So well, yes, CPU load will in any case produce heat, this can not be avoided, that’s the nature of all CPUs and the Intel Core i7 10710U is not different in this regard. If you can sacrifice some performance vs. energy consumption you can do several tricks to keep it low profile.
One would be to change the CPU frequency governor from ‘ondemand’ (default) to ‘conservative’. This will cause the CPU to run on lower frequencies longer which will reduce power consumption and thus heat.
If this is not sufficient for you, then you can also clamp down the TDP of the CPU. Newer Intel CPUs can account for energy, indeed they can account for the Joules power used by instructions etc. and thus reduce performance to reach a power consumption goal.
These can be controlled via the RAPL interface in sysfs. Right now we default on the L14 to 15W TDP long term and 20W short term. Short term is a kind of peak usage for some seconds, long term is the sustained load. So if you want to make sure that your system stays cold(er) you could simply clamp down the long term TDP, something like 10W would for sure already help a lot.
This will clam down to 15/20W:
#!/bin/sh
echo 15000000 > /sys/devices/virtual/powercap/intel-rapl/intel-rapl:0/constraint_0_power_limit_uw
echo 20000000 > /sys/devices/virtual/powercap/intel-rapl/intel-rapl:0/constraint_1_power_limit_uw
The values are given in uW.
Cheers
nicole