How can I throttle the CPU Power in Ubuntu to prevent over heating?

Ubuntu
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This is my 1st post here and I’m a newbie to Ubuntu.

I’m running a CPU intensive application on my Ubuntu LTS 20.04 that has a 4 core, 8 thread Intel Xeon processor.

Is there an application or Terminal Command that will allow me to adjust the overall maximum processor power state to the CPU?

Reason I ask is the application I’m running pushes the CPU usage to 100%. There is a setting that allows me to limit the number of threads being used. I have set this to a single thread, but because the software still runs at 100%, it overheats and the system shuts down ungracefully. What I need is a way to limit the overall maximum processor state to prevent over heating across all cores & threads.

I’m in need of the equivalent functionality to what Windows provides in it’s “Power Options” dialogue box (see below)
Power-options-Windows

Does anyone have any ideas whether this is possible in Ubuntu? Thanks in advance.

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I’ve used that a lot and it works well. Though, you have to specificy a specific program which should be throttled. As far as I know, it does not work globally for the whole OS.

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3

The answer may lay in your AC power adapter. I found I was using a original AC adapter rated @ 65watts for a Lenovo 310 Desktop with 4G ram and 1T to be inadequate when I updated memory to 8G and installed a Nvidva 370. Every time I used FireFox, my CPU fan would wail like a siren.

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Hi @StableGenius , Thanks for this tip. You got me thinking as I did upgrade my Lenovo M93p Tiny (Tiny Desktop) from 8GB to 12GB DDR3 RAM and swapped the traditional HDD 7200 rpm (Seagate) with a Samsung EVO SSD. Hence I may need to upgrade my AC Adapter.

But before I do that, is anyone aware of some software for Ubuntu that measures the Power usage (Watts) similar to this Windows app (see below - red boxed areas)

SysInfo-PowerWatts-FanSpeed
SysInfo-PowerWatts-FanSpeed1079×469 275 KB

If I can somehow measure the Power used (Watts) I can then determine if my AC Adapter needs upgrading. Thanks in advance.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: How can I measure real-time Power usage (Watts) of my Ubuntu desktop PC?

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Hi MV02, I was able to swap over the AC adapter to 120 W and the CPU seems to run quieter than before. From various Open Source software that monitors processes and memory usage (KDE’s widget Memory status or Stacer) I’m using less (1.1 GIB) and no Swap memory. I didn’t find any answer to your question about software that reads electrical stats though, good luck.

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