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I have a problem with my laptop. It overheats.
In Windows 7 I use 80% Maximum Power State under power options to workaround the issue.

Is there a similar solution available for Ubuntu?
Can I set my maximum processor power state somehow to 80%?

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  • What about using a laptop cooling pad, best you can get for a decent price, maybe SH bought from resellers.
    – Taz D.
    Apr 8, 2014 at 20:53

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Have you installed the latest microde for your CPU. It is very useful for laptops and all the other computers with newest CPUs. If your CPU is from Intel, you need to install intel-microcode package and also microcode.ctl package, and there is a different package for Amd CPUs named amd64-microcode.

This is a good tutorial showing you how to properly update Ubuntu to the latest microcode package.

Once you install this microcode package, you should see after reboot some improvements for your CPU temperatures. Next you can visit this page to learn how to properly deal with CPU overheating and CPU power control by installing and testing one or more software packages as suggested in that link. Please read the comments to the article too because they can provide you with other reliable alternate solutions for your problem.

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  • While the tip is great for overheating in general, his laptop is faulty. So microcodes won't help here I think.
    – Apache
    Apr 8, 2014 at 20:02
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Information on CPU states:
The states in Windows have no exact results.
What I mean is... you cannot set a CPU to 80%.
They only have a few steps, like 4 or maybe 5.

And they can also go sleeping, modern CPUs can park cores... the list goes on.

You can solve this two ways.


First, the easiest, but dumbest.
sudo apt-get install indicator-cpufreq

You will get a nice indicator, where you can switch to power-saving mode.
Indeed, this is not 80% or x% you wanted, but this is the easiest.

Second, define your own percentages.
You will need to get your hands dirty for this. Not that much, though.
First, you have to edit your /etc/cpufreqd.conf file with your favourite tool.
Like so: sudo gedit /etc/cpufreqd.conf

Here is an example - do NOT use this, just use it as a base:
http://pastebin.com/aEm3cgYM - It's from ThinkWiki

Please note, that I have no means to test out the second one.
(I will edit my answer when I verified it.)

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