Windows 10: AMD cool'n quiet not working correctly

Hi all,

I am running win 10 20H2 on a not so recent PC as it follows:

- M3N-WS motherboard nforce 730a

- phenom 2 x4 945 CPU

- kingston 4*2GB DDR2 800 RAM

- geforce 650 ti

- patriot 256GB SSD

I recently found out that my CPU is always capped at its maximum clock for all the time, so 3ghz, even with no usage, but I wasn't really able to know if in the past this feature was working and at some point stopped or never worked at all.

I started investigating, I firstly used CPU-Z and Open Hardware Monitor to check if it was just the win10 task manager to show a wrong information, but it was correct: the CPU is always at highest clock. I then read around this forum about this issue and I checked already the advanced power management section to set the minimum and maximum CPU usage, with no effect. Another thing I read was about the ACPI version of the motherboard, that causes the incopatibility if is older than ACPI 2.0.

I then did as followed: I took a spare SSD and installed a clean win10 1809, installed really the SAME and essential chipset drivers, nothing more. Cool'N Quiet was working fine. Good. Next step: I updated the system to the actual same version 20H2. Again working, so ok, no ACPI incompatibility I guess, and the mess need to be in my actual OS setup, but the feature should work on out-of-the-box system.

My problem now is I really would like to fix the CnQ feature without having to install again all the system, programs, settings and so on, that would be really really time consuming and not possible. I have no other issue at all with my setup, not messing around and for this reason hope to find a "soft" solution because no other reason to start from scratch.

I am here to provide what is needed to troubleshoot.

:)

 

Cool & Quiet won't work

Which AMD rig is it? XP can be a pain to get Cool N Quiet working sometimes.

 

No Cool&Quiet

I don't have anything against it. I was just trying to help you with finding the list. To be honest I never use Cool N Quiet in the AMD rigs I have built. I just use good cooling, OC it, and WCG as much as I can without having to fight it too much with A/C.

 

Cool n' Quiet

Are you sure that is Cool 'n' Quiet and not some fan control setting... based on everything I've seen newtekie1 hit the nail on the head with his description, Cool 'n' Quiet is specifically designed to change the multi and vcore. If Cool 'n' Quiet doesn't do that on your system it sounds like ACPI 2 is disabled or you haven't changed the power settings to 'minimal power management'. TBH I don't know whether it directly affects fan speed or not, that may vary system to system, but I'm pretty sure the multi should always change (otherwise it isn't helping the CPU run any cooler which would defeat the object *Confused ).