Developer finds tuned profile, not kernel bug, was pinning laptop CPU at max speed
A developer noticed their HP EliteBook 840 G2 was running its Intel Core i5-5300U CPU at maximum turbo frequency (2900 MHz) continuously, even at idle, causing temperatures of 83–88°C and over 115,000 thermal throttle events in roughly two hours. Investigation of kernel sysfs data revealed that both scaling_min_freq and scaling_max_freq were locked to the CPU's maximum value, forcing the processor to run at full turbo with no room to scale down. The developer initially suspected a bug in the Linux kernel's intel_pstate driver and prepared a Bugzilla report, but kernel documentation clarified this was not a kernel defect. The root cause was traced to the tuned throughput-performance profile applied at boot, which had set min_perf_pct to 100, effectively pinning the CPU performance floor at its maximum. Removing or adjusting that tuned profile resolved the issue and allowed normal frequency scaling to resume.
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