The Lenovo Y530 has been highly requested on the channel, so I’ve bought one to find
out how hot it gets and see if there’s any throttling. In this video I’ll perform some
detailed thermal testing and find out how overclocking and undervolting can help improve
performance and temperatures.
In my configuration here I’ve got the Intel i5-8300H CPU with Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics,
so expect different results with different hardware, the i7-8750H for instance would
probably be worse.
Thermal testing was completed with an ambient room temperature of 25 degrees Celsius, so
expect warmer temperatures in a warmer environment. Also keep in mind there are heatpipes shared
between processor and graphics, so a change in one component may affect the other.
Starting at the bottom of the graph, at idle the temperatures are a little warm, although
the fan was completely silent. The gaming tests were done with Watch Dogs 2, as I find
it to use a good combination of CPU and GPU. All gaming results were around the same, whether
or not the CPU was undervolted by -0.15v, graphics overclocked by 180MHz or fan maxed
out.
The stress tests were done by running Aida64 and the Heaven benchmark at the same time
in order to attempt to fully utilize both the processor and graphics. The results here
also didn’t change much, we’re pretty much thermal throttling non stop regardless
of fan speed or undervolting in these combined CPU and GPU workloads.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. We can see that when
the -0.15v undervolt is applied to the CPU or the 180MHz GPU overclock the clock speeds
rise up a fair bit, much more compared to raising the fan speed, but as you’ll hear
soon it was already running close to max speed at stock anyway, which is why there’s not
much of an improvement with max fans despite thermal throttling being the limitation. In
all of these combined CPU and GPU tests the CPU was never able to reach the full 3.9GHz
all core turbo speed, we got closest with the undervolt applied and fans at full speed
though.
These are the clock speeds I got while just running CPU only stress tests without any
GPU load. At stock it wasn’t quite possible to reach the 3.9GHz all core turbo speed of
the 8300H, however it was possible with the -0.15v undervolt, shown by the green bar.
These are the temperatures while running these same CPU only stress tests, no thermal throttling
here with the GPU at idle, but the CPU undervolt does improve the temperatures by 10 degrees
Celsius.
To demonstrate how this translates into performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks here,
with the older 7th gen i7-7700HQ just down the bottom for comparison, check the card
in the top right if you want to see a detailed comparison between these two CPUs. The single
core result with the 8300H doesn’t change as we only see power limit throttling under
multicore stress test, and this was only intermittent and can be reduced with the undervolt.
Here are the GPU only clock speeds while under a graphical only stress test, and with a 180MHz
core overclock applied on average there was a 140MHz improvement under this workload.
Here are the GPU only temperatures while running the same GPU only stress tests, and there’s
basically no difference with or without it overclocked, but still cooler compared to
the combined CPU and GPU load testing shown earlier.
So how does this performance boost actually translate into games? I’ve tested with the
exact same Windows, Nvidia and game updates installed, the only changes were the ones
listed here.
Far Cry 5 was tested using the built in benchmark, the average frame rates at ultra settings
were 6.4% better compared to stock speeds, and there was a 7% improvement to 1% low,
so we are able to get a decent performance boost from overclocking the graphics and undervolting
the CPU, though results will of course vary between game.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was in the low to mid 30s. With the stress tests running the center of the keyboard gets
to the low 50s, and then very similar results while gaming, with the middle right up the
back hitting the mid 50s, although that’s probably fine as you only need to touch there
to use the power button.
As for the fan noise produced by the laptop, I’ll let you have a listen to some of these
tests.
At idle it was completely silent, the fan wasn’t running at all. While running the
stress tests with the fan at stock it’s about average, a little louder while gaming,
and then just a little louder still with the fan maxed out.
While the gaming performance seems pretty good, it was a bit sad that even the i5 was
seeing thermal throttling in combined CPU and GPU workloads such as gaming, I can only
assume the i7-8750H model would have to throttle back further assuming that version uses the
same cooling solution, I can’t say for sure without testing though.
These differences in performance shown aren’t hard and fast rules, there are different factors
which will vary results, primarily the temperature of the room you’re running in, application
of thermal paste, and even the specific hardware which comes down to the silicon lottery. You
may not be able to undervolt or overclock your hardware the same as me, it depends on
the chip and its specific power requirements, so don’t just blindly copy my settings and
do some testing to find out where your stable point is for best results.
It may be possible to further improve temperatures by swapping the thermal paste, and as I own
this laptop that could be something I try in a future video, not sure if I’ll bother
though, I’m given I saw no change after doing this to my Aero 15x recently.
In any case, undervolting and raising the fan speed is much easier for anyone to do,
and as we've seen it did improve performance a little in this particular unit with no downside
once you’ve got a stable undervolt.
Let me know how much of a performance boost you’ve found by undervolting your hardware
and what you thought of the improvements here, and don’t forget to subscribe for the full
review of the Lenovo Y530 gaming laptop, as well as future tech videos like this one.