X1 Carbon 9th generation throttling

Support
1

I have a new lenovo x1 carbon 9th generation.

Tthe inxi -Fx is at the bottom of this post.

The problem is with thermal throttling. When I run s-tui stress
test the system works fine for about a minute, with temps just
below 100C.

Suddenly, the cpu frequency drops to 400 (all cores) then slowly
returns to 2400 and temp stabilizes at about 60C.

Obviously, I want the system to run as fast as possible at up to 100C.

The i7-1165G7 has been locked by intel apparently to it is impossible
to change voltages etc.

But one would hope that the cpu could run at a safe (100C) maximum.

As it stands, my new x1 is slower than my old x1 6th generation that
happily runs at 3300 Mhz forever (thanks to lenovo_fix).

Is there any hope for the x1 9th generation, or is it just a dog?

System: Host: elrond Kernel: 5.11.10-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.0 Console: tty pts/3
Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux
Machine: Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 20XW003GUS v: ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 serial: PF2PLH7L
Mobo: LENOVO model: 20XW003GUS v: SDK0J40697 WIN serial: L2HF13405ZG UEFI: LENOVO v: N32ET47W (1.23 )
date: 03/26/2021
Battery: ID-1: BAT0 charge: 41.7 Wh (72.4%) condition: 57.6/57.0 Wh (101.1%) volts: 16.5 min: 15.4
model: Celxpert 5B10W13974 status: Unknown
CPU: Info: Quad Core model: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Tiger Lake rev: 1 cache:
L2: 12 MiB
flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 44864
Speed: 400 MHz max: 400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 400 2: 884 3: 964 4: 400 5: 915 6: 886 7: 974 8: 864
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
Graphics: Device-1: Intel Iris Xe Graphics vendor: Lenovo driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0
Device-2: Syntek Integrated Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 3-4:3
Display: server: X.org 1.20.10 driver: loaded: intel unloaded: modesetting
Message: Advanced graphics data unavailable for root.
Audio: Device-1: Intel Tiger Lake-LP Smart Sound Audio vendor: Lenovo driver: sof-audio-pci bus-ID: 00:1f.3
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.11.10-1-MANJARO running: yes
Sound Server-2: JACK v: 0.125.0 running: no
Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes
Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.24 running: no
Network: Device-1: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel port: 3000 bus-ID: 00:14.3
IF: wlp0s20f3 state: up mac: 84:5c:f3:ea:e9:08
Bluetooth: Device-1: Intel type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 3-10:4
Report: This feature requires one of these tools: hciconfig/bt-adapter
Drives: Local Storage: total: 953.87 GiB used: 328.41 GiB (34.4%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Toshiba model: N/A size: 953.87 GiB temp: 32.9 C
Partition: ID-1: / size: 865.96 GiB used: 328.41 GiB (37.9%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p7
ID-2: /boot/efi size: 499 MiB used: 308 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/nvme0n1p6
Swap: ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 7.32 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/nvme0n1p5
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 45.0 C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 5454
Info: Processes: 229 Uptime: 23h 26m Memory: 15.36 GiB used: 3.67 GiB (23.9%) Init: systemd Compilers: gcc: 10.2.0
Packages: 1288 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.0 inxi: 3.3.03

2

Did you disable throttling?

cpupower frequency-set -g performance

There is also a GUI:

pamac install cpupower-gui
3

I used tlp to set cpu governor to performance and energy policy to performance.

this made no difference to the throttling after 1 minute problem … ;(

4

I’m not being sarcastic here, but a slim laptop not letting you run the cpu at the boiling temperature of water is doing you a big favor. 100C is not an acceptable temperature in this scenario, maybe, just faintly maybe, on a desktop with real cooling surrounding the cpu, but at that point, your cooling is failing anyway so it’s not likely you would hit those temps on a mobo.

Score 1 for lenovo thinkpads, lol. Even 60C I consider quite hot in a laptop, and in particularly, an ultra thin laptop that has no real way to efficiently get rid of that much heat. What you are witnessing is good engineering, first, they throttle the cpu to avoid laptop self immolation, and because it’s a very thin laptop, they keep it throttled until the system is able to return to a safe temperature.

The idea that you actually want your cpu to be running that hot inside of a slim body with no way to remove that heat, which must fairly soon destroy your laptop indicates to me a pretty strong confusion about what heat is and how it impacts circuits. I’d thank lenovo if I were you for not letting you do what you want to do.

5

There’s a lot of good in what you say.
But as I said, the 6th gen x1 carbon leaves this up to the user. Sometimes,
I would like high power for more than 1 minute (not for hours).
I guess it depends if you like to have choice about how you use
your own hardware or have it dictated.
Interesting in Windows (this is a dual boot) the machine cycles back to full power whereas in linux it sits at 2400 mhz and about 60C. That is, in Windows after the cpu drops below 60C at 400mhz it jumps back to 3900mhz and heads for 100C again. Quite different thermal management philosophies though maybe the linux model makes more sense.