Cooling mods [hardware] - Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) Q&A, Help & Troubl

Hi all!
I have been noticing that the tablet can get fairly hot where the CPU is, and under load it can reach fairly high temperatures - CPU prime got it up to over 90°C for me to the extent that I had to shut it down.
To be honest, it doesn't really impede normal usage, and normally it seems to reach slightly over 70°C under higher workloads. I suppose that's not unheard of for ARM devices and might not actually count as overheating. But after seeing this video on the Teclast X98 Pro and some other info on modding in tablets, I was still wondering if there'd be a way to improve the cooling on the Note 10.1 2014 to get lower average temperatures - potentially, that should also lead to more stable and fluid running under high loads, as there won't be any need for throttling, and it might also be good for the components to keep temps lower.
So I guess my main question is if anyone has undertaken anything of this sort for this or comparable tablets? @thebadwrench has recently posted a very useful guide about swapping the battery with a rare shot of the inside of the tablet: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=66124495&postcount=13
I was thinking what the most sensible way could be to improve cooling of the CPU, which should be the small shielded unit in the lower centre of the second picture. People seem to have had good results with copper, but it seems fairly crowded in there and it might be hard to get it installed without shortening anything.
Aside of the more practical question, I'd also be interested in the typical temperature that other people's tablet reaches and if you have any better apps than CPU prime to produce high CPU load - possibly one that shows CPU temperature at the same time as well? Currently, I'm having another app running to check CPU temp (CPU prime for some reason only shows the battery temp).
Looking forward to everyone's answers!
PS: @mods Not sure if this is the right section of the forum, feel free to move if you feel it fits better elsewhere.

AFAIK Microsoft intended to fit an innovative kind of heat sink into their Lumia 950 and finally produced a standard design w/o particular cooling devices due to difficulties.
I have no clue how anything could be done. Except replacing the back cover with something thicker, offering room for heatsinks, fans, peltier elements or such.
But the Note should at least have thermal throttling and emergency shutdown features, like all current phones, which will throttle within the first half minute under full load.

franzli said:
Hi all!
I have been noticing that the tablet can get fairly hot where the CPU is, and under load it can reach fairly high temperatures - CPU prime got it up to over 90°C for me to the extent that I had to shut it down.
To be honest, it doesn't really impede normal usage, and normally it seems to reach slightly over 70°C under higher workloads. I suppose that's not unheard of for ARM devices and might not actually count as overheating. But after seeing this video on the Teclast X98 Pro and some other info on modding in tablets, I was still wondering if there'd be a way to improve the cooling on the Note 10.1 2014 to get lower average temperatures - potentially, that should also lead to more stable and fluid running under high loads, as there won't be any need for throttling, and it might also be good for the components to keep temps lower.
So I guess my main question is if anyone has undertaken anything of this sort for this or comparable tablets? @thebadwrench has recently posted a very useful guide about swapping the battery with a rare shot of the inside of the tablet: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=66124495&postcount=13
I was thinking what the most sensible way could be to improve cooling of the CPU, which should be the small shielded unit in the lower centre of the second picture. People seem to have had good results with copper, but it seems fairly crowded in there and it might be hard to get it installed without shortening anything.
Aside of the more practical question, I'd also be interested in the typical temperature that other people's tablet reaches and if you have any better apps than CPU prime to produce high CPU load - possibly one that shows CPU temperature at the same time as well? Currently, I'm having another app running to check CPU temp (CPU prime for some reason only shows the battery temp).
Looking forward to everyone's answers!
PS: @mods Not sure if this is the right section of the forum, feel free to move if you feel it fits better elsewhere.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Similar temperatures are note uncommon in mine. One suggestion is to use a small desktop fan and aim it down at the tablet when your demanding alot from the cpu. I sometimes do that with mine and it actually brings the temperature down about 15 degrees. Its not a mod, but it does work

Thanks for your answers so far!
@lecorbusier yes, I suspect it has throttling, but in the interest of better running it would be nice to avoid throttling when possible. I'm not sure about the effect on battery life - throttling might be good in that a reduced frequency might need less energy, but running hot in the first place is probably bad for battery life.
In fact, part of my problem might stem from either the ROM or some apps I am running - Squid on temasek's CM13. Maybe I just never noticed this before, or didn't use squid so often, but I've noticed that the last couple of days CPU gets up to over 70°C at times with just some writing in squid. Not sure if this is normal, will probably post it in the CM13 thread. But my general idea/wish to improve cooling still stands independently of that.
Similar temperatures are note uncommon in mine. One suggestion is to use a small desktop fan and aim it down at the tablet when your demanding alot from the cpu. I sometimes do that with mine and it actually brings the temperature down about 15 degrees. Its not a mod, but it does work
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That sounds like an effective method (and I guess in a way one might call it a mod ). I'm thinking about something more portable, and hence passive though.
I will probably try opening up and having a look at the current cooling mechanism to see if adding a copper shim or a better silicone heat sink etc. might help things. Another consideration would be a modded case that contains some metal instead of plastic on the back side. That might help to take away some of the heat even though the plastic back of the device itself probably remains a poor heat conductor. Might be a complicated mod, but I'll see if I can come up with a way to do that. If/when I manage to get something done, or some new thoughts, I will advise here.
Any further input of course still very welcome!

Metal will disturb the various antennas.
A back cover replacement containing one or two fans, adding 1 to 2cms of thickness, and draining the battery with the fans while looking clumsy, thats the "best" solution I could imagine.
Or a back cover replacement containing one or two copper plates, cut and arranged in a way that the antennas aren't too handicapped. Probably you have to remove the various EMI shields to be able to establish direct contact between the chipset and the plates. That is, if the chips don't have contact with the shield plates.
I think this will be something never been done before, but probably after.
Like the battery mod for phones, where you solder one battery together with a second one and cut a hole in the back cover, that the now double-thick battery may fit. That's already been done.

Good point about the antennae, I hadn't thought about that! That also makes sense of the lack of metal cases (facepalm). Might still try modding a case with some metal in some spots at some points, but good to keep in mind how this might impact wifi and bluetooth.
My plan was to see if there'd be a chance to fit some slim copper plates in strategic position on top of the CPU inside the normal case. I'll have to open it up and see how much, if any, space there is - but will probably try this first on a Galaxy Tab S 8.4 that I rely on less for productivity (and that does actually get way to hot, to the point of self-shutdown). Whenever I find the time that is...
Will report when I get around to doing anything on the Note (and might open a topic at the Tab S forum in case I do try a mod there first).

I added a copper shim for cooling to my Galaxy Tab S (will put a more detailed post on that forum when I find some time), which seems to have helped to control temperatures somewhat better. I had two odd crashes, but had some before I did the mod, so am relatively confident that's a problem of the ROM rather than my mod.
Will probably try it on my Note as well soon and report here for anyone who might be interested.

Have modded my Note now, and am planning to post a more detailed description some time (won't have time before next month though). It had clearly improved temperatures and stability of my Tab S, but I'm not sure how much of a difference it made on the Note 10.1 2014 because I didn't measure the baseline temperatures before the mod right (used CPU Prime benchmark which seems to have general stability issues on the temasek ROM I'm using).
Currently, I have idle temperatures of around 30C, under normal use it would get to 40-50C, and under stress (app StabilityTest) it goes up to around 89/90C after 5min and to 92/93C after 10min.
I'd be quite interested in what temperatures other people get on their devices without any modification?

franzli said:
Have modded my Note now, and am planning to post a more detailed description some time (won't have time before next month though). It had clearly improved temperatures and stability of my Tab S, but I'm not sure how much of a difference it made on the Note 10.1 2014 because I didn't measure the baseline temperatures before the mod right (used CPU Prime benchmark which seems to have general stability issues on the temasek ROM I'm using).
Currently, I have idle temperatures of around 30C, under normal use it would get to 40-50C, and under stress (app StabilityTest) it goes up to around 89/90C after 5min and to 92/93C after 10min.
I'd be quite interested in what temperatures other people get on their devices without any modification?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the update. I did some baseline checks for you, using the same StabilityTest app for consistancy purposes. I am also on temaseks build, cm13 more specifically. I run temaseks 12.1 build just as often as the cm13, so I will run the tests there as well. I revert back to my stock rooted kitkat rom about 1 or 2 days per week so I'll check the temps on that ROM as well.
So, at idle I'm a little warmer than you, hovering between 37C and 40C. Under normal use (like web browsing) I'm between 50C and no higher than 57C. Under stress (again, using same app) I was at 90C at 5 minutes and 91C after 10 minutes. So slightly warmer on low end, nearly identical on the big end. I have the samsung flip cover thats specifically made to fit the 2014 edition on mine, so that could account for my slightly warmer temps. Its worth noting that when gaming on a VERY cpu demanding game, I never reach anything above 78C. Its probably one of the top 10 most cpu demanding games on play store and BY FAR the most I ever demand from my CPU, consuming a whooping 1.5-2Gb of RAM at times.
I'll check the numbers on my other 2 normally used ROMs here in the next few hours and I'll post those results too :good:
On a side note, my galaxy s6 phone (completely stock, near new) averages nearly indentical cpu temps and after researching the matter on it, I found that those temps (on the s6) are what others are getting as well. So it seems that, generally speaking, samsungs might just run with warmer temperatures. I did see somewhere that 100C is kinda the 'YIKES!' point for them and that they start clocking down around that temp to prevent permanent damage

