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Sometimes, my laptop will suddenly start performing very poorly. I thought it might be overheating, so I checked HWMonitor and saw that the temperatures were fine. What I did see however is that the clock rate had stepped itself down to 399 MHz.

HWMonitor Screenshot

I've seen the clock rate move up and down based on load before, but it seems that once it gets down to 399 MHz, it never recovers regardless of load.

What would cause this to happen? How can I fix it? Rebooting seems to be the only fix.

I've had the laptop for about a month and didn't notice this problem until a week ago. No Windows updates or software changes occurred during that time, as far as I've been able to tell based on logs.

Edit: Power plan is set to the default "balanced" plan, and this is all happening while I'm plugged in on a docking station.

Power Options

Edit #2: I stumbled across ThrottleStop which indicates that the problem is "PL 1". Temperatures are within tolerances. Is this power limit a physical limitation? If not, any way to increase it (provided I stay within thermal limits, of course)?

ThrottleStop PL 1

Edit 3: Some solid discussion here on the problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/8flj0i/t480_power_limit_throttles_down_to_5_watts_on/

Brad
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  • What power plans do you have enabled – Ramhound Jul 14 '18 at 23:23
  • @Ramhound It's set up for "balanced". Posted a screen shot of that. I'm plugged in. – Brad Jul 14 '18 at 23:26
  • Also, note that I see the system regularly going up and down as I use it. It's just that sometimes, all cores drop to 399 MHz and stay there. At the moment, they're bouncing from ~800 MHz to ~4.2 GHz somewhat randomly. – Brad Jul 14 '18 at 23:27
  • Switch to High Performance instead. – Ramhound Jul 14 '18 at 23:33
  • @Ramhound The machine overheats pretty rapidly if I do this and force it to run at the high frequency all the time. :-) Besides, I didn't need to put it at high performance before. And, the performance is actually great for many minutes, sometimes hours, until *something* happens and then it drops and stays low. It acts like it's overheated but hasn't, and it should come back after that, but doesn't. – Brad Jul 14 '18 at 23:35
  • Laptops shouldn’t overheat. If your laptop is overheating then your issue is caused by thermal throttling. Take the time to verify there isn’t dust in the laptop and airflow isn’t restricted. I actually own several Lenovo devices – Ramhound Jul 14 '18 at 23:37
  • @Ramhound Sure, they shouldn't, but you clearly haven't owned a Lenovo made in the last 5 years have you. :-) And no, my issue is *not* caused by thermal throttling, as you can see in the screenshot. That's what it acts like it's doing, but such throttling shouldn't be occurring at 56C. – Brad Jul 14 '18 at 23:38
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/80174/discussion-between-ramhound-and-brad). – Ramhound Jul 14 '18 at 23:39

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