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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here. So I need to preface this video with a pretty big disclaimer.
00:11Everything I talk about in this video, you kind of do it at your own discretion because
00:14opening up your computer, fiddling with stuff, playing with software that affects like undervolting
00:19and BIOS and stuff like that, you kind of do it at your own risk because there's always
00:23an element of risk to it, right? I think it's safe, I created this video, I have experimented
00:28with it extensively, but it is at your own risk. Okay, this video is about two powerful
00:34tweaks that can greatly improve the performance of your laptop. And there's two parts to it.
00:40First is a software, it's a relatively easy tweak, super safe. And then the second part
00:45involves opening up your laptop to apply thermal compounds. It's something a little more dicey,
00:50but it should keep your warranty intact as long as you don't tell anyone about it. Okay,
00:53the first thing we're going to look at is the software. And this software gives you
00:56tremendous control over your CPU. And if you just start clicking things randomly, yeah,
01:01you can mess things up. But we're going to be dealing with one thing, which is undervolting,
01:05and it's super safe. Undervolting is a process where you reduce the voltage that's going
01:09to the CPU, but it doesn't affect performance at all. And the reason why you can do this
01:13safely is because CPUs are fed more voltage than they actually need. It's just a matter
01:18of finding that sweet spot. The two more popular apps that people use for this are XTU by Intel
01:24and Throttlestop. Both are free, both are good, but for beginners, I would recommend
01:29XTU because it has all the basic components you need to properly undervolt. This is XTU
01:35when you first load it up. I know it looks crazy complex, lots of numbers, but we can
01:39ignore most of it. First, let's adjust the graphing monitor to show 30 minutes of data.
01:44We're going to stress test your CPU at its baseline without any adjustments, just to
01:48see what numbers we're getting. So this is the XPS 15 9560. It's running a Kaby Lake
01:537700HQ. So during the stress test, the CPU is running pretty much full tilt. Occasional
01:59dip and the temperatures are going up and down as the fans turn on and off. At its hottest,
02:04it's 88 degrees, and at the coolest around 75, 76 degrees. Now the way to undervolt properly
02:10is to drop the voltage, run a stress test, and if it checks out, drop the voltage again
02:15and repeat. You're basically starving the CPU more and more. And so to do that in XTU,
02:21you go to advanced tuning and on this core tab, you click on the core voltage offset
02:26and you want to scroll upwards from zero to see negative numbers. Remember we're undervolting
02:30here, so you want to choose a negative number. So we're going to start with an undervolt
02:34of 50 millivolts. So I'm going to reduce it by 0.050 volts. And when I run the stress
02:39test now, we're getting a max of 83, 84 degrees. For a couple of clicks, not bad, right? System
02:45is still completely stable, we're getting full clock speeds, and it's a step in the
02:49right direction. Okay, then we're going to kick it up a notch and I'm going to reduce
02:52it by 120 millivolts, which is negative 0.120 volts. And I'm cheating here because I know
02:59this is near the limit for this particular CPU. You should reduce it one increment at
03:03a time and test a bit, but for the sake of speed, I'm cranking that knob to 10. So at
03:07this undervolt, when we stress test and activate the graph, we're getting even lower temperatures,
03:13maxing at around 77 degrees, so a good 10 or 11 degree drop from the original unaltered
03:18voltage. So just to demonstrate, I'm going to drop my voltage to negative 130 millivolts.
03:23I know it's going to freeze because I've done this before, it might even blue screen. And
03:27when it does, that's when you know you've hit the undervolt limit. And when you're there,
03:30reboot, go back into XTU and go back to the last voltage that worked. And for me, that
03:35was negative 120, and that's your limit. To really test the stability, you want to
03:40run something like Prime95 overnight, just to make sure it's all good. If it doesn't
03:44last overnight, bump up the voltage. Now every CPU is different, so it's tough for me to
03:48tell you exactly where to start, but I would recommend looking up your CPU or your particular
03:52laptop and seeing what other users with that hardware have been able to undervolt to and
03:56just kind of use that as a starting guide. For the Kaby Lake 7700HQ, I would start around
04:01100 millivolts, so that's negative 0.100 volts. For the Skylake 6700HQ, I undervolted
04:08around 150 millivolts, so that's negative 0.150 volts. And when you're done, you can
04:13close XTU down. The settings apply even on reboot. You don't have to keep the front-end
04:17application open. So undervolting laptops can give you better thermals, but in my experience,
04:22the best results come from something called repasting. Okay, when a laptop manufacturer
04:28makes a laptop, there comes a point in the manufacturing process when someone or something,
04:33usually a person, has to apply thermal paste onto the CPU and the GPU. And usually, they
04:39don't do an amazing job. Usually in a rush, it's like a person who's doing like hundreds
04:43of laptops. I just made that number up. But they're doing a lot of laptops every day,
04:46and they're just squirting paste, and they don't really give that much attention to each
04:49CPU. What ends up happening is that the application is imperfect. Usually there's too much, and
04:55there's a good chance they're not using the best quality thermal paste. There's nothing
04:59super terrible about this. The laptop will perform to spec, but it'll run hot. To resolve
05:04this, we're going to reapply that thermal paste, and we're going to use better quality
05:07stuff, which results in lower temperatures. So for the uninitiated, thermal paste is this
05:12goopy stuff that you apply onto CPUs or GPUs to help transfer heat away from it. And the
05:17better quality paste that you use, and the better the application process, the better
05:22of a job that it does.
05:25Again, every laptop is different, so you'll have to search around to see if people have
05:37done it on yours. But the more popular laptops tend to have some kind of guide or tutorial
05:41as to how to do it. For the XPS 15, once you're inside, carefully unplug the battery, loosen
05:46up the screws here, carefully remove the heat pipe assembly, and then clean off the original
05:50thermal paste using alcohol or arctic cleaner, whatever you want, and then apply some good
05:55thermal paste. So I tend to do a small blob for the GPU, and then a small line for the
05:59CPU. Just use good quality paste, I like Arctic Silver 5. You don't need a lot, but you're
06:05better off using too much than way too little. On some laptops, you'll see thermal pads,
06:09you can swap those out for better quality ones, or potentially thicker ones. Basically
06:13you want the thermal pad to eliminate any kind of air gap. And then when you're done,
06:17place the heatsink back on. But don't lift up to check how you did, just trust, because
06:22if you lift it up, you can put air bubbles into the paste, and that's no good. One other
06:26thing that's kind of unique to the XPS 15, this area here has voltage regulator modules
06:31that get pretty warm. I've always put thermal pads over this area, just to help transfer
06:35the heat to the aluminum paneling. And in the end, the repasting gives you a further
06:39drop in temperature, better battery life, fans that come on less, and most importantly,
06:45no more CPU throttling. Your laptop will be able to run at its maximum clock speed
06:49for as long as it wants. And if you play games, render videos, or just do anything that pushes
06:53your laptop hard, you're gonna get some nice performance gains from this. The thing is,
06:57some people are gonna watch this video and they're just gonna jump to the conclusion
07:00that this is the best thing ever. It's cool, it's awesome, but it's not for everyone. If
07:05you've never opened your computer before, if you don't know what thermal paste is, you've
07:08never used it before, you can still learn and figure out how to do this stuff, and it's
07:12great once you do, but take your time, do the research, understand what you're doing
07:16before you do it, because there is an element of risk to this. I really don't want you breaking
07:19your laptop just because you were a little overzealous. Take your time, do it properly.
07:24Hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. I'll see
07:27you guys next time.