The way Intel’s Turbo Boost works makes temperature monitoring more confusing than it usually is on a desktop processor. My desktop CPU never gets above 85C unless there’s something wrong
I’d like to have an alert if thermal throttling is occurring, so I know the reason for the slowdown right away. However, I have googled “thermal throttling alert” and so far, I’ve only found software that alerts at a fixed temperature threshold, rather than alerting if the CPU is in thermal throttling mode.
There are two reasons I’d like a warning:
- Presumably, if there were ever a problem with my fan or the heatsink was clogged with dust, it may get to the point of thermal shutdown which I presume would be a hard power cut and not a “software shutdown” therefore it would lose unsaved data. If I had a warning I’d have the chance to save whatever I can, quit to desktop, then click shut down so it will hopefully shut down properly.
2: If I wasn’t aware of a thermal issue due to not getting a warning, I might be troubleshooting other causes of slowdowns first. Unfortunately, if I let it hit the throttling limit over and over again without realizing it, well, that would shorten the life of the motherboard, and I want to make it last as long as it can. If I got a warning I’d check the cooling system or make sure I didn’t have the laptop on the wrong surface. Or, if I were sharing the laptop with someone else and THEY put it on the wrong surface, most I know would at least let me know if the laptop showed a message saying it was overheating.
So has anyone had good experience with a software program that, among other things, can alert to thermal throttling?
Alternately, if I knew what temperature triggered thermal throttling below stock speed, I could set an alert threshold to that.