franzli said:
I'd be quite interested in what temperatures other people get on their devices without any modification?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, I've done some testing with a few different ROMs and I think you might be as susprised with the results as I am. First of all I need to correct myself in my last post. The initial testing I did was on temaseks unofficial CM12.1 build, not on the CM13 build. I have now tested on temaseks cm 12.1 and cm13 builds, my stock rooted & debloated 4.4.2 ROM and an old nandroid backup I have of hyperdrives 4.4.2 ROM. Heres what I found...
Temaseks CM13 build ran the hottest and was by far the most stressful on the processors and therefore ran the hottest. It consistantly kept the CPU clocked at near max (even when set to "ondemand"), whether needed or not (with no background process running) and would only reduce power when forced via CPU governor or was at the safety threshold for temperature, which I can now comfortably say is about 95C. Tablet was slightly warm to the touch at idle with a temperature of between 50C & 55C. Under moderate load temperature jumped very raidly to the mid 80C range and then would stay there pretty steadily. Under heavy load, CPU temp quickly peaked at 94C where while watching the CPU output, it was obvious the CPUs were going in & out of protection mode as they would drop to 1600MHz, then peak at 1900MHz, 1600MHz, 1900MHz & repeat this. I didnt let this go on for more than about 2 min before shutting down and allowing tablet to cool.
Next, I repeated tests on both touchwiz based kitkat ROMs I have backups for. 1 of them is stock, rooted, debloated and un"tweaked". The other is stock, rooted, debloated and tweaked. Both ran MUCH cooler, peaking at 80C & 82C. These were ocassional spikes and actually averaged around 75C when under heavy load. Now comes the good news...
I have identified a major contributor of excessive CPU temps. When testing on the touchwiz ROMs and observing CPU clocking in relation to CPU temps, I found that the governors are set lower in these touchwiz ROMs. They were a steady 1300MHz with the occasional 1600MHz spike. They averaged 55C to 63C under moderate load and when under heavy load never reached more than 82C.
So, I am now back on my long time daily driver, temaseks cm12. 1 build and I'm ditching the CM13 build entirely. At least for now. I have set my CPU governors down to 1300MHz and with heavy load for nearly 30 minutes (gaming) my CPU peaked at 85C. So my findings were that CM ROM has overclocked the CPUs excessively. They are set to 1900MHz, which has become obvious to me brings them right up to their temperature safety threshold, 95C. It seems Samsung clocked them at 1300MHz and allowed for occasional spikes above this point, keeping them at a maxium & slightly more reasonable 85C a full 10C cooler than their maximum safe operating temp.
I never expected I'd stumble on not only a source, but also that I've been utilizing the solution for months. I should add that governing the CPU lower has had absolutely no effect on performance. I regularly shut down 1 or 2 CPU cores as it is. I found that the tablet will run perfectly under normal use with only 2 cores. This reduces temperature and increases battery life. Sluthing can be so much fun sometimes, it was right in front of my face I just never put 2 & 2 together lol :good:

Thanks for your detailed comparison, that's very helpful indeed! In light of that, I think my mod has indeed given some improvement, as I don't reach over 90°C on CM13 until after 5-10 min, albeit with some throttling to 1700MHz after about 10min.
I've always had the impression that the current CM13 builds are a bit more CPU hungry and run warmer (possibly that triggered my thinking about a cooling mod in the first place), so it's very interesting to see that backed up experimentally! Interestingly, I've had mixed experiences with CM13, almost like two "modes" of running - sometimes, it runs pretty warm, roughly like you describe, but at other times it runs fairly normally around 30-40°C without problems. Haven't really figured out what the problem is and am having occasional instabilities/reboots as well, so I might actually also return to CM12.1 for the moment too.
While the higher CPU clocks (although 1.9GHz is the specified clock speed, but I get what you mean) may explain the heat and slightly better results in Geekbench I've been having with CM13, it's a bit odd that I still get the good result when the ROM is in the cool "mode" (it goes up to high 60s, mid 70s during Geekbench if memory serves well).
How do you set your governors? And have you been able to get the cores to switch on and off automatically as they do on some other devices? Or is this not implemented in the kernel or something?

franzli said:
Thanks for your detailed comparison, that's very helpful indeed! In light of that, I think my mod has indeed given some improvement, as I don't reach over 90°C on CM13 until after 5-10 min, albeit with some throttling to 1700MHz after about 10min.
I've always had the impression that the current CM13 builds are a bit more CPU hungry and run warmer (possibly that triggered my thinking about a cooling mod in the first place), so it's very interesting to see that backed up experimentally! Interestingly, I've had mixed experiences with CM13, almost like two "modes" of running - sometimes, it runs pretty warm, roughly like you describe, but at other times it runs fairly normally around 30-40°C without problems. Haven't really figured out what the problem is and am having occasional instabilities/reboots as well, so I might actually also return to CM12.1 for the moment too.
While the higher CPU clocks (although 1.9GHz is the specified clock speed, but I get what you mean) may explain the heat and slightly better results in Geekbench I've been having with CM13, it's a bit odd that I still get the good result when the ROM is in the cool "mode" (it goes up to high 60s, mid 70s during Geekbench if memory serves well).
How do you set your governors? And have you been able to get the cores to switch on and off automatically as they do on some other devices? Or is this not implemented in the kernel or something?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your welcome. I too noticed that on CM13 at times it seems to run alot cooler than at other times. Although the only time I ever see go as low as 30C is when its been asleep for awhile and then I turn the screen on (CM12 & 13). As soon as it wakes up it'll go to mid-high 40C to mid 50C (on CM12) or it'll go straight to high 50C to low 60C (CM13). CM13 definitely ramped up alot quicker when testing, almost like its either min or max CPU power. I like temaseks CM13 build, but for me there wasnt much improvement over the CM12 build. Plus there is a few minor bugs as well as the slight negative effect on battery life I noticed. Plus I was noticing that there was a bit of a touchy spot in the top right corner of my screen that when swiped from the outside in, it sometimes crashed my tablet. I wasn't sure if it was a fault in my tablets hardware or something software related and I'm still not 100% positive which it may be, but since I began taking notice of when it was happening, its only ever happened on CM13. Thats also part of the reason I think I'm going to hold off on using the CM13 build for awhile. CM12 build is overall just more to my liking I guess... more to my tablets liking as well.
After posting yesterday I looked up some specs on Samsungs website and you are 100% correct about it being 1.9GHz. This is the spec copy/pasted off their website... Exynos® 5 Octa (1.9GHz Quadcore + 1.3 GHz Quadcore). The second part stands out because 1.3GHz is definitely where the stock rom was trying to maintain its CPU frequency when under heavy load. Not once did it exceed 1.6GHz. Whereas both CM builds ramped up to the full 1.9GHz very quickly. So the difference is going to be HOW the processor steps up in frequency as opposed to what the frequency actually is. Thats where my knowledge on that kinda stuff ends. I'm a "let's figure out what failed and why" or "lets figure out how it works" type of person. Thats why I work on cars for a living. I leave the development and detailed technical mumbo jumbo to the devs and engineers. Troubleshooting methods are much the same for just about everything though, hince how I came to my conclusion yesterday. Just for grins I may load up PAC ROMs CM12 build, see how it does. too...
As for how I set my governor, it depends on what I doing at the time. I never fine tune anything, like I said, that's outside my realm of knowledge. What I do set is the governor to either interactive or ondemand. Interactive more for casual use and ondemand more for gaming. I also manually shut down CPU cores depending on my demand from my CPU. Right now, for instance, I'm running stricly on cores 0 & 2 with cores 1 & 3 turned off. My CPU max clocking frequency is set to 1.3GHz but its consistantly hovering at 650MHz, or .65GHz. Thats all I ever mess with and I do so mainly for battery life. It makes a noticeable difference (both charging and discharging) if I adjust those 3 things according to my use. And no, my cores don't ever switch on or off automatically. I do vaguely recall seeing them do that on a different ROM, but I don't remember what ROM that was... it was at least a year ago that I saw that. I'm sure that is something that is kernel related, but I'm just guessing on that one.
What exactly did you mod? Any pictures?

