The Intel Core Ultra Series 1 comes with three CPU modes (Framework | Fix Consumer Electronics): Performance mode - 30W sustained 60W boost Balanced mode - 25W sustained 60W boost Efficiency mode - 15W sustained 60W boost
Is there a way to permanently activate the Efficiency mode in the BIOS? (I couldn’t find an option) or what would be the way on Windows to permanently activate this mode?
I take it there is no new information in this regard? It would be nice to be able to set/adjust the sustained boost TDP.
Got the Ultra 7 155H equipped 13 for my wife and am extremely impressed overall with the hardware.
The way the fan bursts and ramps up speed is her only complaint since this makes it noticeable.
I’m probably going to upgrade to a PTM sheet for the CPU to see if that will help. If that doesn’t do the trick then perhaps a laptop stand with fan is the next step.
I believe this is also called battery saver on Windows. It is possible to change the battery percentage value needed to activate it such that it is enabled all the time. You would need to do that through powershell or by manually changing it in the power profile.
This command will open all power options in your power profile so that you can edit them via the GUI: (gci 'HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings' -Recurse).Name -notmatch '\bDefaultPowerSchemeValues|(\\[0-9]|\b255)$' | % {sp $_.Replace('HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE','HKLM:') -Name 'Attributes' -Value 2 -Force}
From here it is possible to get to the option you need to adjust. I am not near my Framework atm, so I can’t tell you now, but this should get you far enough a long.
Don’t know what steps you have taken to reduce fan noise, but I just replaced the stock TIM with Thermal Grizzly’s PhaseSheet PTM in my wife’s 13 w/ Ultra 7 155H.
It requires ~10 heating/cooling cycles for maximum efficacy, but I can say there was an immediate improvement on the first boot. Lowest core temperature at idle came down 6C; from 39 to 33. Highest core temperature under CPU-Z synthetic stress came down 5C; from 79 to 74.
I did a few thermal cycles before my wife needed the laptop for work this morning and have noted improvements in fan behavior. Under worst case/synthetic stress, the fan speed doesn’t increase at all for ~20% more time; from ~34 seconds to now ~41 seconds. It also takes more time between notably audible steps in the fan curve; the first 2. Stock was ~4 and ~6 seconds, now it is ~7 and ~10 seconds. Last, but not least, the peak noise output is down a noticeable amount.
The sound is anecdotal, but I would not doubt that even that “minor” reduction of 5C for hottest core is enough to maintain a lower peak fan speed.
Considering there was a measurable increase in time between fan steps riding the 60W TDP, measured at 57.x watts in HWInfo, my assumption is that during normal use the fan won’t have to ramp up/down so jarringly as it comes in/out of turbo/boosting to get things done quickly.
Will be back with more info, data, and screenshots once the wife has had it for a few days and the PTM has had a chance to fully set.
It took a few weeks but the thermal performance ended up getting much worse. The fan was running constantly; much worse than in stock form.
After discussing with some folks over @ Overclock.net it seems the PTM worked as designed, and the issue lies with the heatsink of the laptop. Most likely culprit is inadequate mounting pressure of the heatsink for the PTM to function properly.
I have switched to a traditional TIM; Arctic MX-6. Performance seems to be similar to stock.
May end up with a laptop cooling pad to keep it silent.
After 3 thermal materials, and replacing pads w/ putty, didn’t help with fan noise…I went to the BIOS.
BIOS has the option to disable HT and/or E-cores. To my surprise, this also did nothing . Turning off HT and/or E-cores just allows whatever cores/threads are available to utilize all available power and clock higher.
FLEX ratio setting in BIOS also did nothing.
After the BIOS schooled me on Core Ultra behavior, I finally opted to “unlock” the power options in Windows.
The “battery saver” setting based on charge level, plugged in or not, actually did nothing to reduce power consumption.
I did find a couple settings to reduce clocks and power. All values below are from running CPU-Z Benchmark.
“Processor Energy Performance Preference Policy”, and “PEPPP” Class 1 Processors.
Setting both to 100% reduced avg total system power ~26%; 65.6W to 48.7W. Setting only PEPPP saw ~19% drop; to 53.4W.
Peak maximum total system power went from ~100W, to ~86W, to ~71W.
Average core clocks for all cores/threads from ~2,400 MHz, to ~2,300 MHz, to ~2,000 MHz.
Peak CPU package temperature went from ~101C, to ~99C, to ~88C.
Average CPU package temperature from ~87C, to ~80C, to ~74C.
Hopefully this translates to better fan behavior under normal use. Must wait and see what the wife says.
If not I’ll try altering boost behavior. If that fails, perhaps I’ll just cap the frequency.
Thank you so much @robert_melchert this is incredibly helpful! I can confirm that BIOS settings did not do anything for me, neither the battery saver setting in Windows. What helped me to get rid of the fan noise is “ThrottleStop”. It did not help with batter duration, though. I am looking forward to giving PEPPP a shot!
This has been driving me nuts. The wife has also been displeased as the new laptop was supposed to be quieter than the old one; not noticeably worse.
We replaced her aged HP Elitebook; 1st gen Ryzen 7. 4C/8T just wasn’t cutting it anymore and fan noise was not great. The irony is I opened that up the other day to apply new paste and now it’s silent almost all the time
Doing PowerShell commands and then guessing what settings to alter shouldn’t be necessary. For everything that FrameWork has done right, which is essentially everything, this is a big miss.
Just allow us to set PL1 & PL2 in the BIOS. The heatsink is clearly inadequate for the heat load/density of this CPU.
If they don’t want to do that, then they could offer energy saver/efficiency, balanced, and high performance for windows power plans. Easy, breezy 30, 45 and 60W.
After setting PEPPP as mentioned, it only took a couple hours for the wife to complain about fan noise again.
I checked power settings and found that everything went back to stock values despite no input from her; she also did not reboot. I went back changed things again thinking maybe I had hit reset to default accidentally.
It stuck for most of the day, longer than initially, but settings reverted again…IDK what’s doing it…
Core Ultra isn’t supported for all the intricate tuning of the CPU, so it doesn’t seem you can do any damage, but there are a couple options to limit performance. “Disable Turbo” and “Speed Shift EPP”.
“Disable Turbo” limits the Ultra 7 155H to ~1GHz for E-cores and ~2GHz for P-cores. Rather significant constraint, but definitely prevents overheating and fan noise. I just checked and the program was still running after PC awoke from sleep. It doesn’t have a “start with windows” option, so if you want that you’ll have to add it via Task Scheduler; not difficult.
Speed Shift EPP is configurable according to the ReadMe.Txt, but I haven’t had time to mess with it yet. That should allow tailoring how high the cores boost. Possibly a better solution than disabling turbo entirely which hamstrings performance quite a bit.
. Turning off HT and/or E-cores just allows whatever cores/threads are available to utilize all available power and clock higher.
