Macbook keeps throttling intermittently

Run the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. The diagnostics generally do a good job of identifying cooling system issues, plus it is generally good to identify power related issues. However, if you installed a third party battery, the diagnostics may fail the battery test even if the battery is good & healthy since some third party batteries do not communicate as expected.

Power related & sensor issues will cause the CPU to run at idle speeds of 800Mhz. This includes the battery not being connected, or the Trackpad is disconnected, etc.

Unfortunately I have encountered some Apple laptops where the system performance is so slow that I thought the CPU was being throttled, but where I have seen no indications of any thermal or power related issues and macOS command line utilities were reporting the CPU running at Ghz speeds. In those cases, there was some unknown issue with the Logic Board. In some of those cases I suspect there was accidental liquid damage to the Logic Board, but not necessarily all of them. I don't recall the Apple Diagnostics reporting any issues in those cases either, but the issue did follow the Logic Boards.

For an Intel Mac, IIRC the following command will show the CPU frequency:

sudo  powermetrics  |  grep  -i  'average frequency'

I usually used 'system average' instead for a simple single line instead:

sudo  powermetrics  |  grep  -i  'system average'

If the CPU frequency is showing Ghz values and the Apple Diagnostics pass and you are having severe performance issues from a clean install of macOS (no restore from backup, no third party apps installed, not signed into AppleID/iCloud, no external devices connected), then most likely the Logic Board has failed.

I don't recall how or even if it is possible to read the CPU temperature using the macOS built-in command line utilities since I usually use Macs Fan Control for that purpose since it gives access to many other temperature sensors.

Otherwise if the system is being thermal throttled, then it will usually be caused by third party software.

reddsgenesco wrote:

I have a 2017 Macbook Pro (2.9GHz quad core i7 running Ventura macOS) that intermittently throttles the CPU down to 25% sometimes.

I know this from using "hot" (https://github.com/macmade/Hot) or "pmset -g thermlog"

I've already completely cleaned all the dust from the inside as well as replaced the bloated batteries, so now it throttles less often but it still throttles sometimes to 25% for apparently no reason at all when CPU load is very low and cpu temp is apparently normal.

How can I troubleshoot further to eliminate this throttling?

I am curious to see the total output of your github "hot" <pmset -g thermlog>

On Intel using the default zsh this is what I see:

MacBook-Pro ~ % pmset -g thermlog

Note: No thermal warning level has been recorded

Note: No performance warning level has been recorded

2024-07-04 19:12:25 -0700 CPU Power notify

CPU_Scheduler_Limit = 100

CPU_Available_CPUs = 16

CPU_Speed_Limit = 100

What I can say about your post —

to get a good look at your User/System config. and reveal conflicts or issues, you can download/run this trusted utility https://etrecheck.com . Full Disk Access is recommended for best results. No personal info is reported.

If you need help interpreting the report you can post it here in its entirety in the "Additional Text" box in the editing toolbar below, in your reply.

How to use the Add Text Feature when posting an Etrecheck Report

How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

MacBook Pro 16" 2019 macOS 14.5.1