spectre-meltdown-checker VS intel-undervolt

I tried the latest SMC from https://github.com/speed47/spectre-meltdown-checker and all were in green. :-)

How is this project different spectre-meltdown-checker?

OpenBSD will disable all but the first thread on any Intel processor by default. I'm assuming that these models are too old to have microcode updates addressing the Spectre exploits (Meltdown, Foreshadow, Fallout, Zombieload, RIDL etc.), and disabling SMT/HT might be the most secure thing to do by default.

This script produces a good assessment of Spectre problems for a wide variety of CPUs. I know that they are difficult to exploit, and the mitigations are disabled by many because of their performance impact.

https://github.com/speed47/spectre-meltdown-checker

You can confirm the status of the mitigations using InSpectre for Windows, or Spectre & Meltdown Checker if you're on a unix based system.

You can run https://github.com/speed47/spectre-meltdown-checker

He's probably referring to the class of vulnerabilities checked by this script: https://github.com/speed47/spectre-meltdown-checker. It's not just Intel CPUs that were affected, AMD and ARM also have some vulnerabilities (I just ran it on an ARM v7 to see) although maybe not as many.

utilise microcode updates (should be by default, check)

10th gen is locked by "Overclocking lock" And "Cfg lock" in bios, you can disable it thru ifr and use any software to undervolt your cpu (throttlestop on windows, linux has its own software (this, probably)). This is a lot safer than just putting voltages in bios as you can guess.

On Windows machines and laptops with Intel cpus, I almost always use Throttlestop to tweak power consumption and thus temperatures. I'd like to do so on this machine as well. I've found this: https://github.com/kitsunyan/intel-undervolt

intel-undervolt - though I may not be using this optimally. CPU: -75, GPU: -50, CPU-Cache: -75

You can use intel-undervolt to modify the voltage, TDP.

I will try your suggestion about limiting power package. I've been using this 3rd party intel-undervolt software, which I'm not sure if it supports granular changes to wattage, but it seems like there is some energy/performance settings there.

I personally use intel-undervolt and auto-cpufreq.

You can also undervolt though software on Linux based OS's. For intel there's these: https://github.com/georgewhewell/undervolt (this one looks more popular) https://github.com/kitsunyan/intel-undervolt (this is the one I use, no particular reason)

intel-undervolt also works fine for Intel laptops (I've used this successfully with my 11th gen H laptop).