thebadwrench said:
Your welcome. I too noticed that on CM13 at times it seems to run alot cooler than at other times. Although the only time I ever see go as low as 30C is when its been asleep for awhile and then I turn the screen on (CM12 & 13). As soon as it wakes up it'll go to mid-high 40C to mid 50C (on CM12) or it'll go straight to high 50C to low 60C (CM13). CM13 definitely ramped up alot quicker when testing, almost like its either min or max CPU power. I like temaseks CM13 build, but for me there wasnt much improvement over the CM12 build. Plus there is a few minor bugs as well as the slight negative effect on battery life I noticed. Plus I was noticing that there was a bit of a touchy spot in the top right corner of my screen that when swiped from the outside in, it sometimes crashed my tablet. I wasn't sure if it was a fault in my tablets hardware or something software related and I'm still not 100% positive which it may be, but since I began taking notice of when it was happening, its only ever happened on CM13. Thats also part of the reason I think I'm going to hold off on using the CM13 build for awhile. CM12 build is overall just more to my liking I guess... more to my tablets liking as well.
After posting yesterday I looked up some specs on Samsungs website and you are 100% correct about it being 1.9GHz. This is the spec copy/pasted off their website... Exynos® 5 Octa (1.9GHz Quadcore + 1.3 GHz Quadcore). The second part stands out because 1.3GHz is definitely where the stock rom was trying to maintain its CPU frequency when under heavy load. Not once did it exceed 1.6GHz. Whereas both CM builds ramped up to the full 1.9GHz very quickly. So the difference is going to be HOW the processor steps up in frequency as opposed to what the frequency actually is. Thats where my knowledge on that kinda stuff ends. I'm a "let's figure out what failed and why" or "lets figure out how it works" type of person. Thats why I work on cars for a living. I leave the development and detailed technical mumbo jumbo to the devs and engineers. Troubleshooting methods are much the same for just about everything though, hince how I came to my conclusion yesterday. Just for grins I may load up PAC ROMs CM12 build, see how it does. too...
As for how I set my governor, it depends on what I doing at the time. I never fine tune anything, like I said, that's outside my realm of knowledge. What I do set is the governor to either interactive or ondemand. Interactive more for casual use and ondemand more for gaming. I also manually shut down CPU cores depending on my demand from my CPU. Right now, for instance, I'm running stricly on cores 0 & 2 with cores 1 & 3 turned off. My CPU max clocking frequency is set to 1.3GHz but its consistantly hovering at 650MHz, or .65GHz. Thats all I ever mess with and I do so mainly for battery life. It makes a noticeable difference (both charging and discharging) if I adjust those 3 things according to my use. And no, my cores don't ever switch on or off automatically. I do vaguely recall seeing them do that on a different ROM, but I don't remember what ROM that was... it was at least a year ago that I saw that. I'm sure that is something that is kernel related, but I'm just guessing on that one.
What exactly did you mod? Any pictures?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi thebadwrench,
Which app did you use to do all this modifications on cm13 stock kernel? Especially deactivating cores is very interesting. Can you see all eight cores? I'm using 3C toolbox and it shows it only as quad core and on voltage page I have two cpu cluster.(one clocked till 650mhz and the other till 1900mhz)
Under CM13 the cpu behavior is totally different as on stock Samsung roms because the small cores are more or less unused and clocked at max. only at 650mhz, Lol!
I watch also much more kernel warnings in ksmg and high temperatures for a while now on CM13.
Also battery runtimes are only 3,5-5h unlike 7-8h under cm12.1!
Sometimes the cpu is also locked at max. speed(1,9ghz), mostly after looking youtube videos or other heavy load situations. The only way to get back "normal" behavior is to reboot the device.
I see also only two used cpu states all the time it jumps between 250 and 1900mhz, the most steps in between are unused.
We can only hope a real kernel developer can have a look on this or we can cherry pick some usefull tweaks from another device with the same cpu chipset.

ollimi1 said:
Hi thebadwrench,
Which app did you use to do all this modifications on cm13 stock kernel? Especially deactivating cores is very interesting. Can you see all eight cores? I'm using 3C toolbox and it shows it only as quad core and on voltage page I have two cpu cluster.(one clocked till 650mhz and the other till 1900mhz)
Under CM13 the cpu behavior is totally different as on stock Samsung roms because the small cores are more or less unused and clocked at max. only at 650mhz, Lol!
I watch also much more kernel warnings in ksmg and high temperatures for a while now on CM13.
Also battery runtimes are only 3,5-5h unlike 7-8h under cm12.1!
Sometimes the cpu is also locked at max. speed(1,9ghz), mostly after looking youtube videos or other heavy load situations. The only way to get back "normal" behavior is to reboot the device.
I see also only two used cpu states all the time it jumps between 250 and 1900mhz, the most steps in between are unused.
We can only hope a real kernel developer can have a look on this or we can cherry pick some usefull tweaks from another device with the same cpu chipset.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use kernel adiutor https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.grarak.kerneladiutor It also shows 4 cores but shutting them down is just a single click. In the attached screenshot you can see that I've manually unchecked cores 1 & 2 and on the CPU display (turned on via developer options) you can see that those cores are indeed shut down and not operating. I like the app's widget, allows you to set up as many different profiles as you want and then change between the different profiles on the widget.

thebadwrench said:
I use kernel adiutor https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.grarak.kerneladiutor It also shows 4 cores but shutting them down is just a single click. In the attached screenshot you can see that I've manually unchecked cores 1 & 2 and on the CPU display (turned on via developer options) you can see that those cores are indeed shut down and not operating. I like the app's widget, allows you to set up as many different profiles as you want and then change between the different profiles on the widget.
View attachment 3732472
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, good news!
I am positive surprised that kernel Adiutor is working, seems we have build-in UCI, which is needed, nice! Using KA on my OP2 since a long time but there is no custom kernel for p600 cm13 roms so I have not tried!
Will try it now!:good:
Thanks!!

thebadwrench said:
What exactly did you mod? Any pictures?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I replaced the silicone heat pad on the CPU with a copper shim and thermal compound, added some small silicone pads around other components (all under the heat shields) and added a .5mm silicone heat pad on top of the main heat shield to enhance contact with the back plate. I do have some pictures, but I want to provide a proper write-up and currently don't have much time as I'm moving. Will hopefully find a chance to give a more detailed write-up in May - sorry for the delay, but full report is forthcoming!
As for the CM13 issues, @joshndroid apparently implemented some changes to it in the last build, so I might check that out, although I agree that CM12.1 is probably still the safer bet for a stable daily driver.

franzli said:
Thanks for your detailed comparison, that's very helpful indeed! In light of that, I think my mod has indeed given some improvement, as I don't reach over 90°C on CM13 until after 5-10 min, albeit with some throttling to 1700MHz after about 10min.
I've always had the impression that the current CM13 builds are a bit more CPU hungry and run warmer (possibly that triggered my thinking about a cooling mod in the first place), so it's very interesting to see that backed up experimentally! Interestingly, I've had mixed experiences with CM13, almost like two "modes" of running - sometimes, it runs pretty warm, roughly like you describe, but at other times it runs fairly normally around 30-40°C without problems. Haven't really figured out what the problem is and am having occasional instabilities/reboots as well, so I might actually also return to CM12.1 for the moment too.
While the higher CPU clocks (although 1.9GHz is the specified clock speed, but I get what you mean) may explain the heat and slightly better results in Geekbench I've been having with CM13, it's a bit odd that I still get the good result when the ROM is in the cool "mode" (it goes up to high 60s, mid 70s during Geekbench if memory serves well).
How do you set your governors? And have you been able to get the cores to switch on and off automatically as they do on some other devices? Or is this not implemented in the kernel or something?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Franzli,
The kernel seems odd to me!
The small A7 cluster is virtually unused and clocked only to 650MHz @ 1200ma !! Normal is 1.3GHz @ 1200ma for the small A7 cluster on 5420! Also a lot of warnings and errors in ksmg!
No idea whether the A7 ever used or permanently in idle mode, Lol!
Also all 4 big a15 cores are always online, what means no hotplug driver available!
I don't know if we will ever see a good kernel for CM13 because of the missing sources.
Although the kernel is running and mostly stable it is far from "good"!
Power consumption is almost doubled, problems with overheating and sometimes cpu is locked at max. speed and the only way to solve it is a reboot.
I don't remember the cm12.1 kernel but he was definately better in terms of battery runtimes and reliability.
BTW, I'll also mod the device cooling using bigger copper sheets instead of the perforated aluminum sheets, thermal-pads and thermal-grease when I start changing my battery and usb jack, what is definately neccessary in my case!
Maybe I will buy one of the small heatpipes used in S7 or so when I find them somewhere.
It is not difficult to adjust it if needed, so that it can replace the heatspreader.
Mabye it is needed to isolate the heatpipe from the mainboard but nothing what a piece of kapton tape not can do.

