21/08/2026
I ran my mini PC at 85 °C for 18 months and blamed the small case. It was not the case.
My Minisforum MS-01 has been a Proxmox node since early 2025. The CPU sat between 82 and 88 °C around the clock, with routine spikes into the low 90s. I logged 30 days of it in Grafana. Everyone I asked said the same thing: tiny chassis, that is just how it is, as long as it stays under 100 you are fine.
I posted the graph on r/Proxmox last week. Most replies pointed at thermal paste, dust and fan curves. Before opening the case I decided to check the software side first.
I migrated every VM off. The box idled at 54 °C drawing 10W. So the cooling works.
I checked the BIOS over the vPro remote KVM, without connecting a monitor. C states enabled, package C state limit unlimited, SpeedStep and Speed Shift on. Nothing misconfigured.
Back in Proxmox with the VMs running, turbostat showed 91 °C and 30W at four percent CPU utilisation. That is a lot of heat for almost no work.
The cause was the CPU governor. It was set to performance, which pins the minimum clock to the maximum. My cores were running at high frequencies all day to do very little.
Two commands later, measured twenty minutes after the change with the same VMs running:
CPU package temperature: 91 °C down to 58 °C
Measured at the wall: 52W down to 28W
Annual running cost in Switzerland: 115 CHF down to 61 CHF
The trade is real. CPU utilisation went from four to seven percent, because the same work takes longer at lower clocks. Turbo is unchanged, only the idle floor moved.
I nearly opened a machine that had nothing wrong with its cooling.
I have updated my full MS-01 review with the numbers, both Grafana charts, and the systemd unit that makes the setting survive a reboot. It now covers 1.5 years of continuous operation, including SMART data on the three NVMe drives.
https://edywerder.ch/minisforum-ms-01-review/
Hands-on review of the Minisforum MS-01. See noise levels, 10GbE speed, thermals, and why it’s a top choice for homelab virtualization setups.
