What is Thermald?
In Ubuntu, thermald (the Linux Thermal Daemon) is a background service developed by Intel. Its primary job is to monitor your CPU’s temperature sensors. If the processor starts to get too hot, thermald proactively intervenes by throttling the CPU frequency, injecting idle cycles, or ramping up cooling fans to prevent hardware damage.
On ultra-thin laptops with poor cooling, this service is essential to prevent emergency shutdowns. However, if you are running Ubuntu on a large desktop PC, a custom gaming rig, or a rack-mounted server with massive heatsinks and powerful, dedicated fan controllers, thermald is entirely unnecessary. In some cases, it can actually cause severe performance drops by throttling the CPU prematurely during heavy workloads before the hardware’s own built-in thermal limits are reached.
How to Disable Thermald in Ubuntu
If you have adequate cooling and want to rely on the BIOS/hardware to manage thermal throttling, you can disable the software daemon.
- Open your Ubuntu Terminal (shortcut:
Ctrl + Alt + T). - First, stop the daemon from running in the current session:
sudo systemctl stop thermald.service- Next, disable the service so it does not start automatically upon reboot:
sudo systemctl disable thermald.service- (Optional but Recommended): Since desktop PCs do not need this package, you can completely uninstall it to reclaim disk space and ensure it isn’t revived by a system update:
sudo apt-get purge thermaldWith thermald removed, your desktop’s motherboard BIOS and the CPU’s internal hardware logic (like Intel Turbo Boost or AMD Precision Boost) will have complete, uninterrupted control over frequency scaling and thermal management, ensuring maximum performance.