franzli said:
Hi all!
[...] But after seeing this video on the Teclast X98 Pro and some other info on modding in tablets, I was still wondering if there'd be a way to improve the cooling on the Note 10.1 2014 to get lower average temperatures [...]
So I guess my main question is if anyone has undertaken anything of this sort for this or comparable tablets? [...]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hallo there
Well I just did the job. I have also made a short manual and would like to share it with you. But first some things about me and my tablet.
I bought a used galaxy note 10.1 2014 edition SM-P600 couple months ago. I was really disappointed about the device performance. Switching from stock android 5.1 to [ROM][7.1.2]Resurrection Remix N for SM-P600 (n1awifi) [5.8.5][UNOFFICIAL][NIGHTLY] did some improvements in performance. But since I am a very heavy web surfer I was still not satisfied with the performance. I have also tried [P600][Touchwiz] Marshmallow Rom 20170622 and went back to RR because I can play around with the CPU governors and all that deathy audiutor stuff. Between very nice work Exynos Team and all the other developers...
Soon I realized that the SM-P600 becomes fairly hot in the backside. I took a look at the ifixit pictures. There was no other way finding good resolution pictures of the inside.
I ended up installing cool tool app. Well is there any other good app for monitoring temps, clock and load in overly?
Well so I added frequency, load, battery temp and cpu temp. You need to add cpu temp manually. I guess it is Label ->
custom label -> enable- Then you have to go fine tuning -> custom label -> path:/sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp. leace everything as it is. regex is (\d+)\d{3} and add postfix °C and prefix cpu:
.
So I went along and analysed heat and temps in the galaxy 10.1 2014 edition. Especially frequency-temp-ratio. And I can tell you this buddy is everything else than cool. Temps jump up so fast I can't tell you. Even some fast scrolling on ebay, facebook desktop web page in browser treated the Temperature to the hight 80s and soon the high 90s. I have also seen the things franzli mentioned before. Even light work put so much heat to the processor. Watching the frequency and temperature bounce was a pain. I could feel the pain that little Exynos 5420 must suffer of all the time.Throttling is the only ways this little buddy can survive To make it short I decided to do the cooling mod...
So lets see what I found on my journey ... I can tell you that's a big surprise
I opened the case very easily. You can find tons of videos on youtube or use ifixit.
Well I have to mention I am an electronics hardware engineer. So doing this stuff is nothing unique for me. And I have years of professional PCB manufacturing, repair experience.
Opening the case, adding some tape and this is what you get...
As you can see there is a little thermal pad applied to the aluminium shielding. And boooom there you are . Do you see all thet flux solder remains? How come samsung? Seriously?
This is the shielding close up with that thermal pad.
As you can see the FBGA package is covered with flux from soldering. So it is naturally, that the cooling in the galaxy is a pain. There can't bee any good heat flow.
So let's check that thermal pad.
woops that little buddy is kinda to small. I am sad to see this.
Well I cleaned the surface as good as I can with ethanol. After this I applied a new Thermal pad.
After that it looked like this.
Then I closed the shielding case and cleaned it.
So next comes the actual cooling mod. I added a big thermal pad.
I had to cut that little hook in the back plate. So that the 100mmx100mm copper layer will fit in shape.
And this is it done.
So what about the results :laugh:
The back plate fits perfectly. If you know there is a thin layer of copper you can feel it. But it is so less. I had no problem closing the case. Ahh yeah I had to tage it with double sided tape, so it is pressed down to the thermal. The back plate will do the rest pressure.
And really don't worry about the wifi interference. There is no worry. Because the copper layer is located on top of the bettery pack and shielding case. Why should there be any interference? I have tried. Reaching same wifi performance as always. No worries:good:
So what about heating. Well my galaxy note stays pretty cool.
I need to mention this is all mesured with the [ROM][7.1.2]Resurrection Remix N for SM-P600 (n1awifi) [5.8.5][UNOFFICIAL][NIGHTLY] I mentioned before.
I used interactive governor.
I reach in Antutu v6.2.7 about 57000 to 58000
In futuremark work 2.0 I get 4000
Here some pics
I am sorry for that high resolution pics. But I wanted best of (bad) quality. I used my redmi note 4 for taking pictures. If you can't read all in the pics, just open in new window.
There isn't any more throttling at all. It is hard to push to 85°C or above now. Just with synthetic GPU and CPU load on all four cores at once. And it takes a couple of minutes. But in real world you will never get it. With only load on one core my maximum is 69 to 72°C. The tablet fells pretty nice now. The warming in the back plate is reduced to a very large surface. So sometimes it fells as if your hands warm up the case.
Can you suggest me any ROm with a good overclocking potential? I have already tried this ROM. I really don't know why, but it keeps crashing all the time at 2GHz or 2.1 GHz. Even with no load at all. I guess the used kernel is bad.
Do you have any ROM suggestion for me.
If you have any quastions and things you want me to test write me.
Just wanted to share my experience with you. I didn't expect a dirty PCB, BGA and thermal pad like this. So what do you think about this.

Related

[Q] setvsel cpu damage

hey guys, just wondering will using a lower vsel damage my cpu and/or battery?
i have previously beein using milestone overclock on 1ghz and 60 vsel and am adding setvsel into the mix, also any ideas on starter settings? thanks
also could someone just give me a heads up on what vsel actually IS
I don't believe there are any studies that show effects of long term use of lowering the voltage, which is what you are doing with vsel in order to save battery juice...or you could increase the voltage but that defeats the purpose and also heats up the battery which leads to shorter life span. Many use it without reporting any damage to battery or cpu, I believe it's safe (however, if you are overheating you might fry the battery or cpu, so you'll need to moniter and play with settings to get the desired effect without any overheating issues).
With regards to setvsel, there are reported issues from users with different roms...from what I've read (and you can do your own research to see if this is what you are seeing...this is the conclusion that I've come to by reading a lot of threads), it is better to use milestone to overclock and setcpu to lower the vsel.
With that being said, I've used them all and like setvsel so keep going back to it...but I've been having some issues lately so I've removed setvsel to see if that is what is causing some problems (too early to tell).
Oh, and as for settings...pop on the overclocking/undervolting thread in the development section to see a lot of different settings and remember that what works for one user might not work for you...you'll have to experiment a bit to find your ideal setting.
oh okay i think i might go back to my old settings with milestone overclock and setcpu and just lower the vsel! i was under the impression for some reason that lowering the vsel would heat the battery. Thanks!
I'm no expert to be honest, I'm more of a research kinda person. From what I've researched, undervolting can help keep temps down, and may particularly help when you overclock (as overclocking is stressing the cpu to go beyond it's normal operating design hence it may heat up...supplying it with less power, or voltage, is what helps keep the temps down.
Of course, this is given you find the optimal setting for your phone, and as it seems from reading through these forums, many users have experienced completely different results using the same settings (i.e., one user will have a stable setting without any problems while another user on the same rom using the same settings will have crashes and/or issues like overheating). Doesn't seem right, but it is what it is
yeah ive read through most of that stuff too, i went down to 1ghz at 51 vsel, seeming stable, but i decided to go with 54 anyway
1.1 GHz @ Stock vsel for over a month without any issues...I hope it lasts.
Sent from my MB525 using XDA App
Hi,
I've also read a lot regarding the underclocking 'dangers' but couldn't find anything to prove that there is such an issue. I think that it is an urban myth spread everywhere by people asking if there is a danger with low vsel [but that are never getting a positive answer on it].
The only thing I found using setvSel is that I had to first install Milestone Overclock and load its module prior to start setvsel. There is a way around it, but requires you to copy files in the system folders and change their permissions. I find that my way is much easier.
As far as over-heating goes, it's an overclocking thing; not underclocking.
My Defy is set at 900Mhz and really, I don't see the point of going much higher: everything runs smooth and lag free already.
vsel: 21/300; 32/600; 43/900 - 90% up_threshold
Been like that for about a month now and never experienced any problem at all.
The underclocking is great for saving battery; no exact numbers to give here but it feels like my battery now last 2 times longer. I can easily get 4 days between charges with low/moderate usage and would get to 6+ days "IF" I could stay away from games and having the screen ON for long sessions of browsing/video watching.
I tried SetCpu before but I didn't like the interface; the simplicity of SetvSel is really nice.
i use setcpu for scaling and profiles, and run 18/300, 36/600, 50/1000 stable and smooth as
Undervolting is not a bad thing at all. It means less Watts consumed for running (Watts = Voltage x Amperage), less of your battery consumed.
Ussually companies test a large batch of components and how they react on different voltages and freqvencies, and then they decide for a voltage that works with all components and that is safe for all cases. Eg. when they have different CPU speeds and thus different options for CPU's this is one way to decide which one work at 3GHz and which one at 2.7 GHz (the other one is demand for components).
Phisically you will not have any problems and you can't damage your phone by undervolting, so no problem here, only possible software problems if you go too low.
Advantages :
+ Lower processor temperature
+ Lower phone temperature
+ Longer battery time
+ Longer components life
Disadvantages
- Stability issues (freeze, artefacts, slowness)
maxi2mc said:
Disadvantages
- Stability issues (freeze, artefacts, slowness)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You know, I was recording a video and when playing back noticed that there were squiggly lines that went through the video a couple of times (in a two minute clip). This was the first time I saw this...and have recently lowered vsel by 2 on vsel3...could that be the artifacts that you are mentioning?
I just figured it perhaps I was too bouncy with the phone while recording making it glitch...but now that I see this post I'm thinking maybe I undervolted too much...what do you think?
My settings: 54/1000 44/700 28/300
I know what people mean by same settings don't work for every phone even if it's the exact same model. My Defy won't underclock as much as others. I'm using SetVesel, and I've been able to drop 5 points from each, and that's about it before it reboots itself. I only tested undervolting, but I mainly overclock to get as much speed as I can, and give it enough juice to run super fast. I'm current running [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Threshold at 75%. The highest the temp ever got was 112F, and that was after playing a game for about an hour. Usually it stays below 90F for normal use. I get around 17-20 hours out of it with screen on time at about 3 hours @ 50% brightness. I've been running these settings about a month, and have not had any issues.
If you put something like 100vsel will the phone accept and then burn? Is there any protection? Does anyone know what's the highest acceptable vsel?
Just for curiosity...
im pretty sure 80 is the highest you should EVER use and that'll significantly increase the chances of your phone burning out. @bobbyphoenix you should be able to lower your vsels a fair bit or your really unlucky! i run a lower vsel for 1ghz than u do for 700mhz smooth and stable
stewi21 said:
im pretty sure 80 is the highest you should EVER use and that'll significantly increase the chances of your phone burning out. @bobbyphoenix you should be able to lower your vsels a fair bit or your really unlucky! i run a lower vsel for 1ghz than u do for 700mhz smooth and stable
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CM7, rather non-technical person here. I seem to have a very happy phone at setvsel settings of [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], 86%. Been running this for the month or so since I rooted and the phone feels like it was made for this config. I've never seen the temp above ~32c. My 2¢.

How to undervolt and get better battery life. Please post your results and how to.

