throttlestop

Simple tool to manage thermal behaviour on Linux for Intel CPUs with a MSR.

Disclaimer

If this tool works, great! However, no guarantees are made that it won't hasten the heat death of the universe through the spontaneous combustion of your CPU.

Installation

Requires msr-tools: sudo apt install msr-tools

Install tool with sudo pip3 install throttlestop

Install service with 30 second interval and 4 minute delay using sudo throttlestop-install-service -i 30s -d 4min, and configure the service using the interactive prompt (it will find the python binary with sys.executable):

Enter systemd configuration lines:
/usr/bin/python3 -m throttlestop voltage "{\"cache\": -149, \"cpu\": -149}"
/usr/bin/python3 -m throttlestop temperature "{\"offset\": 20}"
/usr/bin/python3 -m throttlestop # Hit return to exit
Finished configuring service!

Activate service with

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable throttlestop
systemctl start throttlestop
systemctl enable throttlestop.timer
systemctl start throttlestop.timer

API

sudo throttlestop SECTION [JSON-STRING],

where SECTION is one of (tdp, voltage, temperature). Provide JSON JSON-STRING argument to set the SECTION value, or omit it to read (as a JSON string).

The JSON-STRING is applied as a delta to the output of the command, which can be obtained using sudo throttlestop SECTION

Inspired by:

• https://github.com/mihic/linux-intel-undervolt
• https://gist.github.com/Mnkai/5a8edd34bd949199224b33bd90b8c3d4
• https://github.com/razvanlupusoru/Intel-RAPL-via-Sysfs/blob/master/README.txt#L112 (Though the scheme is incorrect)
• https://github.com/georgewhewell/undervolt