Reduce clock speed during high load conditions
Reduce clock speed during high load conditions
Laptop: Acer Nitro 5 AN515-55 SNID: 11002133634 CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-10750H CPU @ 2.60GHz (4,20 GHz max) RAM: 32 GB @ 3200 MHz GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX3060 (85w) Windows 11 Home x64 BIOS version: V2.06 As mentioned in the title, my processor slows down under load. This issue has persisted for some time, but I've managed to cope with it. Recently switching to Windows 11 hasn't resolved the matter—I've experienced this problem for about six months while using Windows 10. Initially, the system would automatically throttle to 1.80 GHz right after booting, returning to normal after a restart. After two weeks, the issue disappeared temporarily. About a month later, whenever I launched resource-heavy applications—even games like War Thunder that only use around 60% CPU—I saw the speed drop from 4.20 GHz to about 3.70 GHz and stay there. Restarting the PC didn't help, and this has persisted for five months now. Updating drivers, cleaning RAM, changing thermal paste hasn't fixed it. I also adjusted energy plan settings without success.
I've observed something odd: the fan speed reported by the Nitro Sense app appears to lag behind the CPU temperature, even though I suspect that's not the main concern. Previously, during gaming, the CPU would reach up to 90°C, and fans would spin at full capacity. Now, it rarely hits 80°C or 70°C, and the fans don't reach high speeds even when needed. According to later posts, a single core seems to overheat more than others, which isn't visible in Nitro Sense or other monitoring tools.
Another strange occurrence is that despite reaching its maximum speed of 4.20 GHz, the performance fluctuates wildly—jumping between 3.90 and 4.45 GHz and staying there. This instability continues even after a short stress test. The screenshots below from CPU-Z illustrate these rapid changes.
Please share any advice or solutions that might help.