[sf-lug] Overheating and CPU throttling

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Akkana Peck (akkana at shallowsky.com):

> My Thinkpad X201 laptop has developed an overheating problem.
> Randomly, when I'm doing something lengthy and CPU intensive
> like building Firefox, it will shut down without warning. Afterward,
> I have messages like this in /var/log/kern.log:
> thermal_zone0: critical temperature reached (100 C), shutting down

One comment I've seen about this that sounds plausible is that sometimes
the factory didn't do a great job applying thermal paste between the CPU
and the CPU fan, and maybe it dries out a bit and degrades over time, so
it's not that difficult to re-do that with aftermarket thermal paste.  
(If considering this, I'd recommend finding a video guide on YouTube or
such, covering X201 teardown.

On the task of applying software control of CPU throttling, fan speed,
etc., I've never done that so probably shouldn't try to advise you
except to say that I'd start with the very same Web-searching I'm sure
you've recently done.