Inspiron 14 Plus 7420 Intel I7-12700H, Thermal and PowerThrottling Issues + TGP & TDP?

Little update from my side -  did install HWiNFO64 and did play around with Throttlestop PL1 and PL2 settings.

The overall combined powerdraw got up to a value of 103.5 W - this is the maximum i got out of it so far. I managed to squeeze 50 Watt out of the CPU, managed to get the GPU up to 38 W, but i think 35 W is the actual real limit.

Still having huge temperature issues when i start demanding power and performance over a longer period.  Weird thing -> the clocks were going up to 3.2 GHZ, floating around 2,6-2,8 GHZ, but this keeps the unit very HOT with average temperatures of 85-90.

Seems i got to play around more. Especially with the PL1 and PL2 settings - might be able to tame those max frequencies with it a bit. We'll see.

"Other input from other users with a Dell Notebook with a 12700h would be much appreciated."

The only true comparison is another system of the same model with this CPU.  You can also purchase this CPU in an Alienware M15 R7.  And in the Alienware, it is cooled by a thermal mass that allows it to run at higher speed far longer than in the lightweight Inspiron you have.

Despite putting the same CPU in both systems, the laws of thermodynamics dictate the performance will track with the cooling capacity -- that's the limitation you face with any 14" system vs one 15" or larger.

Well, after being privately messaged by dell cares and given some random copy paste information i got like weeks before (official intel processor specs as well as official geforce rtx 3050 specs....) - i really feel like whether i am not "allowed" to get the designed specs of board power, gpu and cpu power, but yeah, its not like i bought and own it. lol. 

Nonetheless i am still fooling around with throttlestop and i set "prochot offset" to 10. This sets the whole thing to start thermal throttling at 90 degrees - it still reaches max temperatures of 94-96 in short peaks though, but not going up to 100, which is the set maximum from Intel anyway.

Slowly going to understand what MSR and MMIO has to do with PL1 and PL2. I had to reset Throttlestop after i messed around with value and lock boxes a bit too much.

My machine automatically sets MSR -> PL1 - 70 and PL2 - 80.

I monitored that MMIO values are automatically "floating" with PL1. 

I got PL1 automatically changing from 35 up to 45 and then during a longer gaming session down to 20, while PL2 keeps staying at 80. In terms of thermal design- this is a bit of a bummer- to be honest.

Temperature with a stabilizing clock around 1,9-2,2 GHZ showing 75-80 degrees. Before hitting this values, the system manages to stay around 3GHZ for some time with 85 to 90 max (thats where my set throttle-value of 90 will start kicking in anyway).

After closing the gaming session it recovers pretty quick starting to autmatically increase PL1 MMIO value slowly , as core temperatures decrease.

Not sure for now if i will force Throttlestop to keep the system running at given fixed values. Other input from other users with a Dell Notebook with a 12700h would be much appreciated. 

In terms of the GPU - it pretty much locks at max 35 W and even HWiNFO64 showing that i got up to a max of 40W, it really never runs with that value at a given period of time. GPU Hotspot 82 max, GPU 75 max.

Hey there.

I know. Thats what i was exactly telling Dell too, like you can have 50 different Notebooks with the 12700H, different Brands and Model-Types and you will get different outcomes - all stands and falls with the thermal design. Got that. Just trying to find the best compromise with this unit here - love it so far - but maybe youre right - could i buy again , i would definitely choose another one, maybe from another brand with more freedom to tweak bios settings and additional software supporting the overall handling of it.

Ultimately it is my own fault - i am using Desktop PCs custom builds with AMD for ages now and really wanted to give Intel a chance in terms of a Notebook. I was not aware back then, that i did exactly choose the wrong (12th) generation as well as the processor type which is not tweakable at all. I really dont wanna end up thermal pasting it with liquid metal risking to fry, just to get those high load temps under control.

And dont get me wrong, i am not complaining or anything. Its just too much to ask Dell, the Brand i am usually down to, to give me the Thermal Design specs for this thing here. Know what? It is no longer available in the Austrian Dell Online Store anyway. Like 3 weeks after i got mine, it seems to be "discontinued" at least in our country. You can still get one in the German store or other Countries....

Thanks for your 2 cents though.

Next update so far, for anyone who might encounter a similar situation with this model here. I managed to tame down the max. MHZ clock speed with a speedshift set max value of "55" - this maximizes 4'289.5 MHZ (might pull that down to 3,6-4 ghz maybe). A Prochot offset of 12 (88 degrees) - keeping the overall max. cpu temps not going above 90-91 degrees so far. 

Glad someone else has gone through some of this already!

I have the 7420+ w/ the i7 but integrated graphics. To your original post, I am seeing quite poor thermals running CPU-Zs stress test w/ a maximum CPU temperature hitting 96C before throttling down to 2.2 ghz

Have you made any additional progress since your last post or were those final changes the ones you stick with till today?

