December 2021 - at late night !! - I had the same problem as others, that one of 4 CPUs of an Intel I5 Esprimo 900E90E was running with 100%. “htop” did not show the reason, but “top” shows “kworker” runnning 78% continously over hours with 3,4 GHz.
In detail :
My hardware is simple - Fujitsu Esprimo 900e 90e with i5 and 4 Gig Ram and 2 x 1 TB SSDs - planned für RAID1 as a tiny samba server !!! Installing Leap 15.4 NET beta (as a server) shows some minor weaknesses = no icons on yast2 and no German language as root, but consumimg 15 Watts over 15 minutes. absolutely super savings - “kilowatt hours” are becomming more and more expensive.
So installing Leap 15.3 NET final and all known software problems are gone. I was happy. In the meanwhile I did install a little USB 3.0 PCIe board (as usual in other PCs). Now the Esprimo did consume 48 Watts !!, doing nothing else than waiting for work. “htop” shows one cpu running 100%, randomly, but no task was shown doing the work. Searching in the internet shows some other problems - but no solution. I did a try with upgrading from 15.3 NET onto 15.4 NET beta - having the same problem with one cpu and 100% load.
So by accident I did rember the old “top” tool and look, “kworker” is consuming 78% of the total cpu power. “htop” does not show this task !!! I did remember the intallation of the new USB3 hardware. Taking the USB 3.0 board out, the 100% load was gone and the power consumption slows down to 15,8 Watts with SAMBA and ICEWM running.
This may help others with similar problems, taking out all extra hardware using the core mainboard or the naked PC without any extras. Good luck. Now I am waiting for Leap 15.4 final.
Gert from Germany