apple to fix. Nice.

Meanwhile, my X1E is running strong as it should. No issues what so ever. It's built like a tank, and behaves like one. My wife just recently dropped her X1C on the wooden floor in our apartment. It damaged the floor really bad, but X1C? Not even a slightest scuff. I can take a picture of the parquet if there is any doubt in your mind about it. No need to take the X1C picture at all, because it will show nothing :p

It's a sad time to use a MBP. My final solution to the issue is returning MBP, and trying to convince my company to get me mac mini. With MBP I would still have to bring external keyboard with me, and I have to bring power adapter any way. So why not mac mini? It's even easier to carry, it's small, light and no power adapter needed.

I really hope that Apple can get their heads out of their own a***s. But somehow I doubt it. They are using butterfly since 2015, and still no sign on them giving up on this POS.
 
I'm gonna post here, since it's related to X1E as well, but there's gonna be some Apple bashing as well. Reason I'm not posting in MBP subforum is because I really don't want any pc vs mac wars, they are boring and irrelevant.

As most of you know, I'm using X1E. But with X1E I have to use mac as well. Because of iOS development. Now I used cloud for that, but when I'm out of office, it gets annoying and troublesome because of lousy internet connections. So my company issued me a brand new MBP 13", 2018 just 3 weeks ago. Nothing fancy, basic 256/8GB model. I don't use it as my primary device, so no need for vm's or anything of a sort. Just fire up Unity3D/Xcode and use it from time to time.

Now in those 3 weeks, I probably used it about 10 times the max.
And my spacebar is stuck. I tried compress air, I tried pushing hard on the key, well, nothing worked. So one more MBP for Apple to fix. Nice.

Meanwhile, my X1E is running strong as it should. No issues what so ever. It's built like a tank, and behaves like one. My wife just recently dropped her X1C on the wooden floor in our apartment. It damaged the floor really bad, but X1C? Not even a slightest scuff. I can take a picture of the parquet if there is any doubt in your mind about it. No need to take the X1C picture at all, because it will show nothing

It's a sad time to use a MBP. My final solution to the issue is returning MBP, and trying to convince my company to get me mac mini. With MBP I would still have to bring external keyboard with me, and I have to bring power adapter any way. So why not mac mini? It's even easier to carry, it's small, light and no power adapter needed.

I really hope that Apple can get their heads out of their own a***s. But somehow I doubt it. They are using butterfly since 2015, and still no sign on them giving up on this POS.
Since 2017 actually
 
X1 Extreme, i5 8300H, 1TB SSD Samsung MZVLB1T0HALR-000L7, 16GB DDR4 (single channel), GTX 1050Ti Max Q, 4K, BIOS version N2EET37W 1.19

As mentioned previously I chose the i5 processor because I thought this might mitigate some of the fan and thermal issues reported by other owners. I own two other laptops, one of which is a six-year-old Sony VAIO 17 inch, i7 quad core (3rd gen), 16GB DDR3 (dual channel), FHD, SSD Samsung 860 Evo Pro 1TB. The other is my recently purchased Lenovo L390 Yoga (i5, 512 Samsung SSD, 16GB DDR4 single channel, FHD).

Once fired up I carried out all necessary updates of Windows 10 and updates via the Lenovo Advantage application. I then set up my power management settings exactly as I do on my other computers. For example I lean the power mode towards better battery and I set the system cooling to passive. I also tend to set the maximum processor state to 99%. This disables Turbo boost but that doesn’t matter for most of what I do. In the Lenovo application I invoked the cool and quiet mode.


Display

Although I have a 27 inch high-resolution display attached to my desktop computer, this is the first time I have experienced a 4K display on a laptop. I have mixed feelings about it. When comparing it to the FHD displays on my other laptops the difference isn’t overwhelming. In fact you have to get quite close to the FHD displays before you will see that they aren’t quite as sharp as the 4K. I have had some issues with scaling in some applications. When this occurred I increased the windows scaling from the recommended 250% to 300%. This was a big mistake because it kicked off the fans really badly. Reverting to 250% calmed the fans down. To get around the unreadable text in photo shop I did the following: right click on application icon > compatibility > change high DIP settings > system (enhanced).

Straight out of the box the screen looked off, as is normal. I’m a professional photographer so good screen calibration is something I do straight away. This made a huge difference and I was better able to appreciate the panel. However there is quite a bit of lag and ghosting when scrolling up and down webpages.

