laos

Yes I have. Meant to reply sooner, but it turns out ThrottleStop helps with the inconsistencies, mostly. There is still some stuttering during benchmarking that I think might just be the limits of XTU, since it only overclocks the boost, and you can't raise the base frequency past 2.8 GHZ, unless someone found a workaround to this. Performance is def. a lot better. Now I just need to do some fine tuning if possible.

Unfortunately this did nothing to remedy the situation. I'll have to dig around some more I guess. Very strange!

Yep it's throttling. Very strange - I dropped it from 3.5 Ghz to 2.8 Ghz and saw performance improve in games like GTAV since the CPU stopped throttling. It used to thermal throttle at 95c but now it never gets past 80-85C, so I went and did the wattage boosts you recommended. I'm still seeing thermal throttling below 80C. Screenshot attached. There's no power throttling option int his version of XTU. Is there maybe a different version I should try? Underclocking gives me the best performance still, strangely. The CPU just keeps wanting to slow down. http://i.imgur.com/IlnkWVZ.png

Wow 3-5C really? That's pretty good for $30. Right now I'm on GTA V Very High 1080p, went from 98C to 75C -- however XTU is still reporting thermal throttling and I'm not sure why. Frame rates are meh. 50-60 then it drops to 20-30 in some places. I also have a kill-a-watt plugged in and I'm not peaking above 180-190W so no idea where the issue is emerging and why it's thermal throttling with so much juice left to heat up. It's also overclocked to 3.6 or 3.8 Ghz I believe. The GPU (980M) is overclocked to 1263 MHZ / 2855 MHZ and I'm seeing 65 to 70C with solid performance. Are you using XTU? What settings? Trying to see what I can push on this, given the cooling mat + holes below the fan give it some crazy cooling via air movement. I see the CPU jump down 5-10C in seconds when the fan kicks up.

I was a bit worried about tearing it open, but the throttling got so bad i went ahead, opened it, found a chunk of dirt jammed in the heatsink, as well as some dried out IC thermal paste that had oozed out from the interface and along the sides. I cleaned it all up, applied arctic silver, and whattaya know, it's doing great now. Nothing above 90C and idling as low as 35-40C now, so it looks like that was the issue all along. Never realized until now it's a copper pipe with some other metal (steel? aluminum?) fins. I see this for $30 on aliexpress, but I just reapplied the paste and it's pretty good for now, but i'll keep this in mind if I ever want to replace the heatsink with something more conductive. Thanks for all the suggestions. Turns out it was something fixable after all.

I have a P150SMA with a cooling mat and a mod with holes below each fan ( CPU and GPU) to improve airflow. I can get my GPU to idle around 37 C but the CPU refuses to drop below 60 or even 70 sometimes, even when idling with max fan speed (Fn +1). The CPU and GPU fan appear to be working but it's clear that the CPU has a smaller fan, but perhaps it's not getting the best airflow? My games constantly thermal throttle the CPU, reducing performance. Any suggestions? Should I try lapping the cooler? sand the heatpipes? I'm up for whatever to get the CPU temp down. Also it looks like the screenshots stopped working since the forum upgrade

So any recommendations for a P150SMA owner? I see the 300 watt clevo with 4-pin, and my laptop has the 2.5mmx5.5mm -- I'd really prefer an adapter than any hardware mods. Anyone know anything that works without soldering the PSU? Thanks,

that would more or less come down to your CPU and its performance

I'm sorry to hear that

I just jumped from 870M to 980M on my p150sma rather than buy a new desktop due to shipping concerns (I go west to east coast pretty often and prefer to have my main laptop with me) and I'm fairly satisfied. The value jump isnt good unless you intend to OC, for which you WILL need to do cooling mods. I had someone drill holes, install a fan, and improve airflow overall to help keep the 980m cool. If you can accomplish that, it can easily meet a stock. 980 desktop in performance. Stock cooling is not enough for the full power of a 980m

Basically get a USB stick, and download Ubuntu or some distro and just see if it comes up with this command in Bash: How to create a bootable USB stick on Windows | Ubuntu HowTo: Linux Show List Of Network Cards If nothing shows here, it's very unlikely a driver issue and hardware related as linux should be able to see at the very least some sort of hardware identifier for your network card.

I was more-so wondering if you could get different diagnostic info from running a Linux live CD to see if drivers are the issue for a core hardware issue with the socket, as you've suspected. If everything else is working fine then i don't know, could be the MB socket. Your guess is as good as mine

I've notice high prices on older X80 series GPUs on rj-tech personally compared to the 980 at around ~$750 but TBH i don't even see many people on eBay selling cards, so who knows, might take you a few tries to sell it at the price you're happy with. $300ish doesn't seem too unreasonable. Only problem is just how many people out there want a 680...

this sounds much more likely software than hardware to me. Have you tried booting from a Linux live CD or something to see if hardware IDs show up in that environment?

Your Clevo model number I think matters more than your GPU type, assuming nothing is soldered in place. Not sure about differences between P150EM and P150SMA but it looks to be listed here on the compatible list for maxwell cards http://forum.techinferno.com/clevo/3119-%5Bbios-vbios-mods%5D-prema-mod-stock.html#post54056 You need to flash prema mod, install the card, reinstall windows (i would, at least, if i were jumping AMD to NVIDIA,) and then flash one of those firmwares Prema posts. If you flash the OC one, then just install nvidia inspector and you can overclock. also note this thread http://forum.techinferno.com/clevo/8663-%5Bgpu-upgrades%5D-gtx7-8-9-p-em-hm-series.html