Are there solutions that can limit the CPU usage of a process?
A search over the net brings some programs that may help. They are all freeware.
BES - Battle Encoder Shirase
BES is a small tool which limits the CPU usage for a specified process: for instance, you can limit the CPU usage of a process which would use CPU 100%, down to 50% (or any percentage you like). With this, you can use other programs comfortably while doing something CPU-intensive in the background. By limiting the CPU load, you can also cool down your CPU immediately when it happens to get too hot. Of course the processing speed will slow down proportionally if you limit the CPU usage, but it should be much better than crashing because of heat or (in the worst scenario) having your computer broken with a burned CPU.
Process Tamer
Process Tamer is a tiny (140k) and super efficient utility for Microsoft Windows XP/2K/NT/Vista/Win7 that runs in your system tray and constantly monitors the cpu usage of other processes. When it sees a process that is overloading your cpu, it reduces the priority of that process temporarily, until its cpu usage returns to a reasonable level.
Process Lasso
Process Lasso is a unique new technology that will improve your PC's responsiveness and stability during periods of high CPU load. Windows, by design, allows programs to monopolize your CPU without restraint -- leading to freezes, hangs, and micro-lags. Process Lasso's ProBalance (Process Balance) technology intelligently adjusts the priorities of running programs so that badly behaved processes won't negatively impact the responsiveness of your PC.
The easiest solution I found is to limit Processor power.
- Go to Control Panel.
- Hardware and sound
- Power options
- Edit plan settings
- Change advanced power settings
- Processor power management
- Maximum processor state and lower it to 80% or whatever you want. Using software that measure CPU temperatures like 'Speed fan' you will see that temperatures drop.
Sure this is an old question but I'm surprised nobody has suggested this yet:
Reduce your CPU speed.
Practically all laptops and Windows itself have built in mechanisms for dynamically adjusting processor speed to match load. You can override this behaviour - for example in Control Panel => Power Options => Advanced, you can set a maximum processor speed that's below 100%. Your processor will then be limited to a lower speed, and thus generate less heat, nomatter what you're doing.
This requires no additional software and more importantly, reducing your CPU speed makes your processor more efficient, so is a better solution than limiting your CPU usage in Windows. Using 50% of a processor at 2.0Ghz will use considerably more power than 100% of a processor at 1.0Ghz. Less power = less heat.