Limit CPU frequency to reduce temperature

VIM4 Ubuntu
1

Which version of system do you use? Khadas official images, self built images, or others?

vim4-ubuntu-24.04-server-linux-5.15-fenix-1.7.4-250423-emmc.img.xz

Please describe your issue below:

High board temperature, 80-85 degrees in a closed case with passive cooling.

Could you please assist me in finding a solution to limit the CPU frequency or otherwise reduce performance in order to reduce the board operating temperature to 60-65 degrees?

2

@wmdumb you can try changing the CPU governor to not run in performance, try running it ondemand to scale the CPU frequency when there isn’t much load, you’ll need to use the following command:

$ echo ondemand | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor

Cheers

1 Like
3

alternatively you can try disabling a few of the cores eg:
echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/online
echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/online
echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu4/online
echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu5/online

But this may not help

4

This will definitely reduce general power consumption in idle running conditions, or with infrequent tasks, but in hindsight when re-engaging the system with more tasks it puts more pressure on the online cores and drives up power draw. I’ve tested this with the VIM3 earlier, it’s better off letting the SMP cores do their thing at reduced clock rate.