My cpu Always runs on high clock speed although usage is low
Emily Wong 
My PC is a Toshiba satellite L55 with an Intel core i5 running windows 10, and the maximum clock speed is 2.4GHz. It has been running good and the clock speed used to increase with the usage percentage, but now the clock speed is constant (mostly at 2.74GHz) but the usage percentage lowers and increases depending on what I am doing. I tried booting it in safe mood but no change at all, and it's running on a SSD if that's important.
43 Answers
The path might be slightly off since i'm doing this via a win8.1 device, but the idea stays the same:
Go to Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Power Options and click on Change plan settings for your current power plan.
Click on Change advanced power settings and go to the Processor power management. In there you can have a look at the Minimum processor state setting.
Uninstall any utility software that came with the device, any "Control Center", "Smart Tool", or anything like this. The OS will always manage this better.
Many tools try to override the OS settings, but the the OS will always reset this. Such tools can make your CPU clock quickly jumping between 2 and 4 GHZ while idling.
After 20 years I can only conclude, that if the tool includes "Smart" in its name - it is always the opposite. :)
On Windows 10, clicking the battery icon in the taskbar and changing the slider on there to anything other than high performance fixed it for me. Turns out just changing the power plan settings is not enough. Screenshot