When working in MS Word the screen shows a slight jump/flicker whenever I dictate a word or sentence using Dragon Naturally Speaking v13. This can be a little headache inducing. There is no text flicker when typing normally. I have made sure I have the most recent graphics driver.


Temperatures and Fans

My low-level productivity tasks mostly centre around Internet research where I will have three or four tabs open in Chrome. At the same time I’ll also be doing emails and perhaps something in Microsoft Word. I might also be watching something in low resolution on YouTube. Higher-level tasks will include using Lightroom to process high resolution photographs and then exporting. And occasionally watching high-resolution videos. I do a bit of video editing but not often.

When doing nothing, on battery, my idling temperature is approximately 45°C. For light productivity as described above this will go up and down to around 59°. Higher-level tasks as described above will take me up to around 64°. I have ascertained that the fans kick in at 60° and they stop at 48°.

Overall the computer runs cooler and quieter on battery versus plugged in. That is the same for all of my laptops.

When engaging in light productivity tasks I am not seeing much fan activity at all and a bit more activity when plugged in. The fans will kick in when I run a slideshow in Adobe lightroom. If watching a low resolution video for one hour the fans will kick in on average twice for around 40 seconds. If watching a 4K video the fans will kick in every three minutes or so for over a minute each time, which can be quite intrusive. It’s not so much the loudness of the fans, but the tone. They have a high pitched jangling metallic note to them. When watching a long 4K video temperatures don’t tend to exceed about 62°. The temperatures I am describing here are broadly identical to the other laptops I use, new or old, fat or thin.

The machine was noisier during the first couple of days, probably because I was downloading a lot of software.


Coil Wine

My unit does exhibit coil whine. Despite being well over 40 I have quite sensitive hearing and I’m particularly sensitive of high frequencies. The coil whine I’m describing isn’t the gentle scratching and clicking I occasionally hear, but a high-pitched tone like a fingernail on a blackboard. It’s intermittent and normally I only hear it if I hover my ear approximately 10 inches above the letter S on the keyboard. But at other times it’s audible at normal typing distances – I can hear it now and it’s bothering me. Coil whine is a tough one, it seems that more units have it than not (irrespective of manufacturer).

I need to test this more fully to see if it happens as often when I am switched down to 1080p resolution - so far dropping the resolution has increased my temperatures a little (?).

I haven’t had a chance yet to think about undervolting this machine. It will be interesting to see if that improves the coil whine. The coil whine as I type this is annoying me (though quite likely somebody with a less sensitive disposition would not be troubled). If I can’t sort it out this could be a deal breaker because it makes me a little agitated and queasy. It’s definitely worse than it was a couple of days ago.


Performance

This is where things became a little odd. Once I started carrying out some of my basic tasks I was aware that my Extreme is a little slower than all my other laptops. Not by a huge margin, but it’s obvious when working. There is nothing going on in the background, no errant services running and all power and performance settings are as I have them on my other machines. Noteworthy was the slower performance in Adobe lightroom, where it was taking approximately twice as long to open and render an image as it does on my old Sony VAIO (which still has quite a nice specification and is extremely fast - just a bit too big hence buying the Extreme). Zooming into images is also a bit juddery and I have to wait a few seconds again for rendering. This can make a big difference to my productivity when I have a lot of images to process.

The same phenomenon occurs when opening webpages, there is that slight jitter and marginal slowness. Incidentally my new Lenovo L390Y is a little faster on the same tasks. My eventual conclusion is that this must be down to having a 4K display. I set the resolution down to 1080p and things improved.

It’s a shame this is a little slower than my old VAIO, and I can’t help wondering if that is also partly down to the solid-state drive I have in the Extreme perhaps being slower than the one in the VAIO (which is a Samsung 860 Evo Pro). Other than the 4k I can’t ascertain why my new Extreme is a bit slower given that the hardware is faster.

When I started using Adobe photoshop, trying to open an image was impossible, the image would open as a small truncated rectangle in the top left-hand corner and the programme would then crash. In the end the only way around this was to go into the Photoshop preferences and uncheck the graphics processor. That returned normal operation.

Edit (12:56pm UK): switching down the resolution to 1080p has done a lot to improve the performance issues (and has reduced the coil whine) but it has also increased my temps by 6 or 7 degrees, hence the fan is now cutting in far too often.


Conclusion

A mixed bag so far. I’m not falling in love with it as I’d hoped, but maybe I’ll feel differently in a week or two. If it didn’t have the coil whine I’d be much happier.
 
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When I first booted up my x1 extreme everything was working just fine, but I did notice a little slowness because of possible indexing for the first few hours. The 128 GB SSD card that came with it was an offbrand card. I have now replaced it with a Samsung 512 970 Pro, which makes things a little bit better, but not earth shattering. Everything else works just fine on my system. I don’t hear coil wine and my fan speed is tolerable to me. I have bios 1.19 installed which helps the fan speed that reduces fan noise.

4K is good at native resolution for me, but I tried the 1080 resolution just to try it out. I did not like it, so back to native. Try it for a few days and see what happens. If you don’t like it call Lenovo and demand a return.
 
X1 Extreme, i5 8300H, 1TB SSD Samsung MZVLB1T0HALR-000L7, 16GB DDR4 (single channel), GTX 1050Ti Max Q, 4K, BIOS version N2EET37W 1.19

As mentioned previously I chose the i5 processor because I thought this might mitigate some of the fan and thermal issues reported by other owners. I own two other laptops, one of which is a six-year-old Sony VAIO 17 inch, i7 quad core (3rd gen), 16GB DDR3 (dual channel), FHD, SSD Samsung 860 Evo Pro 1TB. The other is my recently purchased Lenovo L390 Yoga (i5, 512 Samsung SSD, 16GB DDR4 single channel, FHD).

Once fired up I carried out all necessary updates of Windows 10 and updates via the Lenovo Advantage application. I then set up my power management settings exactly as I do on my other computers. For example I lean the power mode towards better battery and I set the system cooling to passive. I also tend to set the maximum processor state to 99%. This disables Turbo boost but that doesn’t matter for most of what I do. In the Lenovo application I invoked the cool and quiet mode.


Display

Although I have a 27 inch high-resolution display attached to my desktop computer, this is the first time I have experienced a 4K display on a laptop. I have mixed feelings about it. When comparing it to the FHD displays on my other laptops the difference isn’t overwhelming. In fact you have to get quite close to the FHD displays before you will see that they aren’t quite as sharp as the 4K. I have had some issues with scaling in some applications. When this occurred I increased the windows scaling from the recommended 250% to 300%. This was a big mistake because it kicked off the fans really badly. Reverting to 250% calmed the fans down. To get around the unreadable text in photo shop I did the following: right click on application icon > compatibility > change high DIP settings > system (enhanced).

Straight out of the box the screen looked off, as is normal. I’m a professional photographer so good screen calibration is something I do straight away. This made a huge difference and I was better able to appreciate the panel. However there is quite a bit of lag and ghosting when scrolling up and down webpages.

When working in MS Word the screen shows a slight jump/flicker whenever I dictate a word or sentence using Dragon Naturally Speaking v13. This can be a little headache inducing. There is no text flicker when typing normally. I have made sure I have the most recent graphics driver.


Temperatures and Fans

My low-level productivity tasks mostly centre around Internet research where I will have three or four tabs open in Chrome. At the same time I’ll also be doing emails and perhaps something in Microsoft Word. I might also be watching something in low resolution on YouTube. Higher-level tasks will include using Lightroom to process high resolution photographs and then exporting. And occasionally watching high-resolution videos. I do a bit of video editing but not often.

When doing nothing, on battery, my idling temperature is approximately 45°C. For light productivity as described above this will go up and down to around 59°. Higher-level tasks as described above will take me up to around 64°. I have ascertained that the fans kick in at 60° and they stop at 48°.

Overall the computer runs cooler and quieter on battery versus plugged in. That is the same for all of my laptops.

When engaging in light productivity tasks I am not seeing much fan activity at all and a bit more activity when plugged in. The fans will kick in when I run a slideshow in Adobe lightroom. If watching a low resolution video for one hour the fans will kick in on average twice for around 40 seconds. If watching a 4K video the fans will kick in every three minutes or so for over a minute each time, which can be quite intrusive. It’s not so much the loudness of the fans, but the tone. They have a high pitched jangling metallic note to them. When watching a long 4K video temperatures don’t tend to exceed about 62°. The temperatures I am describing here are broadly identical to the other laptops I use, new or old, fat or thin.

The machine was noisier during the first couple of days, probably because I was downloading a lot of software.


Coil Wine

My unit does exhibit coil whine. Despite being well over 40 I have quite sensitive hearing and I’m particularly sensitive of high frequencies. The coil whine I’m describing isn’t the gentle scratching and clicking I occasionally hear, but a high-pitched tone like a fingernail on a blackboard. It’s intermittent and normally I only hear it if I hover my ear approximately 10 inches above the letter S on the keyboard. But at other times it’s audible at normal typing distances – I can hear it now and it’s bothering me. Coil whine is a tough one, it seems that more units have it than not (irrespective of manufacturer).