Hey all, this is a thread I saw on different forum and think it is would be good for noobs like myself to benefit from. How to undervolt your CPU and also post your Galaxy Note 2 specific results. I have tried these next steps, and so far I'm doing okay (can't give an accurate results on battery life yet). Like I said (I'm not ashamed to say I'm a noob) but if others can throw their two cents in, we can all learn and this thread can be useful. The next part was cut and paste d from other forum. And I deleted the url for the kernel and root
Prerequisites:
1. Must be rooted and recommended kernel
2. Download and install System Tuner
3. Download and install Stability Test
Steps:
1. Open System Tuner and select CPU
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
2. Drag the slider shown in the picture to overclock or underclock CPU. In this picture we are overclocking to 1.8ghz
3. Select Voltage at the top to get to CPU voltage settings.
4. Ok, here select the buttons as they are in the picture.
a. Select the Green circled button to save current stock default settings.
b. Select the Yellow circled button 4 times exactly to reduce the millivolts by 100.
Stability Testing:
Now we really should make sure that it can handle it under load right? :silly:
1. Open Stability Test and select CPU+GPU Stability Test.
2. Select Full Details - Proceed.
3. The app will now start stressing your cores. I waited until at least 10 cpu passes before quiting the app...
Cliffnotes:
-By default, your settings will revert back after you restart your phone. You can set them to load at boot, but don't do this unless your absolutely sure that they're stable!
Open System Tuner - CPU - Menu key - Settings - Active Tweaks - Reapply CPU Settings - On Boot Completed
-Whenever i tried to lower the mv more than 100 below stock at 1.8ghz, my phone rebooted
-I am in no way responsible for anything that might happen after performing the above, even if you start your sentence with the word "but"
-here's stock settings in case you need to revert
[/QUOTE]
This is an interesting project but I would think that the average user would not need this as battery life is pretty good. Speaking for myself, I am able to get through the whole day without any issues.
Of course there might be other reasons why someone would want to do this.
Doc
Thanks
Sent from my SGH-I777 using xda premium
DocEsq said:
This is an interesting project but I would think that the average user would not need this as battery life is pretty good. Speaking for myself, I am able to get through the whole day without any issues.
Of course there might be other reasons why someone would want to do this.
Doc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
from what i've read, undervolting save very little battery time as the processors are pretty efficient anyways. i don't have actual numbers, but i'd guess you'd get a few extra minutes - which some may really need.
it's that freaking gargantuan screen that sucks the most juice. there used to be a mod to undervolt displays. they had it working on an OG galaxy tab. i never really seen it used anywhere else.
I have an international version of galaxy note 2. I'm currently using AllianceROM and Perseus kernel. And my stock voltage is way way higher than yours. Like 1400mV mine, 913mV yours. Can I undervolt my note 2 to same specifications like yours? Thanks.
This is interesting but setcpu when I had it on my last phone worked awesome and was very easy to use.
Sent from my Amazing Galaxy Note 2!
rjisanandres said:
I have an international version of galaxy note 2. I'm currently using AllianceROM and Perseus kernel. And my stock voltage is way way higher than yours. Like 1400mV mine, 913mV yours. Can I undervolt my note 2 to same specifications like yours? Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You is 1400 mV on 200 MHz? It's probabky 1400 on 1.6 ghz.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium
I also have Perseus kernel overclocked but still have great battery life. Thanks for the tip though might try it and compare the difference just in case.
I agree with DocEsq.. It is interesting indeed, but is it really necessary?
Can you overclock it?
My note 2 seems to be charging forever after undervolting. I'm talking for about 6-7hrs charging time here. What seems to be the problem? I'm using Perseus kernel. TIA!
Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk 2
I once conducted a test with my evo3d. I basically ran an amp meter inline with the battery. Measuring the exact power consumption. I dont remember the exact specs, but undervolting and underclocking my phone compared to stock made a very minute difference in actual power consumption. A difference of about 8-15ma. This was during a CPU full load scenario for about 10 seconds. Even loading the CPU with the screen off to take as many variables out as possible it was very little difference. During normal operarion the power consumed was virtually identical.
So the 2 to 3% of the day (overall time) your phone is actually under HEAVY load, it won't make much difference. It did make a performance impact. So not much benefit, just reduced performance.
Now overclocking and/or overvolting did make a larger difference in consumption at high constant load.
Want to ACTUALLY make a large impact on your battery life? Make sure you don't have any apps preventing your phone from sleeping and run the absolute lowest screen brightness you can stand.
YMMV.
Sent from my Galaxy Note 2 using Tapatalk 2
The benefit I found from undervolting isn't better battery life, it's reduced heat which in heavy use provides better performance due to no cpu throttling. I'm running 1800mhz using less battery than 1600mhz and with same temps as stock. Very stable, been running this for a month now at least.
Action B said:
The benefit I found from undervolting isn't better battery life, it's reduced heat which in heavy use provides better performance due to no cpu throttling. I'm running 1800mhz using less battery than 1600mhz and with same temps as stock. Very stable, been running this for a month now at least.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What app did you use to undervolt?
Sent from my Amazing Galaxy Note 2!
yankees45us said:
What app did you use to undervolt?
Sent from my Amazing Galaxy Note 2!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm using the stweaks app that comes with perseus kernel.. I've undervolted quite a bit and I get better battery life.. Still not quite as good as I had stock, but definitely a lot better for being over clocked.. I just reduce each level to the level below it and run for a few to check stability and keep going from there.. So far I have had no trouble at all with undervolting.. Certainly nothing like I did with my elte.. Here's where I've been for almost a week as well as today's battery results so far with Pandora playing over 3 hours straight and moderate use..
Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2
Yeah, just to let you know that there certainly isn't a linear correlation between undervolting and underclocking and power usage. That might have been the case in simpler times, but with modern multi-core microprocessors, you might actually be decreasing battery life by screwing with your clock rate or voltage. Yes, the defaults err on the side of caution, but it's a whole lot of work for little to no gain.
For example, by reducing your phone's clock rate, you might actually be forcing your phone to be spending more time at load; thereby not allowing it to fallback to its sleep state. There is also something called the power wall, where an increase in operating frequency requires an exponential increase in power. However, the reverse is also true. It can be counter-intuitive to think of it this way, so a practical example is how on a 100 mile trip, a 25 mpg sedan saves 4 gallons of gasoline over a 12.5 mpg SUV. However, over the same distance a 50 mpg hybrid saves only 2 gallons over the 25 mpg car. By that same logic, a mythical 100 mpg vehicle would only save 1 gallon of fuel. It's the law of diminishing returns. Then of course, there are the stability issues that you should take into account.
There is a lot that happens behind the scenes regarding power management. Your phone is capable of intelligently scaling it's processors, voltages, and frequencies up or down all based on current and expected demand. There are people who spend a lot more time doing this for a living, and the idea that you can do it better is probably a falsehood. If you want MOAR POWER, by all means overclock/overvolt it (just don't fry it), but trying to get an extra couple minutes of run time is likely a waste of some hard work. It's the software that kills your battery, not the hardware.
Talking about computer architecture can be complicated and boring, but start with searches on "rise time" and "logic level transitions" if you want to want more background.
Action B said:
The benefit I found from undervolting isn't better battery life, it's reduced heat which in heavy use provides better performance due to no cpu throttling. I'm running 1800mhz using less battery than 1600mhz and with same temps as stock. Very stable, been running this for a month now at least.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting... whenever I'm dling using a torrent client my phone gets a nasty fever and I've gotta set it down somewhere as it will literally make me sweat, lol. I do b there think I'll be undervolting just for that specific circumstance but that is a very interesting concept...
anishannayya said:
Yeah, just to let you know that there certainly isn't a linear correlation between undervolting and underclocking and power usage. That might have been the case in simpler times, but with modern multi-core microprocessors, you might actually be decreasing battery life by screwing with your clock rate or voltage. Yes, the defaults err on the side of caution, but it's a whole lot of work for little to no gain.
For example, by reducing your phone's clock rate, you might actually be forcing your phone to be spending more time at load; thereby not allowing it to fallback to its sleep state. There is also something called the power wall, where an increase in operating frequency requires an exponential increase in power. However, the reverse is also true. It can be counter-intuitive to think of it this way, so a practical example is how on a 100 mile trip, a 25 mpg sedan saves 4 gallons of gasoline over a 12.5 mpg SUV. However, over the same distance a 50 mpg hybrid saves only 2 gallons over the 25 mpg car. By that same logic, a mythical 100 mpg vehicle would only save 1 gallon of fuel. It's the law of diminishing returns. Then of course, there are the stability issues that you should take into account.
There is a lot that happens behind the scenes regarding power management. Your phone is capable of intelligently scaling it's processors, voltages, and frequencies up or down all based on current and expected demand. There are people who spend a lot more time doing this for a living, and the idea that you can do it better is probably a falsehood. If you want MOAR POWER, by all means overclock/overvolt it (just don't fry it), but trying to get an extra couple minutes of run time is likely a waste of some hard work. It's the software that kills your battery, not the hardware.
Talking about computer architecture can be complicated and boring, but start with searches on "rise time" and "logic level transitions" if you want to want more background.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Like the way you put that. Good analogies there it just seems like the other day that undervolting was the hip thing to do. Technology just moves at such a wonderful pace though. Just one little FYI though, since i do like you analogy i would like to point out that the law of diminishing returns actually refers to something else entirely. I know, I know, nitpicking, but it's just that everyone is always off the mark with that one and, well I guess I'm just an anal ahole (and an economics major, ,which I guess just overall makes me an a hole, ,lol)
If you have ever pulled apart a laptop and saw how much thermal paste the engineers at the factory "designed" for their to be on there, or seen the air/fuel ratio most cars roll off the lot with, or ever replaced an intake in a vehicle with a high performance unit I'm not sure you would feel the same way about you yourself not being to do a better job.
I get the point, and I believe often there is validity to that point, but sometime things just aren't that simple. This is where power gains come from in tuning a car (which i do). This is where efficiency is raised by removing restrictive components in a vehicle (intake, exhaust, etc) and where cooling performance is increased on a CPU with the proper application of a quality thermal paste.
Whenever time is money, and you are deciding between your bottom line and something that works and something that works as well as it can, shortcuts are made and corners are cut. Perhaps they could have spent another 200 hours for the team to absolutely optimize the processor for each device, but the cost would have been an additional $20,000 dollars. This is not always the case, but with processors I think it is. I will undervolt everytime and I do take objective measures for battery and I agree gains are relatively small. For cooling, I found the difference to be very significant at 1800, mhzI didn't check at 1600mhz, however. I can run a full Antutu benchmark as much as I want at room temperature and never exceed the throttling point (70 C if i remember correctly). Now, I am in no way saying these are facts, these are opinions, so I could be wrong of course.
Psychotic-Cerebellum said:
Interesting... whenever I'm dling using a torrent client my phone gets a nasty fever and I've gotta set it down somewhere as it will literally make me sweat, lol. I do b there think I'll be undervolting just for that specific circumstance but that is a very interesting concept...
Like the way you put that. Good analogies there it just seems like the other day that undervolting was the hip thing to do. Technology just moves at such a wonderful pace though. Just one little FYI though, since i do like you analogy i would like to point out that the law of diminishing returns actually refers to something else entirely. I know, I know, nitpicking, but it's just that everyone is always off the mark with that one and, well I guess I'm just an anal ahole (and an economics major, ,which I guess just overall makes me an a hole, ,lol)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The TIM wasn't put on there by the engineers who designed the chips; they are put there by workers being paid next to nothing.
Your phone doesn't have a CPU, it doesn't even use thermal paste; it's usually just a rubber contact patch and passive heat dissipation. This actually brings another point where overclocking can sometimes reduce performance due to throttling by thermal constraints (why our phone has such a low GPU rate than what it is capable of in other phones with better thermal envelopes).
You aren't replacing the SoC, you are changing the software that determines how to set the voltage/clock multiplier. The car analogy isn't valid.
And I stand corrected regarding the Law of Diminishing Returns; never paid attention in macro-econ. I think was because my prof. was more interested in forcing his political ideology upon us than actually teaching the subject. :silly:
EDIT: Keep in mind, the engineers rarely get what they want. The product the consumer ends up getting is usually dictated through a collaboration of what the business and marketing teams want. The engineer might request a large cooler clamp with a perfectly lapped surface and a carbon-based TIM. In reality, the consumer gets a dinky fan with melt-on TIM and retention springs. Money talks.
anishannayya said:
The TIM wasn't put on there by the engineers who designed the chips; they are put there by workers being paid next to nothing.
Your phone doesn't have a CPU, it doesn't even use thermal paste; it's usually just a rubber contact patch and passive heat dissipation. This actually brings another point where overclocking can sometimes reduce performance due to throttling by thermal constraints (why our phone has such a low GPU rate than what it is capable of in other phones with better thermal envelopes).
You aren't replacing the SoC, you are changing the software that determines how to set the voltage/clock multiplier. The car analogy isn't valid.
And I stand corrected regarding the Law of Diminishing Returns; never paid attention in macro-econ. I think was because my prof. was more interested in forcing his political ideology upon us than actually teaching the subject. :silly:
EDIT: Keep in mind, the engineers rarely get what they want. The product the consumer ends up getting is usually dictated through a collaboration of what the business and marketing teams want. The engineer might request a large cooler clamp with a perfectly lapped surface and a carbon-based TIM. In reality, the consumer gets a dinky fan with melt-on TIM and retention springs. Money talks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. The voltages are set by an engineer, that is what I was referring to.
2. The CPU thing was an analogy as was the car. Not a direct comparison. The analogy is referring to how there is set fuel and timing tables just like there is set voltage tables, both might not be the most efficient from the factory, tweaking them can improve things. How is this completely not valid?

