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I have a Lenovo Legion Y540 with an i5 9300h and A GTX 1650 running Linux, specifically Pop OS. It seems to be running a bit hot on idle at about 48° C. So, I was wondering if I undervolted my CPU in XTU in a Windows VM, would that still apply to the Linux OS?
I know I could just use Throttlestop, but I feel a bit more comfortable using XTU.

  • You could just try it and use lm-sensors to verify the voltage on the Linux end. Or just try it and see if your idle temperature drops while maintaining acceptable performance, in which case other specific details don't really matter, since that's really your end goal. – Jason C Sep 10 '20 at 17:17
  • Btw check out https://www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/hp1xq9/pop_os_running_hot/ and maybe some other similar experiences [with these search terms](https://www.google.com/search?q=pop+os+runs+hot+on+idle). Having no experience with Pop OS myself, my initial thought is some general power management configuration quirk, but that's a wild guess. There is one comment on that reddit post that achieved success by updating packages then downgrading nVidia drivers. – Jason C Sep 10 '20 at 17:22
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    The reddit post helps with the GPU temps, they dropped from around 45° C to around 40° C on idle. On the CPU side, the XTU undervolt actually still applies after I reboot the Windows VM and even after I shut the Win VM down, it still worked. But, it stopped working as soon as I shut down the Linux OS and fired it back up. –  Sep 11 '20 at 06:43
  • That seems to make sense; perhaps XTU settings aren't persistent (or they are but since the VM BIOS is sandboxed, it doesn't do what you want) and under non-VM situations they'd just be applied on Windows boot and everything would be cool. If that's the case then you're SOL on using XTU for a persistent change. Unless there's a real BIOS setting you could tweak you probably won't be able to avoid doing it on the Linux side if you want the change to be present without having to start the VM. – Jason C Sep 11 '20 at 15:13

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