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I want to be able to substantially throttle down the CPU on my desktop, which due to space constraints is in our bedroom and the wife is suspending it each night because of the fan noise.

I've tried playing with all the power options, including Passive vs Active mode, Min/Max CPU, ensuring power management is enabled, etc., but nothing makes the CPU dip at all (I'm watching it with Resource Monitor and CPU-Z).

Has anyone seen this before and/or have some idea of how to get it to work as I want?

UPDATE: as a follow up, my ultimate settings would be: throttle the CPU substantially at all times except during the day if a user is logged in and actively interacting with the desktop. Is this possible in Windows? I figure looking at the Task Scheduler to change Power Plans might be the best I can do.

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  • Have you checked the BIOS settings? I've not tried to reduce the performance of my processor, but I have messed around with fan speed stuff using almico.com/speedfan.php - for this to do it's job, I have to set BIOS settings to allow it. It doesn't seem to directly detect that the BIOS is controlling the fan otherwise - it can still try to regulate the fan speed, but the fan just keeps doing what the BIOS tells it to do. Speedfan can get the fan speed right down to zero on my system, whereas the BIOS will only drop the speed to about half no matter how cool it's running.
    – user31438
    Oct 26, 2011 at 10:29
  • Thanks for the tip on Speedfan, I'll check that out. The BIOS on this system feels like it is locked in a Basic mode, though I suspect it doesn't actually have an Advanced mode. There are no settings around CPU speed/throttling or even much around power management. This is a HP (first off-the shelf I've bought... getting too old for DIY :-) due to lack of time).
    – Kazen
    Oct 26, 2011 at 10:34
  • Some systems probably lock out a lot of stuff to avoid returns from people who fried their processor not knowing what they were doing etc. I nearly fried my processor running speedfan - I thought I'd got it starting on boot, but the machine was suspiciously quiet while running all four cores near 100% video-encoding - good job I noticed and checked. Having to set it up to start on boot manually is possibly the worst thing about the program. Anyway, it may be worth doing some research - there may be a way to unlock some advanced options.
    – user31438
    Oct 26, 2011 at 10:56

3 Answers 3

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Go to settings - control panel - power settings Choose a power setting to change, the one you want as your throttled CPU setting, then go to "change advanced power settings". In the box that appears, scroll down to "processor power management". You can then choose the maximum % you wish to run the CPU at and even choose passive cooling if you wish which will prefer to slow the CPU rather than run the fan where possible

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I use this. At the expense of some CPU slowdown of course, slower, but quiet! It keeps working silently in the background.

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  • It may work for some people but when I tried to run WinThrottle unfortunately it died with a DLL loading error. The Delphi source code is part of the download so may be I'll have time one day to debug it.
    – LMSingh
    Aug 23, 2015 at 1:22
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I've tried playing with all the power options, including Passive vs Active mode, Min/Max CPU, ensuring power management is enabled, etc., but nothing makes the CPU dip at all (I'm watching it with Resource Monitor and CPU-Z).

That is normal, and a common misunderstanding of how Windows’ CPU throttling works.

You can set the maximum CPU load by adjusting the Maximum CPU State setting and the system will then reduce its capabilities to act like it has a slower CPU.

It sounds like you were expecting the CPU load level to be capped and no longer reach the top of the graph. This is not what is happening. Rather, when you throttle the CPU, the graph is recalculated so that the top is now set to whatever percentage of the CPU’s full power you set it to. Therefore, if you are running a program that puts 100% load on the CPU, the monitor will not show the load lower than before, it will still show it at 100% on the graph because it is still using 100% of the CPU, it’s just that the CPU’s maximum has been reduced.

Think of it as one of those telescopic travel-cups; you can adjust how big or small it is by changing how many rings are up. Regardless of how big or small the cup may be, filling it up will still make it full; you are simply redefining what “full” means.

Run a temperature-monitoring program like SpeedFan, then run a program that puts 100% load on the CPU. Naturally, you will see the temperature rise. Then you can adjust the Maximum CPU State setting and watch as the temperature drops. You can lower it more and see the temperature fall further. If you then increase the max state, the temperature will go up a corresponding amount.

If you also set it to passive cooling, then after a while, the laptop should no longer make any noise.

However, you will also want to reduce the CPU load as well because by throttling the CPU, you are making it so that whatever work the programs are trying to do will take longer because there is not as much processing power available. You should try to eliminated as many programs as possible so that whatever you are running at night will be able to finish quicker. (If you are not running anything and it’s idling all night, then you should just put the computer to sleep at night for numerous reasons.)

Telescopic travel cup

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