HOWTO make AMD CPUs quiet

The simple trick to make all modern AMD CPUs quiet while still being fast enough for most multi-thread purposes is to disable turbo boost.

You can't have your boost and not have a lot of heat output from any modern processor.

echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/boost

will temporarily disable turbo boost on any modern AMD processor.

Add this to your kernel boot parameters if you want that to be the default when you boot your machine:

amd_cpufreq.boost_disable=1"

tlp

Disabling boost is specially useful if you have a laptop since the processor will use a lot less power that way. You can use tlp if you want to enable and disable turbo boost behavior depending on the power source (AC or battery):

CPU_BOOST_ON_AC=1
CPU_BOOST_ON_BAT=0
PLATFORM_PROFILE_ON_AC=performance
PLATFORM_PROFILE_ON_BAT=balanced

Note that PLATFORM_PROFILE_ON_AC=performance and PLATFORM_PROFILE_ON_AC=performance will lock your CPU to the lowest supported frequency. That's odd and unexpected behavior. Use balanced to get the CPUs base clock when boost is disabled.