I need to test this more fully to see if it happens as often when I am switched down to 1080p resolution - so far dropping the resolution has increased my temperatures a little (?).

I haven’t had a chance yet to think about undervolting this machine. It will be interesting to see if that improves the coil whine. The coil whine as I type this is annoying me (though quite likely somebody with a less sensitive disposition would not be troubled). If I can’t sort it out this could be a deal breaker because it makes me a little agitated and queasy. It’s definitely worse than it was a couple of days ago.


Performance

This is where things became a little odd. Once I started carrying out some of my basic tasks I was aware that my Extreme is a little slower than all my other laptops. Not by a huge margin, but it’s obvious when working. There is nothing going on in the background, no errant services running and all power and performance settings are as I have them on my other machines. Noteworthy was the slower performance in Adobe lightroom, where it was taking approximately twice as long to open and render an image as it does on my old Sony VAIO (which still has quite a nice specification and is extremely fast - just a bit too big hence buying the Extreme). Zooming into images is also a bit juddery and I have to wait a few seconds again for rendering. This can make a big difference to my productivity when I have a lot of images to process.

The same phenomenon occurs when opening webpages, there is that slight jitter and marginal slowness. Incidentally my new Lenovo L390Y is a little faster on the same tasks. My eventual conclusion is that this must be down to having a 4K display. I set the resolution down to 1080p and things improved.

It’s a shame this is a little slower than my old VAIO, and I can’t help wondering if that is also partly down to the solid-state drive I have in the Extreme perhaps being slower than the one in the VAIO (which is a Samsung 860 Evo Pro). Other than the 4k I can’t ascertain why my new Extreme is a bit slower given that the hardware is faster.

When I started using Adobe photoshop, trying to open an image was impossible, the image would open as a small truncated rectangle in the top left-hand corner and the programme would then crash. In the end the only way around this was to go into the Photoshop preferences and uncheck the graphics processor. That returned normal operation.

Edit (12:56pm UK): switching down the resolution to 1080p has done a lot to improve the performance issues (and has reduced the coil whine) but it has also increased my temps by 6 or 7 degrees, hence the fan is now cutting in far too often.


Conclusion

A mixed bag so far. I’m not falling in love with it as I’d hoped, but maybe I’ll feel differently in a week or two. If it didn’t have the coil whine I’d be much happier.


Thanks for the report. Your i5 is under 1.19. So it seems that using i5 does not seem to improve the noise/fan much. Am I right? How about battery life?
 
hajime, I can't say if the i5 has improved fan noise because I haven't been able to test the same machine with the i7. But for normal tasks like web browsing, emails, Lightroom at the same time, the fans don't kick in much (when on battery). When I dropped the resolution to 1080p the temps escalated though, which is a shame because dropping the res helped to eradicate the slow-ish performance (and reduced the coil whine). I'm finding the 4k hard on my eyes, no matter how well I calibrate I'm getting some headaches (which go away when I switch to the lower res).

I haven't undervolted yet, so I'll report back when I've done that.
 
hajime, I can't say if the i5 has improved fan noise because I haven't been able to test the same machine with the i7. But for normal tasks like web browsing, emails, Lightroom at the same time, the fans don't kick in much (when on battery). When I dropped the resolution to 1080p the temps escalated though, which is a shame because dropping the res helped to eradicate the slow-ish performance (and reduced the coil whine). I'm finding the 4k hard on my eyes, no matter how well I calibrate I'm getting some headaches (which go away when I switch to the lower res).

I haven't undervolted yet, so I'll report back when I've done that.

Can you exchange it for a HD version?
 
hajime, I can't say if the i5 has improved fan noise because I haven't been able to test the same machine with the i7. But for normal tasks like web browsing, emails, Lightroom at the same time, the fans don't kick in much (when on battery). When I dropped the resolution to 1080p the temps escalated though, which is a shame because dropping the res helped to eradicate the slow-ish performance (and reduced the coil whine). I'm finding the 4k hard on my eyes, no matter how well I calibrate I'm getting some headaches (which go away when I switch to the lower res).

I haven't undervolted yet, so I'll report back when I've done that.

I think we need to define what "did not kick in much" means. If I recall correctly, my i7 X1E's fans under Bios 1.12 also did not kick in much when doing web browsing and emails if external 4K TV was not connected. If I recall correctly after I upgraded to 1.14, fans kicked in more often. Given the performance degrades you mentioned and that it is not completely silent, I wonder if choosing i7 is a better option.