Solution to reduce thermal throttling on Nexus 5X?

Is there a way to reduce it? My phone slows to the pace of a sloth far too frequently and it seems correlated with temp.
I'm assuming that's the cause because when I look at the CPUs in CPUz the last two go down to 633MHz when things are getting slow. Also seems worse with a case but could be my confirmation bias. This is particularly apparent with the camera, Maps, and when coming out of doze.
Is there a more conclusive way to figure out what is causing my Nexus 5X's occasionally brutal performance?
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
Well, what exactly are you doing with your phone that's causing it to throttle itself? I think with a stock kernel the phone begins to throttle and eventually shut off the Big cluster at 36 or 37 degrees Celsius (someone correct me if I'm wrong). If you flashed a custom kernel, most here have had that limit raised to 46C.
Last weekend I used my phone quite a bit for strenuous tasks including Navigation, Google Maps, lots and lots of pictures and 1080P video. The phone got noticeably warmer, but when I checked my kernel management app, the CPU temperature wasn't even close to the throttle temperature. Unless you're gaming or constantly benchmarking your phone this really shouldn't be a problem. Especially when coming out of Doze. The phone doesn't immediately enter Doze, it waits a while and there are factors that play into its decision to even enter doze in the first place (like laying on a flat surface for X amount of time). So when a phone is exiting Doze because of your input (turning the screen on) the CPU should be quite cool (maybe 22+ degrees). There's no thermal throttling there. The Big cluster shuts off when the screen is off for the sake of battery life, so maybe the lag that you're experiencing stems from the lack of the Big cluster being on for the first second or so when waking the phone back up.
I'll agree that the SD808 isn't a stellar chip; maybe even embarrassing. It's not blisteringly fast, but it certainly isn't slow. There are ways to speed up performance and improve battery life at the same time, which I'm sure you'd appreciate. Unfortunately you have not specified if you're running a custom ROM or kernel, so that's pretty much all the advice and information I can give you right now. But, if you're currently running stock, I'd highly recommend you unlock your bootloader and try out some of the custom (and more lightweight) ROMs that this community has to offer as well as some great kernels. That should make a noticeable difference right off the bat. Then you can dive into the nitty gritty details of tweaking and whatnot if you desire. Check out the links in my signature as a starting point. If you're looking for optimization and speed (like I do) then you'll be impressed.
Thanks for your reply.
I switched to ElementalX about a week ago and it may be a bit better now but it's hard to tell. I've also been using a spigen slim case, maybe that is causing heat to accumulate too.
I don't game. My usage is Maps, Facebook, Snapchat, camera, chrome, hangouts, Spotify, and textra.
I use greenify and amplify as well on xposed. Disabling xposed doesn't seem to make a difference.
Can you confirm that ElementalX throttles at 46C and stock at 36C?
I'm interested in your recommendations. When running geekbench it takes about 9 minutes for things to really slow down.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
If you search the ElementalX thread you can see that the developer, Flar2, was getting very frustrated with the thermal throttling on this device (others were too, as well). You can read through the progression and, eventually, the decision to apply a "thermal fix" or raise the thermal throttling limit. The threshold is 46C now. Confirmed. The stock thermal throttle threshold is 10 degrees less than that from what I've read. I also remember reading that Franco did a fair amount of research into the throttling issue and found that the CPU was capable of going over 50C with no issues (but aren't recommended), so the limit in place now by the ElementalX kernel is a safe one that shouldn't be exceeded. He probably didn't make it any higher so he wouldn't be found liable by any users if they overheat or damage their phones.
I have no experience with xposed and everytime there's a compatibility issue, hard reboots, etc. it's always because of Xposed. So.. Yeah.
I also do not use any tweaking apps that supposedly save battery or whatever. I let the operating system take care of that. I do use the L-Speed app (again, in my signature) to disable certain things like debug logs and what not to speed things up slightly. Again, I highly recommend trying Ubermallow and Phasma Kernel as those have been my choice, after trying many others, for some time now. Also, I'd look into the interactive governor tweaks after you've settled on a ROM and kernel combination that you like. That's where you can fine tune the way the CPU governor on the phone behaves and can really make a difference in battery life and fluidity of the device.
Lastly, a case can make a difference with cooling but I've never really found it to be an issue. Maybe I'm just not hard on my phone enough.
ryanwalexander said:
Is there a way to reduce it? My phone slows to the pace of a sloth far too frequently and it seems correlated with temp.
I'm assuming that's the cause because when I look at the CPUs in CPUz the last two go down to 633MHz when things are getting slow. Also seems worse with a case but could be my confirmation bias. This is particularly apparent with the camera, Maps, and when coming out of doze.
Is there a more conclusive way to figure out what is causing my Nexus 5X's occasionally brutal performance?
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A member on the 6p forum came up with a hard mod that does this with a special thermal paste better then stock . Requires tearing apart the device though ...so its risky but his results looked promising
Sent from my Nexus 6P using XDA Free mobile app
Google just agreed to take back my device so I only have a few days to try things and make my decision on whether to keep the phone or not.
Thank you for your thoughtful responses and suggestions.
Since I started using the phone outside of the case it actually seems much better.
Regarding the extreme slowness coming out of doze, it only occurs when in doze for a long time. Presumably because the phone tries to catch up on all the sync activity that's been paused for the last 12h or so.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
I think I'll try your suggestions and remove greenify, amplify, and xposed to see if things improve. I do agree that the system should be managing those things.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
Yeah, give it a few days. There are many ways to combat the throttling. Got my phone to 41C today while using it out in the sun. The Big cluster is limited to 633MHz at 36C and shut off at 41CC. The 46C built into the kernel is most likely for the LITTLE cluster to start getting throttled. Check the attached pics below.
Thanks. Btw what ROM and app is that?
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
ryanwalexander said:
Thanks. Btw what ROM and app is that?
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ROM and Kernel are in my signature. The app for managing the kernel is Elementalx Kernel Manager and the app to add CPU usage overlays and stuff is called Trepn Profiler.
Sounds like the opposite to me, the phone might be slow because of software on the device not playing nice which causes the SoC to work over time (normal computing + rogue app computing) and can cause the device to over heat and throttle.
There's no reason the device should be slow after a period of doze. That tells me the device is having software caused slowdowns that are not related to thermal throttling.
It takes roughly 12 minutes of 100% sustained load (only synthetic benchmarks) to throttle the 2x A57 cluster, and I've never seen the 4x A53 cluster throttle under any conditions including hours of heavy gaming they stay at 1.4Ghz at all times.
bblzd said:
Sounds like the opposite to me, the phone might be slow because of software on the device not playing nice which causes the SoC to work over time (normal computing + rogue app computing) and can cause the device to over heat and throttle.
There's no reason the device should be slow after a period of doze. That tells me the device is having software caused slowdowns that are not related to thermal throttling.
It takes roughly 12 minutes of 100% sustained load (only synthetic benchmarks) to throttle the 2x A57 cluster, and I've never seen the 4x A53 cluster throttle under any conditions including hours of heavy gaming they stay at 1.4Ghz at all times.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yesterday I was using GPS to drive and Spotify was streaming. The phone got really hot and unresponsive and Spotify began to stutter. Was unable to even launch textra to text someone.
This of course only started maybe 10m into the drive. The phone is fine while cold.
Maybe I have a defective device but my benchmark stress tests give similar results to other people.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
ryanwalexander said:
Yesterday I was using GPS to drive and Spotify was streaming. The phone got really hot and unresponsive and Spotify began to stutter. Was unable to even launch textra to text someone.
This of course only started maybe 10m into the drive. The phone is fine while cold.
Maybe I have a defective device but my benchmark stress tests give similar results to other people.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this is consistent with my experience. GPS and spotify (actually almost any app used concurrently with spotify) will cause the phone to have horrible lag.
also, don't text and drive
Interestingly, today when the phone was on battery saver it seemed much faster. Maybe more throttling could help things more than less?
Of course not exactly faster, but more consistent and no unbearable lagging.
Yesterday I flashed the stock firmware files other than user data. Unfortunately I lost root and it seems like I now need to reformat data to get TWRP going again but until then I'm fully stock. Does anyone know a way around that?
I haven't done enough testing to be sure but things seem to be running more smoothly for now than they did with root and ElementalX 1.06. However just writing this i can feel the phone heating up and becoming less responsive. The bottom 2 cores are offline with SoC at 36C and CPU at 56C when I switch to devcheck to check. Other 4 cores at 1440MHz.
ideaman924 said:
I've been having issues with thermal as well. Installed ElementalX along with the governer tweaks GhostPepper profile. When charging (this makes the device really hot) music begins to stutter, coming out of Viper4Android.
When not charging, slow accumulation of heat makes music stutter, same software used. Go figure. Maybe V4A is too demanding on the 808 chip, but I fear if this doesn't cut it, then I'll have to switch phones the next chance I get.
Oddly, this happens when screen is off - the music stutterings. I've thought about Doze and battery saving apps, and have disabled Doze for V4A through the battery optimize pane.
The phone constantly loses battery, around 2~5% an hour, I know thats not too much but my previous phone lost about 1% every three hours. This was a Note 3 Neo by the way. Installing Xposed and Amplify, Greenify and PowerNap should help, but I've had stability issues when using xposed. Maybe later.
Oh, and one last thing. My phone's thermal limit is set to 55 degrees Celsius, but it still feels like it throttles at around 39 or so. Maybe EX Kernel Manager isn't saving the changes, but either way... It throttles too much!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That could be because of the custom software and CPU tweaks or your V4A installation. Using those settings always has the potential to cause issues and I would troubleshoot there first.
Minimum CPU performance with stock settings is 4x A53 cores at 1.44Ghz which is still fast. If you've ever use one of the more recent Moto G devices you'd know it doesn't stutter playing music when it's cold and neither does this device when it's hot.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using XDA-Developers mobile app
Setting the throttling temp limit to high will decrease performance, see here for details:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-5x/general/thermal-throttling-temp-performance-test-t3388559
Alcolawl said:
Yeah, give it a few days. There are many ways to combat the throttling. Got my phone to 41C today while using it out in the sun. The Big cluster is limited to 633MHz at 36C and shut off at 41CC. The 46C built into the kernel is most likely for the LITTLE cluster to start getting throttled. Check the attached pics below.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is this based on battery temperature or cpu temperature?
leo.best1398 said:
Is this based on battery temperature or cpu temperature?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CPU temperature but I beleive the phone also has ways of combating high battery temps as well.
Alcolawl said:
CPU temperature but I beleive the phone also has ways of combating high battery temps as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If its cpu temp then no wonder it's always throttling the cpu is nearly always above 40°c.
What do you mean ''combating''?
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

