Laptop clocking and voltage

IInuyasha74

Honorable
Hello Everyone,

I decided today on what laptop I plan to buy for use while at school or work. I will buy this rather nice Acer laptop. V5-552G-8632
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314119

What I am curious about now is reclocking the system. I want to try overclocking just a little bit, and also try lowering voltage. I more want to lower the voltage a little if possible, but getting even a small boost in overclocking of 100-200Mhz would be nice.

I also want to do the same with the GPU.
It has:
AMD A8-5557M APU
AMD Radeon HD 8750M GPU.

I know chances are I won't get much out of doing either, but hey even lowering the voltage by 1% means I would probably have an extra 8 minutes of battery life so its worth playing with to me. I've never tried it on a laptop though, so anyone have any information I would love to hear.

Thanks for your input :)
 
Solution
Realistically, there's little you can do to overclock a laptop. There's just no effective cooling to keep it under control and the CPUs are scaled differently for lower power consumption. About the best you can do is find out the maximum quality CPU that the board can handle and have that installed. Be aware, if you do change it, never, ever lose track of the heat build up. I have a slightly older laptop I upgraded the CPU on and I'll tell ya, the heat it puts out now is crazy. I always make sure there's plenty of air space around the ports so it doesn't burn up. And the battery life is practically non-existant now as the new CPU draws about 3x harder.

Stephen Thurman

Honorable
Aug 15, 2013
3
0
10,520
Realistically, there's little you can do to overclock a laptop. There's just no effective cooling to keep it under control and the CPUs are scaled differently for lower power consumption. About the best you can do is find out the maximum quality CPU that the board can handle and have that installed. Be aware, if you do change it, never, ever lose track of the heat build up. I have a slightly older laptop I upgraded the CPU on and I'll tell ya, the heat it puts out now is crazy. I always make sure there's plenty of air space around the ports so it doesn't burn up. And the battery life is practically non-existant now as the new CPU draws about 3x harder.
 
Solution

IInuyasha74

Honorable
Well I understand that cooling could be an issue, but Acer sells a laptop exactly like this with the a10 model CPU in it. It lacks the GPU though so thats why I am not getting that one. I would never increase the voltage anyways, if I get it to boost a little it will be working off the default voltage, and if it fails then I am just undervolting and nothing else.

As for the GPU I actually found someone who has a similar model of one, it is just slightly different and they got it to overclock pretty well. I am not expecting miricles or anything, but my goal for overclocking at max would be to reach 2.4Ghz basic 3.4Ghz turbo and thats the absolute best I would hope for, I find it more likely I would only get to 2.2 and 3.2 but hey a little bit of a boost is still a boost.

Graphics I only want a similarly small boost. Same for undervolting.

What kinda upgrade did you do though? Sounds interesting.
 

Stephen Thurman

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Aug 15, 2013
3
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10,520
The upgrade I did was simple enough, I found out the maximum settings of the board, and found a CPU to match. Socket type, bus speed, etc. but with a higher clock speed. Things draws hard on the battery which is going to happen whenever you increase the clock of a CPU. No matter what, if you up the clock, there's going to be a similar increase in power usage, not the voltage, but the usage. Using a random set of numbers, if you are running 12v at 1 watt at a 1GHz speed, then bump the speed up to 1.1, then the wattage use will also increase to 1.1 without changing the voltage. This is oversimplified to the extreme, but I hope you get my point.

Chances are, you could easily get away with taking the other model's CPU and adding it to the one with the GPU you want, but you'll have to find the board and CPU specs to make sure. You'll still lose battery life and have to worry about heat, but you'll have a better system than stock.

As a side note, any alteration will void any warranty.:wahoo:
 

IInuyasha74

Honorable
LOl what kinda CPU did you switch to?
I never would have considered the idea of switching CPU's on a laptop before but its an interesting thing cause I have heard of it more than once recently I can see where and how it works, but too risky for my blood :p

Are you sure that is how the power works on the CPU's? I know that Wattage=Volts X Amps /Resistance, though the resistance is normally left out of the equation in computers. On my Desktop CPU I boosted the clock from 3.3 to 3.5 and the voltage didn't change but I have never been able to find the amps flowing to it. While I don't think the amperage will increase in equal proportion to the CPU clock increase, I could see where it is possible the amperage increases by some nominal amount which goes unnoticed in the Desktop world but could be noticeable in laptops. Though it is interesting because I thought the amperage always remained constant.

Owell I just play with it when it arrives and see how much I can play with its clock and volts and adjust them a little. I don't want to remove the CPU and solder on a new because it will literally be a new system and the increase in performance isn't worth all the work, cost, and risk to me but its still a fascinating idea.
 

Stephen Thurman

Honorable
Aug 15, 2013
3
0
10,520
I did say it was oversimplified. Ok, how's this for an example of clock/power consumption. Take a clock (an actual old fashioned grandfather clock) and mount a switch to the pendulum. Said switch is attached to a light using x volts at r watts every time the switch makes the connection. Now, if you play with the pendulum's swing time (the clockspeed of the CPU), it will hit the switch more often, thereby using more power as it will turn on the light more often. Again, oversimplified, but pretty much what happens.

Also, the majority of laptops today use a socket system exactly the same as a desktop. This is cheaper in the long run for the companies as they can make several different optional systems out of the same motherboard. In my case, it was a 800MHz bus dual core FCPGA that I put in place of the original single core. The model I had was never offered with the dual core, but the board could handle it. So in it went and now the little laptop runs better, just warmer and while sucking down battery life like it was free.

If you want to check your amps usage, a not perfect tool, but one that gives an idea of flow is the Kill-A-Watt metter you can buy and put between your PS and the wall. It will read your usage and while it might sometimes be a pretty small change that the meter can't always show, you could try switching your settings a few times and doing the same task each time to see what the numbers do.