X2100 Performance

Last updated: 29052020

I’ve recently received the X2100 boards. Here’s some figures on the boards. I’m primarily testing the stable heat dissipation of the CPU and fan. Please comment below for requests for more benchmarks and I’ll try to attach that in.

Benchmarks

I’ll be using some terms that are abbreviated and specific to CPU tweaking. For more details, refer to this article.

All boards comes with adjustable PL1, PL2, tau and BIOS level undervolting. In short, it’s fully unlocked for tinkerers. As the PL1 can be adjusted, this article will just discuss the PL2 and cooling ability of the fan assembly. All figures here are realistic expectation of this board, without any enhanced cooling or tweaking. The tweaks includes PL1, PL2, tau and undervolt adjustments, which should take average users a few hours to get an optimal figure.

i7-10710U hexacore

These are preliminary benchmarks of the 10710u after a day of tweaking. The fan I used is the upgraded fan, but it’s not the one designed for the 4th batch. Testing was done a bit earlier when I didn’t have the newer fan but it honestly doesn’t matter as I’ll explain below. Expect a similar or better cooling capacity of the unit you’ll receive. The paste I used is the Artic MX-4 with a cooling capacity of 8.5 W/(m*K). No other modifications was made.

TL;DR result: 90mV undervolt, 25w PL1. I guess I received a decent silicon since this thing is able to stay stable at 90mV undervolt. The fan is able to dissipate about 25w of heat with the CPU pinned at close to 100 celsius (expect slightly better results with an upgraded fan). In short, this beast can sustain about 2.7GHz indefinitely on all 6 cores with a modest undervolt and an uncomfortably high temperature.

In reality, I’d expect around a 2.5GHz to 3.0GHz stable PL1 across the range of 10710u boards. With a slightly better fan, I’d also expect a lower temperature at ~95C at 25w. Since PL2 and tau can be tweaked, the CPU can be adjusted to enable a 35w or greater power for 5s to 10s of burst speeds. I’ll not talk about PL2 (and other power levels) for benchmarks since it’s completely pointless.

In terms of benchmark, this thing benches really well. Cinebench R20 gives about ~2.4K average. Geekbench results can be seen here. Here are 3 laptops that you can refer to for performance comparisons: XPS13, Intel NUC, MSI and a 10710u article. Given that all these scores (~2.5K) are not at PL1 level, the 2.4K sustained on the X2100 is above average (probably the fastest) compared to laptops of the same league. As usual, I’m not gonna bother with PL2 (and other power levels) since you can tweak it for a higher test result. What’s more important here is the sustained performance and the ability of the cooling system, and synthetics here reveals it’s one of the fastest hexacore 12″/13″ laptops around.

In an ideal scenario, a 35W PL2, <10s tau and 22W PL1 should give you a very snappy experience. Further tweak PL3, PL4, undervolt for better performance.

i7-10510U quadcore

For this test, I’m using the same Artic MX-4 with a cooling capacity of 8.5 W/(m*K). However, the fan is the fan that I’m shipping out (with a very slight design update). From tests, the 10510u is marginally cooler than the 10710u.

TL;DR: With an undervolt of 90mV, 28W PL2 gives about 95C on Aida64. At a more conservative 25w PL1, temperature is about ~90C after an hour of stress test. Cinebench R20 multicore gives about a ~1500 average on 25W PL1. At 25W PL1, the CPU can maintain around ~3.7GHz clock speed indefinitely.

The 10510u is slightly cooler than the 10710u and performance is great. Feel free to check out this article on the 10510u and benchmarks of it on other laptops. At PL1 of 25W, it’s able to attain about ~1500 on cinebench multicore, putting it ahead of every other 12″/13″ laptops. As PL2 (and other power levels) can be tweaked, I won’t be discussing the burst performance.

Ideally, setting a 35W PL2 and a <10s tau should give you a very snappy everyday experience. The 25W PL1 should also give an excellent gaming/rendering/VM performance.

Warning

As the BIOS is completely unlocked, there’s a very real risk of frying your motherboard. There is at least 1 person who reported a fried mosfet after a 35W PL1 stability test for >10min. For most users, there is absolutely no need to go above 20W-25W PL1. I’m looking into shipping the boards with a locked lower TDP for safer operation but the unlocked BIOS will always be available. If you do want to tweak and push this system, any damages will not be covered under warranty.

DO NOT EXCEED THE SUGGESTED TDP FOR PL1 UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING. ANY DAMAGES DUE TO PL1/UNDERVOLTING OR OTHER EXTREME TWEAKING WILL NOT BE COVERED WARRANTY. THERE IS A VERY REAL RISK OF BOARD DAMAGE IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING. PLEASE BE SENSIBLE WHEN TWEAKING POWER AND PERFORMANCE SETTINGS. LEAVE IT AT STOCK SETTINGS FOR A SAFE OPERATION.