I bought my TX-650 at CompUSA a couple weeks ago (installed an extra 1GB of RAM right off the bat) and have been quite happy with it.
I didn’t know anything about undervolting previously but I do find the fan kicking in at 60 degrees slightly annoying so I downloaded notebook hardware control and was pretty surprised to see that I could drop the CPU voltage at a 6 multiplier (600 MHZ) to .700V, the lowest setting, and it seems to be fine. The highest voltage at 12 multiplier is .812V which again is surprisingly low given what other laptops seem to tolerate.
Having said that, I really haven’t seen any difference at all in the temperature. It still hovers around 59-60 when running at 600 MHZ as a baseline (ie. surfing the web) after about 5 minutes, causing the fan to flip on and off.
Anyone else experiment with undervolting the TX? I’ be interested to hear about it.
In most cases, the CPU will probably fluctuate between the lowest and the highest speed settings. Therefore, those are the most important voltages to be concerned with. The ones in the middle don’t matter as much since the CPU is less likely to be in those modes.
Unfortunately, it seems that Sony designed the thermal limit to be around 60C which kicks the fan in regardless. It’s a similar problem to the early S series notebooks. There isn’t much you can do about it other than get used to it.
The undervolting will help in the long run though…since it’s likely to give you a few more minutes of battery life and (if you’re in a cold enough room) keep the fan from kicking in so soon.
I have my max (12 times multiplier) at .812V with no problems.
I can’t believe that lowering these voltages doesn’t really drop the CPU temp on these units. Other notebooks are seeing temp drops of 10 degrees or so.
FYI to the above poster, there is no 700MHZ or 7 times mulitplier for this processor as far as I can tell.
My Tx never gets hotter than about 68 degrees and that is only when the CPUis running constantly at 100% for several minutes—not exactly real-world. But then again it never gets cooler than about 58 after running for 5 minutes.
[quote author=“gr00vy0ne”]In most cases, the CPU will probably fluctuate between the lowest and the highest speed settings. Therefore, those are the most important voltages to be concerned with. The ones in the middle don’t matter as much since the CPU is less likely to be in those modes.
Unfortunately, it seems that Sony designed the thermal limit to be around 60C which kicks the fan in regardless. It’s a similar problem to the early S series notebooks. There isn’t much you can do about it other than get used to it.
The undervolting will help in the long run though…since it’s likely to give you a few more minutes of battery life and (if you’re in a cold enough room) keep the fan from kicking in so soon.
Hehe sometimes I need the fan and the heat when I’m in a conference in a Hotel. The Hotel air-con blows! It’s my only source of heat.. hehe
[quote author=“Archival”][quote author=“gr00vy0ne”]In most cases, the CPU will probably fluctuate between the lowest and the highest speed settings. Therefore, those are the most important voltages to be concerned with. The ones in the middle don’t matter as much since the CPU is less likely to be in those modes.
Unfortunately, it seems that Sony designed the thermal limit to be around 60C which kicks the fan in regardless. It’s a similar problem to the early S series notebooks. There isn’t much you can do about it other than get used to it.
The undervolting will help in the long run though…since it’s likely to give you a few more minutes of battery life and (if you’re in a cold enough room) keep the fan from kicking in so soon.
Hehe sometimes I need the fan and the heat when I’m in a conference in a Hotel. The Hotel air-con blows! It’s my only source of heat.. hehe
LOL, agreed. My wife likes to hold the hot chips in the car on the way home to keep her warm. Then she discovered the joys of using the T at uni on her lap to keep warm. :D
[quote author=“alfogator”]it’s fascinating how this forum has fared so well for years and now I feel the lack of moderation. Speak of bad apples…
Well, we like to keep it “self-moderated” here. People should know better and if they don’t then we take action. Generally speaking, I let most people say what they want as long as they don’t cross the fine line. Recently, we’ve had people who really push what is acceptable here and they’ve been warned.
I like to think that one of the special thing about this forum and its members are that they’re able to have mature intelligent conversations about topics and able to help others.
does the fan really that annoying? i can’t feel that that much even i have a sensitive ear. anyway, the speed of the cpu is always changing even you turn the power saving off, i can see cpu running as low as 15mhz when it is in highest power saving setting. it is a good thing for saving power, no? isnt thats why u buy a TX? a loptop which can actually use for a whole day without charging?
