CPU always throttled, fan clicking - acer V15 nitro

Without any prior warning the CPU in my laptop (an acer V15 nitro, running ubuntu) is now always throttled to 400MHZ, which is very annoying of course.

I've played around with detaching the battery for some time, booting and rebooting with the hdmi cable attached or unattached, I booted into ubuntu 18.04 (I run 19.10), same thing.

Only thing that made a difference, was to go to sleep mode and then wake the machine up again. For a short moment, the throttling is gone and the cpu does what it should. However, the moment I start a program the freq drops to 400 again and stays there.

The only difference that I noticed is that the cpu fan seems to be making clicking sounds. Every 8-10 seconds it clicks a few times. I am not sure if this is connected. Could it be that it is broken and the system automatically throttles the CPU to protect itself?

Or what else could it be?

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Sterces

This is either a dead fan or a dying fan. I would take note of that and consider taking it to a technician.

Any error on startup?
Also make sure it isnt a disk drive or Hard drive clicking. Those can be different.

andylb

Does this happen plugged in and on battery? If it does then @Sterces is spot on

CafeConMasCafe

There's no error on startup. I now let it run for some time, and it got rather hot (86°C), without starting the fan. I guess it's the fan, then.

Battery or plugged makes no difference.

I am not yet 100% sure, but I don't think it's the harddrive, it seems to work normally.

Is it possible that bios detects this problem and throttles automatically?

Thanks for your help, guys.

Sterces

CafeConMasCafe said:

There's no error on startup. I now let it run for some time, and it got rather hot (86°C), without starting the fan. I guess it's the fan, then.
Battery or plugged makes no difference.

I am not yet 100% sure, but I don't think it's the harddrive, it seems to work normally.

Is it possible that bios detects this problem and throttles automatically?

Thanks for your help, guys.

The bios doesnt really "Detect" The cpu has failsafe built into it. So, yes. If it gets too hot it will stop but usually it will start showing other signs and then crashing. Hard drives are pretty undetectable outside of when the computer can catch and warn you... they act normal.

See a Technician.
86°C isn't that hot for a CPU btw.

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