cinnamon-applet-IntelTurboBoost

Description

cinnamon-applet-IntelTurboBoost is a simple systray applet designed for Cinnamon desktop environments.

Intel Turbo Boost© is a remarkable technology, yet there are numerous reports on the Internet regarding potential instability, ranging from system crashes to thermal throttling.

Most of the time these issues are related to the motherboard, not the processor itself. In my case the root cause was a well known issue regarding my motherboard VRM. Budget motherboards...

Until I discovered and fixed my issue I had to disable Intel Turbo Boost© at BIOS whenever I wanted to have a stable system for critical tasks.

This applet simplifies the process of enabling or disabling Intel Turbo Boost© while your system is running, eliminating the need for a full system reboot. If you are struggling with Intel Turbo Boost©, here are some scenarios in which you might consider disabling the feature (for the moment at least):

• Banking applications.
• Avoiding thermal throttling.
• Achieving extreme power savings.

Important: Please be aware that if Intel Turbo Boost© is disabled at the BIOS level, this applet cannot override those settings. It serves as a convenient in-session toggle for Intel Turbo Boost©.

Disclaimer

This tool may potentially cause damage to your hardware due to its use of reverse-engineered methods involving Model Specific Registers (MSRs). Use it at your own risk.

Processors Tested

These are the processors the applet was successfully tested:

• i5-10400F
• i5-7200U

You are more than welcomed to update this list.

Requirements

cinnamon-applet-IntelTurboBoost requires msr-tools package.

Installing requirements on Linux

Make sure msr-tools and python3-polib packages are installed before using cinnamon-applet-IntelTurboBoost.

On Ubuntu/Debian systems, install them with:

$ sudo apt-get install msr-tools
$ sudo apt-get install python3-polib

On Redhat/Fedora systems, install them with:

$ yum install msr-tools
$ yum install python3-polib

Installation

1. Right click on the cinnamon panel that you wish to add Intel Turbo Boost and click on "Applets".
2. Click on the "Download" tab, search for Intel Turbo Boost and click on the install button.
3. Back to the "Manage" tab, select Intel Turbo Boost and add it to the panel using the "+" button at the bottom.

Troubleshooting

In case of issues with the applet, you can always check if Intel Turbo Boost© is enabled with the following command:

$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo

Issues

Please report issues here.

License

cinnamon-applet-IntelTurboBoost is Free software under the MIT license, see LICENSE.txt for details.

Credits

cinnamon-applet-IntelTurboBoost was developed by: