[morning-coffee]

> I know it’s thermal throttling because I can see in iStat Menus that my CPU usage is 100% while the power usage in watts goes down.

When I read this I wondered "Why isn't core temperature alone not a reliable indicator of thermal throttling?". Isn't that the state variable the thermal controller is directly aiming to regulate by not letting it exceed some threshold?

[angristan]

My M4 Max Macbook Pro can run for a while at like 105°C and fans to the max before throttling, when it starts throttling it doesn't exceed that threshold, and then the temperature goes down for a while before throttling stops