Hi there!

Well i am not glad, that someone else has to go through this....

I will update you, as i am currently facing a complete different problem.

First at all i had one of the fans doing crazy noises , which i asked Dell to replace - i got it sent with UPS, super fast, all good so far.

What happend is, that during the replacement process - i was kinda "lazy" and didnt want to remove the heatsink just for getting that fan cable - so i sligthly raised it on one side to get the cable and replaced the fan - now what happened was , that the whole heatsink was kinda bent - just little enough for causing the gpu to overheat and loose alot of performance - -tried to bend the whole heatsink after removal- which caused me to remove and repaste, remove again - turned out i needed a new heatsink unit.

Guess what. The new one was even worse. After applying everything it was 3mm off on the side where the gpu is and caused to permanently throttle the GPU down. So i did remove that again and learned how to "bend" a heatsink - resulting in a amazing performance - -4-5 degrees better overall temperatures - also repasted with SYY157 for sure.

I thought that i will be finally happy now. After 1-2 Weeks using it - i noticed a coil whine developing - which is audible and i HATE IT for being there. I tracked down the root cause, which is, the TURBO.

When i turn off the Turbo-Mode - it instantly stops - turn it on again - audible again. Its a very annoying scratching noise along with some frequencies going up and down.

So i had to contact Dell again and it might be necessary to replace the whole motherboard or maybe the complete unit - A BUMMER.

Will report later with my final results once i will have a hardware which does not develop a coil WHINE ......

So funny story, I thought my original heatsink was better than my 2 replacement ones, I noticed the slight bends in the newer heatsink but didn't think a terrible amount of it. Since Dell replaced my heatsink due to an internal 'dripping' problem, seen here via my Google Photos video link, I've had worse temperatures since then. If you have the same sound per my video, it's a heatsink issue and must be replaced. It's only audible under load and if the unit is at an angle.

What's your battery been like? I know 12th gen Intel isn't supposed to be insane, but I get maybe an hour and half battery life with generally light settings.


I use my laptop docked with a USB-C dock and Razer Chroma X and unfortunately can't rely on it as it overheats constantly. 

Hi there, my overheating issues, friend!

Thanks for sharing your video. I did listen to it on my headphones and it is definitely a complete different thing. My problem encountered after i did replace the "new" heat-sink which i had to bend to have it doing the cooling as designed....  and developed only after 2 weeks .

I did use the possibility and did replace also the the original cooling pads with way better ones to have all parts being able to dissolve their heat onto the hole heatspreader-unit .

It resulted in a overall way better performance (as mentioned above in my original posts) , thus the unit running on longer periods of time with way more clock speeds. Still i did tame it and i am not having it to go above a boost mhz of 4200 - because it will produce way too much overall heat which is really not something youre aiming for (well u know lol).  I voluntarily sacrifice 500 mhz maximum performance to save a few degrees - thats absolutely ok for me - we know by now, that there is a design and technical flaw putting a 12700h into a 14 inch "light" notebook.

Once i stop using the turboboost (which is a bummer anyways) - the scratching and various pitched noisy stuff instant stops - the second i put the turbo on again its audible and very annoying (again).

Tomorrow ill have a good dell technician over my place and he will replace the motherboard. I asked Dell about the idea of also replacing the heatsink i had to bend to get it working the way it should, but for now the motherboard it will be- after that i will report back to you and will give you after a few benchmarks my final conclusion about the unit and how it performs under various situations.

Cheers,

Fullyard

Hello Fullyard,

Let me start by telling You, that I do not want to hijack your thread, so if You think my issue is unrelated to yours, I will just stop posting right away, please let me know. Also, let me thank You for sharing and detaily explaining your experience with this laptop. It helps us fresh owners to better understand what is going on with our unit.

Long story short - I have purchased a 12700H + RTX3060 Inspiron 16 Plus 7620 just two weeks ago and I was having performance issues due to thermal and power throttling from day one. After discovering this thread I have decided to give it a go with repasting and see from there if it will be needing more tweaking in Throttlestop.

Since SYY is not readily available in my country I went with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. After a few warmup and cool down cycles during a day I decided to do a benchmark in the evening (I did a reference benchmark before the re-paste job) and it turned out incredible - a 7 to 9 degrees Celsius decrease on average while maintaining longer PL2 and pretty much the same PL1.

1-2 days after the repasting I started to notice rising average temps during load nad after a couple of days I am pretty much back at where I have started. I think Kryonaut is maybe the wrong choice for a laptop with high temps during mid to heavy load (I do casual gaming on the laptop after work) and without and IHS on the chips. I ordered some SYY 157 from Germany, this paste should be much ticker than Kryonaut and might hold in place better even at higher temps during my gaming sessions.

