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I'm using a Thinkpad T14 gen1 AMD, with Ryzen 4750U processor. The power plan is set to "Balanced" already, but I noticed the CPU frequency is always near the max turbo frequency and the machine gets very noisy and hot when plugged in, even under light load. enter image description here

Then I checked the advanced power settings and found the "minimum power state" is set to 80%, which is the default. I reduced it to 50% and the machine quiets and cools down, but the CPU frequency remains high. Now the machine is cooler in "Performance" mode than before in "Balanced" mode. enter image description here

So I have these questions:

  1. Is CPU frequency scaling no longer the primary way of reducing power? Do contemporary processors use C state and clock gating instead? (when not on battery?) So I should not look at CPU frequency in order to know CPU power state?

  2. Does 80% minimum power state make sense? Why Windows choose such a default? Or is this value dictated by the laptop manufacturer (Lenovo)? I understand maintaining a high frequency improve system responsiveness, but it also accumulates heat, which limits the boost frequency and reduce system responsiveness under short burst load. On my machine, setting minimum power state to default 80% makes the "Best Performance" mode nearly unusable, because heat accumulation already situates the heat sink when the system is idle, so the processor triggers thermal protection soon after the load rises and let alone any frequency boost.

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  • @Ramhound I'm OK with max state=100% and that's not a problem, because my workload is not continuous. I reduced the minimum state so that the laptop can cool down when there is little to no load (when min state=80% the machine is very hot even when it's idling). In theory the CPU should clock down when it's idling (e.g. ~1.6Ghz) and that's the behavior I'm used to (since the SpeedStep of Pentium 3). Commented yesterday
  • @Ramhound I wasn't complaining the utilization was high. I was complaining the frequency is high at low load(3+Ghz at less than 10% utilization). Cpu frequency was usually half the maximum frequency at idle but now that has changed. Commented yesterday
  • First, only a single specific question per post, because we need to be able to select a single specific answer as the correct one. You can make more than one post to post related questions that are not close enough to be the same. Second, the defaults are usually set by the OEM, but there's no rule you have to keep them. Have you checked for and installed the latest available system firmware and drivers? While I don't usually recommend OEM bloatware, especially w/ Lenovo, this may have some PM preset updates that may be worth considering. Commented 13 hours ago

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