Sometimes, my laptop will suddenly start performing very poorly. I thought it might be overheating, so I checked HWMonitor and saw that the temperatures were fine. What I did see however is that the clock rate had stepped itself down to 399 MHz.
I've seen the clock rate move up and down based on load before, but it seems that once it gets down to 399 MHz, it never recovers regardless of load.
What would cause this to happen? How can I fix it? Rebooting seems to be the only fix.
I've had the laptop for about a month and didn't notice this problem until a week ago. No Windows updates or software changes occurred during that time, as far as I've been able to tell based on logs.
Edit: Power plan is set to the default "balanced" plan, and this is all happening while I'm plugged in on a docking station.
Edit #2: I stumbled across ThrottleStop which indicates that the problem is "PL 1". Temperatures are within tolerances. Is this power limit a physical limitation? If not, any way to increase it (provided I stay within thermal limits, of course)?
Edit 3: Some solid discussion here on the problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/8flj0i/t480_power_limit_throttles_down_to_5_watts_on/
