Since the upgrade from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to Ubuntu 18.04, my laptop ASUS k55VM) is overheating and goes to critical temperature shutdown. The temperature varies between 70 and 85°C with doing nothing and then goes up to 95 with watching YouTube videos before shutdown. I have tried to clean fans from dust, blacklisted noveau driver but nothing helped. Finally, I have been successful with searching for workaround that is working for me. The issue here is intel_pstate scaling driver which does not reduce the processor speed when temperature increases.
The driver is not modular and it is built-in with kernel so we cannot unload it. However, we can disable it at boot by editing grub configuration. Firstly, check if your system is using the intel_pstate frequency scaling driver. If not, overheating is not caused by the intel_pstate driver and you need to figure out the cause by yourself.
$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_driver
intel_pstate
intel_pstate
intel_pstate
intel_pstate
intel_pstate
intel_pstate
intel_pstate
intel_pstate
Solution 1 - Disabling intel_pstate at Boot by Editing Grub Configuration
Open /etc/default/grub with editor and locate the line that begins with:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
Add intel_pstate=disable at the end of that string as below.
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash intel_pstate=disable"
Now, execute:
Update grub and reboot the laptop.
$ sudo update-grub
Reboot the laptop and check a driver that is used for frequency scaling.
$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_driver
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq
acpi-cpufreq
Solution 2 - Deactivating Intel Turbo Boost
P State behavior can be also influenced with /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate. Intel Turbo Boost can be deactivated with # echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo for keeping CPU temperatures low. It can be done with the script below.
$ sudo su
# echo '1' > /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo
If it is nreqyuired, you can re-enable Intel Turbo Boost with the script.
$ sudo su
# echo '0' > /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo
End.
References:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1063363/laptop-cpugpu-overheating-after-update-to-18-04-lts/1064534#1064534