Anyways, to get to my point - just after 10 days of using I have started to notice a weird electric buzzing/static noise/scratching... I would say it is like a mix between a noise an HDD reading head accessing data and a high voltage electric buzzing. I am attaching a Google Drive link with a terrible quality smartphone recording, but the noise is noticeable since the fans were not spinning at the time (I have checked and both fans were at 0RPM, so the noise is not coming from the fans, nor the speakers, it is most definitely coming from under the keyboard i.e. the motherboard).

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Qfhjbz3QfNfULMXt7

I have never experienced coil whine from a PC nor laptop in my life, so I am not sure if it is coil whine. It is not a very high-pitched sound, more like an electric kind of buzzing as I have said. I have tried turning TURBO off, but I haven't noticed a major difference in intensity.

Is it similar to your problem or is this totally unrelated?

Thanks for reacting.

Regards,
Martin

FWIW, I used to own a ThinkPad Yoga 14 20FY with the 940m and had a very similar sound - turned out to be a whine from the 940m. I would usually hear it quite a bit louder on a gpu load; try loading Furmark and see if the whine intensifies.

In regards to @fullyard  performance, I found that on the iGPU model - turning off turbo boost helps temperatures immensely but keeping it on w/ PL1 (45) and PL2 (62) allows the computer to stress test @ 90C without throttling passed PL1. 

I do wonder if it's possible to have the dGPU heatsink fit in the iGPU model like some of the older ThinkPad T-series allowed. The additional heat pipes may help out.

How's the battery life for you all? With all the eco stuff I can find enabled, I can only get a low idle of around 9W

Hi Martin,

Hi Martin,

no problem at all. I am really happy, that i am helping in some ways other users with the same or similar issues regarding this matter. Replying and adding your two cents to such a thing is important in my opinion. It shows that there are some technical flaws in the Inspiron 14 and 16 Plus series and it almost takes away some of the "burden" i experience these days knowing, that my unit here is not the exception.

First i want to mention, that i did search the net ALOT and i found out, that most users do NOT recommend using Kryonaut for the latest 12th gen Notebooks. Those generate insane heat which will result in whether a "suckout" "dryout" or both of the paste within a very short time - making things worse than before. I dont know what you experienced, but the original paste they added in the factory was spilled allover the parts in a very "generous" way - like they wanted to drown the whole gpu and cpu/cpu-gpu die with it.

After doing quite some research there were two or three thermal-pastes which I was able to include in the applicable list of candidates - the overall winner was definitely SYY157.Did you already get yours and do you have any comparison?

In regards to you other problem, which is far worse - i did listen to your recording and it is pretty much the same thing. Not 100% - but it is COIL WHINE for sure. Same here - in 25+ years this unit here is the first time where i really hear some audible coil whine which is pretty much annoying.

Please keep me and the community updated.

I hope you will find a solution. Currently i am very disappointed with DELL.

Hey!

Thanks for the heads up!

Turning off the turbo always helps - but is no solution. You take away the units designed performance to prevent it from overheating and cut it down to 60% of the performance intended by the manufacturer.

Good to hear about your PL1 and PL2 settings. I cannot give you a final summary YET, because after the technician was over my place and replaced the motherboard - i was experiencing the SAME COIL WHINE, but this time its around 20-30% more audible. Guess what - the replacement motherboard was not new - it was a used unit from another returned unit or so - thats a BUMMER and i am pretty disappointed with DELL at the moment.

I also experience with this "new" motherboard in my notebook - that the fans are running way more often - temperatures are pretty much the same and smilar - no big tests here , as i did open ANOTHER ticket and seeing all the Black Friday Notebook deals from other brands makes me pretty furious.

I rarely used the Inspiron 14 Plus without the power supply so far - but i can tell you, that i did three times, and it didnt last longer than 2 !!! hours. Thats another real turn off. I think you would need to completely design a different power plan setting and also strip down the unit with throttlestop once you use it on battery - maybe you can squeeze out 4-5 hours. But nothing i am going to try for now.

I WANT A UNIT WHICH IS WORKING THE WAY ITS DESIGNED RIGHT FROM THE START - sorry for caps! I am really not interested in ending up having a spare parts notebook - this aint no fun at all. Its not like i am interested in spending that much hours of my spare time to deal with such a thing endlessly.

I attached the actual noise this unit makes coil whine part 2  - i stop the turbo two times - to make the huge difference audible.

"Cheers",

Steve

Hi jpsulisz,

regarding your question on power at idle CPU - I have measured an idling cpu package power of 6-7W with an idle temperature of 41°C (hottest core).

To add some context: this is with an ambient temperature of 23°C in my room. The laptop is placed on laptop stand (no external fans activated) on a slight incline of about 8 to 10 degrees.

EDIT: let's not forget, that I have the bigger 16" version so it's not a 100% accurate comparison.

Regards,
Martin