is there something wrong with my Note 4?

Attached below is a picture of my Hardware activity while playing Power Rangers Legacy Wars which admittedly is a graphically intense games but I'm worried that the temperature of the GPU and or CPU is getting too high. I want to make sure my Note 4 isn't getting too hot here is the picture:
I need somebody's help. The coolest my Note 4 seems to get is about 53 degrees C and that's when I turn it on after it's been asleep on my desk. It is not a rogue app or anything like that because I have done both Factory resets and I have install custom roms, so everything has been factory reset multiple times. The water damage sticker indicates no water damage whatsoever. I know phones can get hot when gaming, my Note 4 gets to anywhere between 70 to 85 degrees Celsius and I am just wondering if that's normal I reduced my screen resolution to 720P and disabled two cores of the quad core processor and it does not seem to help one bit. Is this temperature normal or do I need to get rid of the phone?
PS when doing normal browsing it seems to hover around 60 to 67 degrees C
And the battery does not seem to go over 37 degrees Celsius
If you're worried about high temps during games I'd recommend turning the max GPU frequency down. It significantly reduced my temps and I didn't notice a significant difference in gameplay.
Thank you for your response. I have done that and it does not seem to make a difference I'm still getting CPU and GPU temperatures in the high 70s to low 80s
bucs9115 said:
Thank you for your response. I have done that and it does not seem to make a difference I'm still getting CPU and GPU temperatures in the high 70s to low 80s
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would you mind posting a screenshot as above with the same overlay? How long are you playing before it gets to this point? Have you adjusted throttling temperatures?
Edit: Saw your other post and wanted to add some troubleshooting. When you open up TWRP and do a file transfer or backup how hot does your phone get? Mine would get pretty hot to the touch, but I don't remember it getting above 80 C.....
The temps you showed in the other thread are definitely not "normal" from my experience with day-to-day use. Did you ever look at the task monitor app I linked to?
Sure I can take another screenshot. How do you want it? I did check out that app and the only thing that I saw was that it seems as though my CPU cores were always running pretty high but I didn't see any applications taking up and unusual amount of processing power. The temperature ranges to about 60 as soon as I open a game for the most part and continues to slowly rise from there. Yes that's about the temperature I get everytime I go into TWRP. I don't even have to be doing anything I'm just open TWRP work and that's about the temperature I get
bucs9115 said:
Sure I can take another screenshot. How do you want it? I did check out that app and the only thing that I saw was that it seems as though my CPU cores were always running pretty high but I didn't see any applications taking up and unusual amount of processing power. The temperature ranges to about 60 as soon as I open a game for the most part and continues to slowly rise from there. Yes that's about the temperature I get everytime I go into TWRP. I don't even have to be doing anything I'm just open TWRP work and that's about the temperature I get
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, I posted that before I noticed your updated screenshot. I was just curious if limiting the GPU made any difference.
Honestly I'm running out of software suggestions. Do you have some sort of case/screen protector that could be affecting it? How hot us your screen (qualitatively)? I just looked at an old video I made and my phone was 52 C in TWRP, which isn't too far off from yours so it might be fine (as I said my phone screen would get too hot to touch at times during intense games). But if you look at kernel adiutor and see that the CPU rarely drops to the lowest frequency/deep sleep there's probably something wrong (unless your screen is constantly on). You could try a different kernel or governor, or check an app like gsm battery monitor to see if GPS or something us hogging CPU time, but I don't really have any more ideas. (Although I did used to cool off my screen with a wet towel when it got really hot)
Just to confirm: you're running a Verizon note 4 right? (Have to ask)
You've updated the modem to the correct version through Odin?
You're on the proper bootloader?
First of all thank you for your help once again. I don't know how to measure how hot my screen gets I don't have any tools that would allow me to do that I do have a case and screen protector on but it doesn't seem to be any worse than it was before I put them on. Yes I am on the correct bootloader and I do have a Verizon Note 4 running the nseven ROM and I am on the correct modem. I'm willing to do anything at this point. This is the second note 4 I've had with this issue and I just want to be able to use it. I want to be able to play my games and stuff you know. So if there's a literally anything I can do . plus I don't really have money for a replacement
bucs9115 said:
First of all thank you for your help once again. I don't know how to measure how hot my screen gets I don't have any tools that would allow me to do that I do have a case and screen protector on but it doesn't seem to be any worse than it was before I put them on. Yes I am on the correct bootloader and I do have a Verizon Note 4 running the nseven ROM and I am on the correct modem. I'm willing to do anything at this point. This is the second note 4 I've had with this issue and I just want to be able to use it. I want to be able to play my games and stuff you know. So if there's a literally anything I can do . plus I don't really have money for a replacement
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I found this: https://forums.androidcentral.com/s...bout-cpu-temperatures-according-cpu-z-s6.html
Which shows some pretty high temperatures during heavy and normal loads for a G4 and some other forum discussing how their note 4 would reboot due to overheating. Since you're not experiencing that issue I'm not sure you need to worry too much. Your processor should be throttling itself if it's getting to hot to make sure it doesn't get damaged. I'd try to make sure that you limit your gpu to around 300 and then just make sure your CPU isn't overclocked and you will probably be fine. My note 4 would get so hot that I couldn't touch the screen, but it still ran like a champ and never rebooted on me. The only thing that is concerning is that your CPU clock specs aren't sticking, but you'll need to read around for how to fix that since I've never had an issue.
Okay well that makes me feel a whole lot better thank you. According to GSMArena the processor speed of the Note 4 is 2.7 gigahertz and mine is currently running at 2.4 so while it is a little upsetting that I can't bring it down any further, at least I know again according to GSMArena that my processor is not overclocked. Thank you for everything

