XPS 9370 thermal throttling ubuntu 18.04

Question

I got a Dell XPS 9370 since a few days and decided to use it with Ubuntu now. I am on 18.04, freshly installed since some minutes. I am bootstrapping k8s clusters in VirtualBox on it, so thermals bump when bootstrapping.

Unfortunately I get the following messages when checking dmesg:

CPU0: Core temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 435)
CPU4: Core temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 435)
CPU2: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 538)
CPU6: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 538)
CPU3: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 538)
CPU7: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 538)
CPU4: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 538)
CPU0: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 538)
CPU1: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 538)
CPU5: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 538)

The laptop is not throttling under Windows 10, also fans do not spin up to full speed in Ubuntu, checking with e.g. HWInfo in Windows or psensors in Ubuntu show max temps of 75-80 when under full load. Any suggestions?

Here are the Specs:

Core i7 8550u

16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD

Answer 1

There is a solution for this for Lenovo laptops and it also works for my XPS 9370.

Install the following script and configure it with a maximum temperature of 97C: https://github.com/erpalma/lenovo-throttling-fix

On my XPS it now manages to sustain between 2.8 and 3.0 Ghz with temp between 97-99C depending on ambient. It no longer scales back to 2.2-2.4 Ghz with temps of 80C.

Do not specify a max temp of more than 97C unless you are willing to edit the Python script as it has a hard-coded check to ensure sane defaults and the service fails.