T520 Processor upgrade - from i5-2450M to i7-2760QM

[149113]

Recently upgraded my older T520 (4239-CTO) from the stock i5-2450M to an i7-2760QM. Did the entire OS/apps install on the docking station and had no issues at all. Everything runs faster and was very stable. Monitored the temps and it was: 48C low, 56C average and peak of 71C. Did not run ADA or Prime yet. When I take the T520 off the dock and use it with the battery only... it will not perform a full boot. The laptop will shut off at the exact same point in the boot process - where the Win 10 pre-boot goes into the GUI. No BSOD, just a hard power down. Nothing in the logs to indicate what's happening. If I connect an AC power supply again, the problem goes away. So is there something that needs to be tweaked in the BIOS to get it to run on the battery without shutting down after doing a processor upgrade such as this? Based on what I read here and elsewhere the i7-2760QM seemed like a safe bet. Am I missing something here?

[TPFanatic]

Is the battery OEM or aftermarket? The battery may be defective.

[MikalE]

I performed the same upgrade to my T520 but experienced no trouble at all. It was if it came from Lenovo with the QM installed.

[149113]

I tried it with both an OEM and aftermarket battery. The aftermarket is brand new.

[149113]

I performed the same upgrade to my T520 but experienced no trouble at all. It was if it came from Lenovo with the QM installed.

So my original processor was the i5-2450M. Does it make a difference if I upgrade using an i7 QM processor type? Everything works great on AC. Just can't do a full boot on battery. I've seen this on machines where you try to OC the processor or memory but that's not possible with the T520 BIOS.

[Screamer]

So is there something that needs to be tweaked in the BIOS to get it to run on the battery without shutting down after doing a processor upgrade such as this? Based on what I read here and elsewhere the i7-2760QM seemed like a safe bet. Am I missing something here?

There shouldn't be, sounds like your problem is quite an odd one. You are definitely not missing anything for sure, do you have the latest BIOS flashed though? If the problem still persists, try disabling SpeedStep and CPU Power Management in the BIOS. See if that works.

So my original processor was the i5-2450M. Does it make a difference if I upgrade using an i7 QM processor type? Everything works great on AC. Just can't do a full boot on battery. I've seen this on machines where you try to OC the processor or memory but that's not possible with the T520 BIOS.

No difference (in terms of functionality and not performance). After all, they are of the same architecture.

[149113]

So is there something that needs to be tweaked in the BIOS to get it to run on the battery without shutting down after doing a processor upgrade such as this? Based on what I read here and elsewhere the i7-2760QM seemed like a safe bet. Am I missing something here?

There shouldn't be, sounds like your problem is quite an odd one. You are definitely not missing anything for sure, do you have the latest BIOS flashed though? If the problem still persists, try disabling SpeedStep and CPU Power Management in the BIOS. See if that works.

So my original processor was the i5-2450M. Does it make a difference if I upgrade using an i7 QM processor type? Everything works great on AC. Just can't do a full boot on battery. I've seen this on machines where you try to OC the processor or memory but that's not possible with the T520 BIOS.

No difference (in terms of functionality and not performance). After all, they are of the same architecture.

I had tried it initially with the 1.46 bios which I have been running since 2015, got the shutdowns and then upgraded to the 1.49 bios and the issue did not go away. Even reset the values to the defaults. I will try the SpeedStep and CPU PM tweaks.

I agree... this is an odd scenario. Should be something that just works as is, battery or AC. I do not think it's heat related. It seems more voltage related since it happens at the exact same point in the boot process.

[149113]

Good news to report... disabled both SpeedStep and the CPU PM in the BIOS and everything boots as normal on battery. Those are the only two changes made. Strange but I am not complaining.

Props to Screamer. Never would have thought disabling those would be a difference maker.

[axur-delmeria]

I'm starting to wonder if that quad-core is a lemon or something.

[149113]

I'm starting to wonder if that quad-core is a lemon or something.

I guess it's possible but it seems stable for now with those settings changed

[axur-delmeria]

I guess it's possible but it seems stable for now with those settings changed

That's the thing: those settings should be safe when enabled.

What's the CPU speed with Speedstep disabled?

[Screamer]

I'm starting to wonder if that quad-core is a lemon or something.

I am sort of getting the same feeling as you are, though I believe this shouldn't be happening.

