What is the output of inxi -Czxx?
I have 3 different computers with 3 different cpus.
One is 2200/4400, one is 1400/4000, and the laptop is 800/4500 for min/max frequencies.
I think the cpu itself determines what is min/max for that system.
These can be tweaked a little by overclocking methods, but I am not aware of any way to slow down the minimum. Someone else may have more relevant info.
grep MHz /proc/cpuinfo
cpu MHz : 2197.223
cpu MHz : 2199.601
cpu MHz : 2200.000
cpu MHz : 2178.722
cpu MHz : 2192.174
cpu MHz : 2200.000
cpu MHz : 2194.894
cpu MHz : 2196.241
cpu MHz : 2200.000
cpu MHz : 2186.409
cpu MHz : 2200.000
cpu MHz : 2200.000
I noted from your inxi output that you have an AMD processor like I do in both my desktops. My laptop is intel. The intel (i7-9750H) in the laptop will idle down to 800 but the AMDs will not slow down that much.
Do you have a way of measuring power consumption? That’s the important thing, right? A lower nominal clockspeed doesn’t automatically mean that. If a processor can “race to idle” — that is, get what it needs to do done and then sleep — that might save more power overall than taking a longer time to do the same thing without sleeping.
Here some info: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/CPU_frequency_scaling
I would advice against doing that. Let the distribution take care of it, a too low base frequency introduces a totally unacceptable response latency of the computer. You are using your laptop in interactive mode, so it has to react when you press a button, not a second later, you won’t run a serious job for hours on it anyway.