Limit CPU

Woden · 28 Mar 2012 at 20:34

A friend of mine is converting some video for youtube and its making her laptop run rather hot.

Is there a way to limit its CPU usage in Windows 7?

Pho · 28 Mar 2012 at 21:12

Set the Maximum Processor State.

(I think the 'balanced' power mode tends to use this as standard, so just switch to that)

j.col · 28 Mar 2012 at 22:16

Also can you not limit the process priority in the program?
When i use DVDFlick, i can set the process priority to High, Medium and Low.
Obviously running it on low, will limit the processor, but will also increase the converting time.
Place the lappy on a table, and point a table fan at it until its finished

Woden · 28 Mar 2012 at 22:38

j.col said:
Also can you not limit the process priority in the program?
When i use DVDFlick, i can set the process priority to High, Medium and Low.
Obviously running it on low, will limit the processor, but will also increase the converting time.
Place the lappy on a table, and point a table fan at it until its finished

I honestly don't know. She's not very tech minded with computers. Not computer illiterate but doesnt know what you dont usually have to. She really does want to learn more though.

I'll get her to look.

[edit] Its VideoWave, it comes with the Roxio cap card.

Sin_Chase · 28 Mar 2012 at 23:14

Video encoding is a 100% usage affair. It will get hot.

Is the heat causing a problem? If not....what is the issue?

Woden · 28 Mar 2012 at 23:16

I think she is more worried than anything else.

To be honest she might be best sending it to me to do on this machine.

iviv · 29 Mar 2012 at 00:02

Windows will throttle the CPU before it gets hot enough to damage itself, won't it?

Philtor · 29 Mar 2012 at 00:04

Sin_Chase said:
Video encoding is a 100% usage affair. It will get hot.

Is the heat causing a problem? If not....what is the issue?

This.

Sin_Chase · 29 Mar 2012 at 01:42

Woden said:
I think she is more worried than anything else.

To be honest she might be best sending it to me to do on this machine.

The CPU will throttle and at worst case the system will either crash or force turn off before she breaks anything.

As long as she is not using it on a bed mattress/sofa and blocking the exhaust openings it will be fine.

At worst it will get a bit loud from the fans but the CPU is matched to the chassis and thermal dissipation it's cooling solution provides. It's designed to deal with it and probably has headroom for more anyway.

TheVoice · 29 Mar 2012 at 01:50

iviv said:
Windows will throttle the CPU before it gets hot enough to damage itself, won't it?

Windows doesn't monitor system temperatures, but the BIOS should be.

Tell her to prop the rear of the notebook up using some coasters or something, even a couple of centimetres can result in a significant drop in temperatures as more air is able to get to the vents underneath.

bledd · 29 Mar 2012 at 15:04

elevate latpop whilst encoding
get a coolmat
use compressed aircan to get rid of dust
take apart laptop, remove dust and apply better cooling paste

-work on them from top to bottom, I've ordered them in 'if I can be bothered order'

paradigm · 29 Mar 2012 at 15:35

j.col said:
Also can you not limit the process priority in the program?

That'll do diddly squat. All the process priority does is allow processes to either be higher or lower priority than others. If the laptop is doing nothing other than encoding, even on low it will use 100% CPU, at least until something else requests some CPU time, then it will relinquish this as it's on low priority.

j.col said:
Obviously running it on low, will limit the processor

It won't.