DELL runs at half speed after 25mins

[qwertyjjj]

I have a DELL Inspiron 9300 about 6 years old with Ubuntu installed.
When I first start up the computer it runs at 1.73GHz on the Performance setting.
After around 25mins, it throttles down to 800 and will not increase.
I have tried turning off the CPU daemons in Ubuntu and it does the same so something is setting it to its lowest setting and not letting it throttle up again. I have to turn it off for 5mins and then boot it up again to 1.73.

Speedstep is enabled in the BIOS. I cannot disable it as otherwise it would run at 800 permanently.
I have cleaned out the dust from the heatsinks and temps are between 45 and 57 when running, which seems fine.

Any ideas what else I could try?

 

[rolli59]

Well Speed step is supposed to work the other way, throttle down the CPU when not under load. It sounds like you are experiencing thermal throttling, laptops can gather dust and lint in their cooling ducts just as desktops do.

 

[qwertyjjj]

Well Speed step is supposed to work the other way, throttle down the CPU when not under load. It sounds like you are experiencing thermal throttling, laptops can gather dust and lint in their cooling ducts just as desktops do.

I cleaned it a few days ago.
LAptop never gets hotter than 58 and then the half fan comes on and cools it to 45 within 10-20 seconds.

 

[qwertyjjj]

The problem I have is that Notebook Hardware control on Windows was able to push it up to 1.73 - maybe it did this through voltage control or something.
Under Linux, there does not seem to be a similar porgram.
So, what are my options as I really do not want to use Windows on the laptop anymore.
Do I have to overclock it or something?

 

[geekapproved]

Speedstep is enabled in the BIOS. I cannot disable it as otherwise it would run at 800 permanently.

I think you confused about what speedstep is. If you disabled speedstep, it would never run at 800, but I wouldn't disable speedstep, u want it to clock down to save battery.

Are you sure that when your running a stress program that the speed isn't going up to 1.73? Run a stress program while you have Coretemp running and you'll see.

 

[qwertyjjj]

Speedstep is enabled in the BIOS. I cannot disable it as otherwise it would run at 800 permanently.

I think you confused about what speedstep is. If you disabled speedstep, it would never run at 800, but I wouldn't disable speedstep, u want it to clock down to save battery.

Are you sure that when your running a stress program that the speed isn't going up to 1.73? Run a stress program while you have Coretemp running and you'll see.

My BIOS says Speedstep ENabled / Disabled. "If you select the disabled option, your computer will run at the lowest speed setting". ALso, I don;t use the battery, I only use AC for my laptop. The battery is old and only has about 20% capacity anyway.

Seriously though, I've tried everything, the computer is locked to 800 after 25mins for no reason, it will not increase no matter how many video programs, or other stress programs are used. In Ubuntu it says the speed is to be regulated between 800 and 800 whereas when I first start the same thing says between 800 and 1.73. In Windows I had to use NHC just to increase the speed to max so it seems something is either wrong with speedstep or with a temperature sensor maybe?