I hope X1E Gen 2 with improved thermal be out soon. Is the rumor still August?
 
Hajime, we simply cannot define fan activity since that is partly subjective and very much dependent on knowing exactly what the user is doing at the time and how quickly they are doing it. All I can say that is for me, doing light tasks such as having three or four chrome windows open, whilst doing emails, and having Microsoft Word open the fans rarely kick in ( perhaps twice in an hour) when on battery. If I then do the same tasks with the machine plugged in to the charger the fan activity becomes quite frequent, kicking in every few minutes. That is quite intrusive , particularly for anyone trying to work close by.

The subpar performance has nothing to do with my choice of processor. This latest generation of i5 processes are very fast, notably so versus the six-year-old processor in my current laptop. I am pretty sure the performance I am seeing is due to choosing the 4K panel.
I think I will be returning this machine because of the performance and the coil line, rather than the fans.
 
I just realised my desktop I7 5820k is more or less same as 8750h! Wow but then I realised my desktop cpu is 5 years old...
 
I think desktop CPUs tend to be more powerful than their laptop equivalents , so I wouldn't worry too much . However in my case I am comparing my new X1 with a six-year-old laptop with a third generation i7 (and everything else being broadly equivalent). I'm accustomed to zipping through my work on that machine but unfortunately everything is taking me longer on the new laptop. Having now done some reading around the web I'm not the only one experiencing this with a 4K laptop. This may not be a problem at all for many people, but because my work relies so heavily on using Adobe Lightroom it is something of an annoyance. I can of course lower the resolution which makes a noticeable difference, but for some reason it sets off the fans . I don't really want to be paying for 4K if I'm not going to use it, at least not very often.
 
I think desktop CPUs tend to be more powerful than their laptop equivalents , so I wouldn't worry too much . However in my case I am comparing my new X1 with a six-year-old laptop with a third generation i7 (and everything else being broadly equivalent). I'm accustomed to zipping through my work on that machine but unfortunately everything is taking me longer on the new laptop. Having now done some reading around the web I'm not the only one experiencing this with a 4K laptop. This may not be a problem at all for many people, but because my work relies so heavily on using Adobe Lightroom it is something of an annoyance. I can of course lower the resolution which makes a noticeable difference, but for some reason it sets off the fans . I don't really want to be paying for 4K if I'm not going to use it, at least not very often.
Tbh I have not installed lr yet on my system but for coding and building and compiling android code. It flies.

Let me install lr and give it a go
 
I applied a cautious undervolt of -0.125v. Benchmarking in XTU suggested that has saved me 9 degrees. However running normal tasks with HWmonitor shows no benefit whatsoever - it's reporting the same temperatures as before, and fan activity is the same. Strange. The coil whine is just as bothersome too, if not a little worse by the day.
 
Hajime, we simply cannot define fan activity since that is partly subjective and very much dependent on knowing exactly what the user is doing at the time and how quickly they are doing it. All I can say that is for me, doing light tasks such as having three or four chrome windows open, whilst doing emails, and having Microsoft Word open the fans rarely kick in ( perhaps twice in an hour) when on battery. If I then do the same tasks with the machine plugged in to the charger the fan activity becomes quite frequent, kicking in every few minutes. That is quite intrusive , particularly for anyone trying to work close by.

The subpar performance has nothing to do with my choice of processor. This latest generation of i5 processes are very fast, notably so versus the six-year-old processor in my current laptop. I am pretty sure the performance I am seeing is due to choosing the 4K panel.
I think I will be returning this machine because of the performance and the coil line, rather than the fans.

I don’t recall my x1e with 4k screen had low performance issues you described. So it is tge cpu?
 
Unless you have a direct comparison it's harder to tell if the performance is a little below par. There is a perceptible lowering of performance when I do the same operation on the X1E vs my current Sony laptop (and indeed my little Lenovo L390 which arrived last week). Maybe I have a faulty GPU, since my performance niggles seem to be tied to running 4k. Also Photoshop will not work properly with the GPU enabled - I've downloaded the latest drivers etc but I have to disable the GPU option in order to open files properly. Odd. Although dropping my resolution to 1080p improves things, there is still a bit of 'choppiness' when zooming in Lightroom and opening web pages - on my other laptops these operations are very smooth.

Incidentally my new L390Y developed a bit of coil whine today following updates via the Lenovo Vantage app (including a bios flash). Aaaagh!
 
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