monitor-cpu-temperature-set-intel-pstate

Monitor CPU temperature and change /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/max_perf_pct to assist cooling down the CPU.

This script monitors CPU temperature and decreases maximum CPU speed to cool down (this supports cooling when the fans are not strong enough). Relies on intel_pstate kernel module and therefore only works with Intel CPUs.

Once CPU is cooled down, the max. CPU speed will be increased again. This allows dynamic reaction to load, such as viewing videos.

To be combined with thinkfan which controls the fan speed and tlp which controlls the same max_perf_pct and battery saving setting. Tested with Thinkpad T430 i7-3720QM on arch linux.

Installation

• Open root console
• Copy monitor-cpu-temperature-set-intel-pstate.service to /etc/systemd/system/
• Copy monitor-temp.sh to /usr/bin/
• Run chmod +x /usr/bin/monitor-temp.sh so script can be executed
• Run systemctl daemon-reload to reload systemd
• Run systemctl enable monitor-cpu-temperature-set-intel-pstate.service to activate service
• Run systemctl start monitor-cpu-temperature-set-intel-pstate.service to start

Logging

If you want to see it in action, run some CPU-intensive tasks (e.g. open multiple twitch streams at the same time). Then you can monitor max_perf_pct and your CPU temperature like this:

watch -n 1 "cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/max_perf_pct; sensors"

Thinkfan configuration

We use Thinkfan for changing CPU cooling fan speed on Thinkpad 430 with this config /etc/thinkfan.conf

# Thinkfan config for Thinkpad T430 with i7-3720QM
tp_fan /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
hwmon /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon4/temp3_input
hwmon /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon4/temp4_input
hwmon /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon4/temp5_input
hwmon /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon4/temp1_input
hwmon /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon4/temp2_input


(0,	0,	55)
(1,	48,	60)
(2,	50,	61)
(3,	52,	63)
(4,	56,	65)
(5,	59,	66)
(7,	63,     79)
("level full-speed", 75, 32767) # 5000 rpm