Hello Eowyn, it's not a weird question - so no worries there

Many people (myself included), use a peice of software called TThrottle, and that allows you to set a temperature for your processor - above which, it'll throttle back BOINC. I find it very effective and a lot smoother than the basic BOINC settings.

TThrottle is good but...Eowyn is using Linux.

Don't know of any alternative to TThrottle for Linux.

You could also get a laptop cooler ---I have one from Walmart and it does the trick--the cooler has a fan or two and your laptop sits on top--keep crunching and let us know how its going

Laptop fans are difficult to control, best left to the hardware... even the venerable Mr Speedfan keeps his hands off and only reads out the temps for these.

On my desktop I've been happily running Fancontrol / lmsensor and tuned it so that the fan remains in low speed when system is not crunching and when BOINC kicks in, temps go up, to have the fan run at a preselected level in higher rpm, but not the howling max. Here's one link discussing http://tuxtweaks.com/2008/08/how-to-control-fan-speeds-in-ubuntu/ , the pwmconfig the critical procedure as that first tests all the different speeds possible and all sensors to find out which controls what and then asks to make your pick/threshold.

That said, eventually found a way to manage the I7-2670QM CPU frequency in Linux so the processor itself is being throttled down to 2.2-2.6 in winter, 1.7-2.0 now in summer... plus a 40CM tripod fan since the metal top is part of the cooling system [we've got a heatwave going on here, with real-feel of 35C+ due the higher than normal humidity.

Good luck in your search.

Unaware of anything comparable to the TThrottle, Windows only tool. Does -not- run in a VM.