With SpeedStep disabled, wouldn't the processor be always operating at its lowest clock multiplier?

I guess it's possible but it seems stable for now with those settings changed

May I suggest running Throttlestop to check if the Core i7-2760QM of yours is capable of changing its voltage? Then, maybe try using the Turbo Boost clock multipliers by increasing the clock multiplier if possible. This should reveal something about the mysterious problem that prevents your Core i7-2760QM from booting up with SpeedStep and CPU Power Management (C1E state) enabled.

[149113]

May I suggest running Throttlestop to check if the Core i7-2760QM of yours is capable of changing its voltage? Then, maybe try using the Turbo Boost clock multipliers by increasing the clock multiplier if possible. This should reveal something about the mysterious problem that prevents your Core i7-2760QM from booting up with SpeedStep and CPU Power Management (C1E state) enabled.

I downloaded the app. What is the process to test this? Also, just an update, I enabled the CPU PM setting and the laptop will boot without issue. So this narrows it down to SpeedStep. Enabled the laptop will not boot on battery. On AC boot is not an issue.

[MikalE]

I got a system error with this program because the .dll mfc120u.dll is missing from my computer.

[dr_st]

I got a system error with this program because the .dll mfc120u.dll is missing from my computer.

Probably need to download the correct Visual C++ runtime redistributable.

[Screamer]

I downloaded the app. What is the process to test this? Also, just an update, I enabled the CPU PM setting and the laptop will boot without issue. So this narrows it down to SpeedStep. Enabled the laptop will not boot on battery. On AC boot is not an issue.

Woops, my bad. I forgot about that, start up ThrottleStop and it should greet you with something similar to this or this. You should be mainly toying around with the 'Set Multiplier' setting on the left side of the window. First, check if the SpeedStep box is not grayed out (tick it, if it is not), as Throttlestop needs that to control your processor's clock speed. Then tick the 'Set Multiplier' box on the far left, and then click one of the < or > buttons that decreases and increases your multiplier respectively. You unfortunately can't control the voltage as far as I know, as anything after the Core 2 series had no way of controlling the voltage, till Haswell came with its 'fully-integrated-voltage-regulators' on the substrate itself.

Good to hear that your processor has no problems utilizing the C1E state/CPU Power Management option, at least SpeedStep is the only remaining problem to have a look at.

I got a system error with this program because the .dll mfc120u.dll is missing from my computer.

Are you using Throttlestop 8.60? That version requires Visual C++ redistributable packages for Visual Studio 2013; could I suggest installing Throttlestop 8.50 instead? It doesn't require the redistributable package and is somehow able to run under Windows 2000 SP4.

[MikalE]

I downloaded and installed the package from 2017. I would think that would include everything written up to 2017, correct? Or must I pick the year-specific version?

Throttlestop still tells me that .dll is missing. I could try TS V8.5 and see what happens.


EDIT:

I downloaded and installed the 2013 version and all updates and it is still missing that .dll. However, TS V8.5 did install correctly and runs.

Where is that .dll supposed to be located?

[Screamer]

Probably, I am not very well-versed with redistributables that Microsoft tends to release. I heard that it might sometimes not be a cumulative package to contain the other previous versions, but that is just my guess.

Somewhere in windows/system32 or windows/SysWOW64 or windows/Microsoft.NET is my guess. Thing is, did you download the 32-bit redistributable or the 64-bit redistributable? Throttlestop is 32-bit and needs the 32-bit redistributable, I suspect that it does not use the 64-bit redistributable.

[MikalE]

That would explain a lot. I downloaded the 64 bit version.

[MikalE]

32 bit version is working fine now.

[149113]

Woops, my bad. I forgot about that, start up ThrottleStop and it should greet you with something similar to this or this. You should be mainly toying around with the 'Set Multiplier' setting on the left side of the window. First, check if the SpeedStep box is not grayed out (tick it, if it is not), as Throttlestop needs that to control your processor's clock speed. Then tick the 'Set Multiplier' box on the far left, and then click one of the < or > buttons that decreases and increases your multiplier respectively. You unfortunately can't control the voltage as far as I know, as anything after the Core 2 series had no way of controlling the voltage, till Haswell came with its 'fully-integrated-voltage-regulators' on the substrate itself.

