ThrottleStop help with CPU not throttling down?

Hoping ThrottleStop can help with an issue I have on a few Dell laptops.

When running on battery the CPU will idle at 0.80Ghz to 1.2Ghz, the laptop is cool, quiet, and gets pretty good battery life.

When plugged in, the CPU won't idle below 1.5Ghz. The laptop heats up and the fan turns on. I'm typically in a quiet office/room so even at a low speed, I can hear the fan. Was plugged into Dell Thuderbolt TB16 dock all day today and the fan never turned off - even with no apps open.

My non-scientific test is that I keep Task Manager open, and plug in the power. Power comes from a USB-C charger or dock cables (USB-C or Thunderbolt all Dell branded). The CPU will immediately go up to 1.5Ghz+ and the fan turns on. Unplug from power and the CPU throttles down, the laptop cools down, fan gets quiet, then fan turns off.

Seen some people in other forums mention they used ThrottleStop, but never gave much info. I have set up under-volting on both Performance (-49.8) and Battery (-80.1) settings in TS.

 

You might want to post this in the ThrottleStop forum, with more specific information concerning the processor and configuration. In the meantime, check to see if Speed Shift is enabled. Also, there is a thread in the Windows forum on increasing battery life. A careful review of software running in the background may tell you what is going on. One other point - you may have power settings configured for passive cooling on battery. That will make it quiet, but will significantly decrease performance. Finally, I would check to make sure dust is not blocking airflow.
Let us know what you find.
Joe

 

First, what generation of (Intel?) CPU are you running? Second, check you package C states in TS while idling on desktop and plugged into your dock, then unplug from dock and check (because of Dell quirks/bugs/features, you may need to shut down then restart and give your machine time to settle before checking package C states again). If your CPU generation is new enough, idling at high clock speeds has no power/heat penalty (or extremely minimal at least). On my Dell 7577, plugging in my monitor via Thunderbolt prevents package C states deeper than C2, which can definitely contribute to some heat.

Bottom line is though, ThrottleStop can display how much power (in watts) your machine is consuming at any given moment which is much more of an indicator of how your machine will heat up than CPU clock speed is.