Forum Discussion
Dell's "We Disabled Undervolting for Your Safety" Joke
My Dell laptop consistently throttles performance under moderate workloads, and I've discovered that undervolting has been disabled in a recent BIOS update under the guise of "security" and "safety." This effectively leaves me with no way to manage thermals, forcing the system to run hotter and slower than it should, as if Dell has intentionally bricked my laptop's cooling solution.
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Intel advised manufacturers to disable undervolting as a mitigation for a side-channel attack that could potentially leak sensitive data. Dell implemented this through microcode updates in newer BIOS versions.
Many users attempt to use software like ThrottleStop or Intel XTU, but recent BIOS updates usually lock the voltage control registers, making these tools ineffective [citation:3].
Sometimes, BIOS updates may hide or disable undervolting options, but others might still be accessible under different menus or settings.
The short answer is that Dell, following Intel's guidance, disabled undervolting in BIOS updates to patch the Plundervolt security vulnerability (CVE-2019-11157).