Here are my findings... All tests were done on AC power on the dock with SpeedStep disabled. The base setting for the multiplier is 24x100. The 24 part moves around a little in the FID column but the 100 stays steady. I reduce the multiplier down the Mhz drops accordingly and predictably (multiplier x 100). If I increase the number beyond 24 there is no change to the Mhz. Here are the screen shots:

[MikalE]

I don't know if this helps you or not, but my multiplier was set at 34 when I opened the program, though the machine was idling at 800 Mhz with a multiplier of '8' shown in the upper right large box at the top of the GUI.

When I opened CPU-Z and stressed tested and benched the processor the speed increased dramatically to 3.4 Ghz. So apparently Turbo Boost and the rest of the processor is working as designed. Under stress processor speed increases, but for surfing the internet or just having it turned on, it's at idle at 800 Mhz. Like Pentium III speeds.

[Screamer]

Here are my findings... All tests were done on AC power on the dock with SpeedStep disabled. The base setting for the multiplier is 24x100. The 24 part moves around a little in the FID column but the 100 stays steady. I reduce the multiplier down the Mhz drops accordingly and predictably (multiplier x 100). If I increase the number beyond 24 there is no change to the Mhz. Here are the screen shots:

The multiplier or FID fluctuating is normal, that is just some very simple form of power management going on. Looks good to me, though. The strange part is that your processor is completely fine, but your T520 doesn't seem so. Reason being that Throttlestop is able to enable SpeedStep and use it without problems, but if the BIOS enables it instead, it does not work? Also, untick the 'Disable Turbo' box, so you can use Turbo Boost and then run a few processor-intensive progams to check if this is seriously a problem related to your T520. Or the processor, though I hope it is not.

Turbo Boost should be enabled, once you have set the multiplier to 25 and unticked 'Disable Turbo'. By the way, Turbo Boost's speed increases are dependent on your processor load. Say, if your processor is fully using 4 or 3 cores, it will max out at 3.3GHz. On 2 cores, it maxes out at 3.4GHz. On 1 core, 3.5GHz. You don't need to set the multiplier to 33/34/35, if you want to enable Turbo Boost. I recall that Throttlestop will always enable it, as long as the multiplier is 1+ above from its stock multiplier value.

[149113]

The multiplier or FID fluctuating is normal, that is just some very simple form of power management going on. Looks good to me, though. The strange part is that your processor is completely fine, but your T520 doesn't seem so. Reason being that Throttlestop is able to enable SpeedStep and use it without problems, but if the BIOS enables it instead, it does not work? Also, untick the 'Disable Turbo' box, so you can use Turbo Boost and then run a few processor-intensive progams to check if this is seriously a problem related to your T520. Or the processor, though I hope it is not.

Turbo Boost should be enabled, once you have set the multiplier to 25 and unticked 'Disable Turbo'. By the way, Turbo Boost's speed increases are dependent on your processor load. Say, if your processor is fully using 4 or 3 cores, it will max out at 3.3GHz. On 2 cores, it maxes out at 3.4GHz. On 1 core, 3.5GHz. You don't need to set the multiplier to 33/34/35, if you want to enable Turbo Boost. I recall that Throttlestop will always enable it, as long as the multiplier is 1+ above from its stock multiplier value.

Multiplier at 35


Hardware Monitor


No issues with the SpeedStep on AC power either through the doc or direct. The images above are all on AC. The laptop will not boot on battery along with SpeedStep enabled.

[Screamer]

By the looks of it, the processor is alright. I have a feeling that your T520 is at fault for SpeedStep's inability to function on battery power. I don't think I could help with the BIOS settings, since you said it did not budge even when the BIOS' default factory settings were applied.

[149113]

By the looks of it, the processor is alright. I have a feeling that your T520 is at fault for SpeedStep's inability to function on battery power. I don't think I could help with the BIOS settings, since you said it did not budge even when the BIOS' default factory settings were applied.

The T520 will be handed off to my nephew and I will just instruct him to not mess with the BIOS settings or enable SpeedStep. It was a great laptop for me for almost 6 years. It has 300k air miles and never once broke down when I needed it. I replaced the keyboard, upgraded the processor and replaced the battery and it's like new again. It's the main reason I stuck with Lenovo and upgraded to the T580 in July.