The performance governor is the right choice for servers, but it's not the right choice on non-server platforms, it's also not the default kernel setting, it was set because we have the ondemand.service in userspace that can change it back to ondemand (or well we have the service because of that change in the kernel :D).
Fans do not necessarily spin, and you might not actually notice any significant changes in power usage, but the expectation of a desktop user is that the CPU scales its frequencies down, which recent-ish Intel CPUs (Skylake+) on like a ThinkPad T480s - which manage the pstates in hardware instead of software like the old MacBook does - don't do.
If we compare this to Red Hat, what they do is CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_DEFAULT_GOV_PERFORMANCE=y in RHEL and CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_DEFAULT_GOV_ONDEMAND=y in fedora.
Power usage, at 3-6% CPU usage:
Powersave: I see 0.9-1.4W power usage on the cores
Performance, I see 1.6-2.5W
The performance governor is the right choice for servers, but it's not the right choice on non-server platforms, it's also not the default kernel setting, it was set because we have the ondemand.service in userspace that can change it back to ondemand (or well we have the service because of that change in the kernel :D).
Fans do not necessarily spin, and you might not actually notice any significant changes in power usage, but the expectation of a desktop user is that the CPU scales its frequencies down, which recent-ish Intel CPUs (Skylake+) on like a ThinkPad T480s - which manage the pstates in hardware instead of software like the old MacBook does - don't do.
If we compare this to Red Hat, what they do is CONFIG_ CPU_FREQ_ DEFAULT_ GOV_PERFORMANCE =y in RHEL and CONFIG_ CPU_FREQ_ DEFAULT_ GOV_ONDEMAND= y in fedora.
Power usage, at 3-6% CPU usage:
Powersave: I see 0.9-1.4W power usage on the cores
Performance, I see 1.6-2.5W