On my Mac mini M4 Pro, BOINC Manager doesn't seem to respect local CPU Preferences. I've been able to stop the fans from going crazy by setting the Mac's "Energy Mode" to "Low Power."
I may be wrong, but I believe BOINC Mgr has been using web prefs (from https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org), and since that site is currently down, BOINC has been running at maximum power. Maybe that's the default when BOINC can't read the web prefs..?
I don't really want to run BOINC Mgr on low power, but it's the only way I can get my fans to not be at 100%. Once World Community Grid is back up, I'll set my CPU prefs there, but in the meantime all I can do is control it using the "Low Power" setting.
Has anyone else noticed this?

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John
M4 Pro Mac mini
14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU | 64GB RAM

Look in the BOINC data directory and see if you actually have a global_prefs_override.xml file.

If it is not there, that explains your issue. Should be in ~/Library/Application Support/BOINC

If it is there, then have you re-read config files in the Manager recently?

Ah! It is NOT there! I created one from the template here: https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/wiki/Global-prefs-override.xml
However, making changes to my settings doesn't write anything to the file. I tried reading the local prefs and config files, but no change.