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Easy way to throttle CPU Turbo on Windows

When you have a machine like I do that has a CPU capable of Turbo or other overclocking, then one may want to only “activate it” when really needed. This way one can avoid unnecessary fan spinups and heat.
My default CPU clock is at 2.8Ghz and capable to boost up to 3.6Ghz. To avoid always going back to the BIOS and turn the Turbo feature on and off, I have found an easier way to throttle down frequency within the Control Panel’s Power options menu.

On this video I show you an easy way to create a custom power scheme and set the CPU throttle values:

As shown on the video you can realise it’s only to change the CPU speed from 100% (with Turbo) to 99% to throttle it to the default frequency. It’s just that 1%, really! :)

To further modify/delete power schemes you really have to go to the command line.

To delete a scheme:

First let’s list all of the schemes to get their UUID:

powercfg /l

results in the list:

Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e (Balanced)
Power Scheme GUID: 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c (High performance)
Power Scheme GUID: a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a (Power saver)
Power Scheme GUID: dc512798-8638-4c98-9432-5e0e744ab01b (Game) *

Let’s delete Power Saver (you can’t delete the current one, marked with *):

powercfg /d a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a

Changing power schemes with a click of the mouse

You can also create a few shortcuts to change between power schemes with just a line like this as the command:

cmd /c "powercfg /s dc512798-8638-4c98-9432-5e0e744ab01b"

This is useful when you use more than 2 schemes, because the taskbar icon only let’s you change between the most recent 2 of them.

Written with StackEdit.

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