Fix Exynos 990 battery drain and Overheating Issues -[ It works ]

I have the exynos 990 version of the S20 FE and as we all know, the 990 is a little bit of a hot mess. However it has quite a lot to give if limited correctly.I'm running One UI 3.1 on android 11. I rooted my FE with magisk and installed Franco kernel manager. The steps below will give you good battery life and performance.
Step 1: Straight up disable the M5 mongoose cores. They are Samsung's biggest undoing.
Step2 : Limit all clock speed to 2Ghz. Trust me, the IPC on the 990 is really damn good and you don't need to worry about performance loss. Forget the benchmarks, everything just works. Getting the last 2.7ghz or 2.5ghz usually requires a significant voltage bump and you mostly wont need the speed.
Step3 : The GPU is actually just fine as is. Try to set the max clock to 370mhz, which sounds ridiculously low, but the 990's GPU was made for 1440p screens, so the UI still remains smooth even at 120Hz. I played Riptide Renegade with this setting and it was very smooth as well. You can play with this number according to how much you game, I, for the most part, don't.
My hypothesis, based on my usage of about 2 months (yeah, i rooted this bad boi about a week from purchase, screw warranty, i'm gonna be alone for life :-( ) is given below >>>>>>
Thermal throttling seems to be due to the M5 cores clocking up like crazy while doing basically nothing. This is probably mostly because Samsung uses their own "energy_step" CPU governor which still needs some work. You can try changing this to schedutil ( which is basically EAS ) and see how it fares. The GPU also ends up underclocking because the GPU has a " joint " governor ( basically ramps up and down with CPU speed to some extent, not entirely sure about this, i may be completely wrong).
I have also have put a battery charge limiter in place at 90% but that doesn't really make a difference. I use my phone quite heavily and at 120Hz but still get about 18 - 20 hours of usage (not 20h screen on time!)if on FULL CHARGE
In fact if you even disable the "BIG" i.g A77 cores, and use only the four A55 "little" ones, it's still good for daily usage. Processing time on the camera takes a bit of a hit, but you can always create a custom profile for that to enable all cores for the camera app. I have my phone skinned with the AOSP-R day/night hex installer theme.
Also huge reasons for rooting :
Tasker > for some insane automation profiles i made
Naptime, Servicely > Free extra battery life
The battery charge limiter to preserve my long term battery life.
Also a GCAM update, the scan3d APKs of BSG are getting rather good. We need to get together an tune the hell out of this sensor to get it to par with the stock camera tho, especially during night. Also no telephoto support, AFAIK. One S20FE confing shall be in the works.
Unrelated shameless self plug : https://www.youtube.com/c/siddharthlh please visit my youtube channel. It does contain some interesting tutorials for tech heads
I'm going to share this thread over on reddit with the army of disgruntled Exytoast users. if this works they will love you as a living god
3mel said:
I'm going to share this thread over on reddit with the army of disgruntled Exytoast users. if this works they will love you as a living god
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe tag me in the post or something I'm siddharth_lh on reddit. I can help out there itself
done...
https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyS20FE/comments/ndnp0s
By "M5 mongoose cores" you mean the ones labeled as "Prime cores"? Just rooted and tried this. Will report back with results.
hectorviov said:
By "M5 mongoose cores" you mean the ones labeled as "Prime cores"? Just rooted and tried this. Will report back with results.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep
bipolar unbound said:
Yep
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you apply these settings?
How's performance and results been?
bipolar unbound said:
Step 1: Straight up disable the M5 mongoose cores. They are Samsung's biggest undoing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What does this do?
Also I dont wanna set the clock speed any lower is that fine?
Cheetah1020 said:
What does this do?
Also I dont wanna set the clock speed any lower is that fine?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you're changing the max frequency via a kernel tweaking app you can simply change it back if you don't like it.
hectorviov said:
By "M5 mongoose cores" you mean the ones labeled as "Prime cores"? Just rooted and tried this. Will report back with results.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How did it go?
Cheetah1020 said:
How did it go?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's been about a week and just 2 days ago I started seeing better battery life. The first 4-5 days were the same as before. I straight up disabled the 2 "prime" cores and the performance is basically the same. Never noticed a hiccup or a slow down. Before I rooted and tried this I was getting about 2.5 hrs SOT before I had to charge and now I'm getting about 3-3.5 hours, just a little more. Seems like less overheating (haven't check temps, just the feeling of it). What I haven't figured out is how to make the change on the GPU frequencies stay, if I set a max, it doesn't cares about it and it still goes above the limit. I'm always using 120 hz on this changes, so I'd say it's worth it.
hectorviov said:
It's been about a week and just 2 days ago I started seeing better battery life. The first 4-5 days were the same as before. I straight up disabled the 2 "prime" cores and the performance is basically the same. Never noticed a hiccup or a slow down. Before I rooted and tried this I was getting about 2.5 hrs SOT before I had to charge and now I'm getting about 3-3.5 hours, just a little more. Seems like less overheating (haven't check temps, just the feeling of it). What I haven't figured out is how to make the change on the GPU frequencies stay, if I set a max, it doesn't cares about it and it still goes above the limit. I'm always using 120 hz on this changes, so I'd say it's worth it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think should wait for Android 12 to see if it gets better if not then I will do this process
Me too. Great tips!
Go to settings and search for "Limit CPU speed to 70%" and turn it on. Normally gives better battery life. Haven't seen any major bottleneck in performance.
adhikraman said:
Go to settings and search for "Limit CPU speed to 70%" and turn it on. Normally gives better battery life. Haven't seen any major bottleneck in performance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Doesnt it affect performance in games and stuff?
Cheetah1020 said:
Doesnt it affect performance in games and stuff?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Haven't experienced any major performance hit in regular usage. Not a heavy gamer so your mileage might vary.
Guys...the last update for Exynos really worked? I've heard about changes in CPU governor that worked!
hectorviov said:
It's been about a week and just 2 days ago I started seeing better battery life. The first 4-5 days were the same as before. I straight up disabled the 2 "prime" cores and the performance is basically the same. Never noticed a hiccup or a slow down. Before I rooted and tried this I was getting about 2.5 hrs SOT before I had to charge and now I'm getting about 3-3.5 hours, just a little more. Seems like less overheating (haven't check temps, just the feeling of it). What I haven't figured out is how to make the change on the GPU frequencies stay, if I set a max, it doesn't cares about it and it still goes above the limit. I'm always using 120 hz on this changes, so I'd say it's worth it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still that§s a really poor battery performance, and now without warranty... I will take my s20fe to samsung and if they wont repair or change it, I will be also forced to root my phone.
My experience rooting S20+ Exynos 990 following this thread:
TL;DR: Added 6-8 hours of standby battery life just from turning off prime and big cores, haven't checked on screen battery life since I don't use my phone much at work, but I wanted standby time improved.
Before turning off the prime and big cores, I got 11 hours tops on battery life. Seemingly out of nowhere the phone was always warm, despite just sitting at my desk with a very strong signal. I knew that at 12 pm, with 50% brightness, 120hz, and AOD I would expect at least 50% just gone even though I barely even used the damn thing. The straw that broke me, is that even though I was connected to wifi, I could only expect maybe at most, 3-4 hours of screen on time, which finally drove me insane. I checked out the thread sometime ago but was skeptical if it really was worth the trouble since it seemed a lengthy process. Take it from someone who hasn't rooted in a long time, just follow the guides and it all is pretty simple.
After turning off the prime and big cores, immediately thermals were so much better, after 3-5 minutes the phone was much cooler, about 5-8 degrees cooler on the chip area. Since the phone was reset, I couldn't really tell if battery was better. After the using my phone for a week rooted I can tell you, the battery difference is abysmal.
Before, I was struggling to end my day on 30-20%, now I can confidently end my day on 60-50%, depending on how much I used my phone. When idle the phone, barely sips battery, my estimate is that it went from 8-10% just idling, to 3-4% (need to check since I haven't turned on the prime cores ever since rooting). I wasn't willing to sacrifice 120hz so I always kept it on and battery life was good, however I will test with Max Hz on 96 hz, which should extend battery life.
Performance on the little cores is virtually the same, I haven't noticed any hiccups, lag or anything by that matter. I was concerned that on this thread it was mentioned that the camera took a hit, but on the S20+ nothing has changed, maybe the shutter is 0.3 seconds slower but I honestly don't notice or it doesn't bother me at all. Recording high resolution videos is no problem, and nothing really changed for me. Thermals are massively improved, if you're doing a heavy task, like recording, downloading or uploading, or something that you know requires heavy lifting, of course the phone will get warm, but not even close to how hot it would get just idling or doing the same tasks with the big or prime cores.
Since I don't play games I can't really say whether gaming has taking a hit or not, I would say that it depends on the game you're playing. You can always create a profile that enables the prime and big cores on FKM.
Overall I can say this, if you have an exynos 990 phone and getting real sucky battery life, rooting is the way to go. This phone just feels so much better with this extended battery life, and now rooting allows me to mod it as I want it or turn off things that weren't useful. Just be warned you will lose Google Pay and some apps from Samsung that use Knox, but for me what you get in return is so much valuable.
Please let me know if you have other questions from rooting the chip.

Categories

Resources