How to extend your laptop battery life without losing power: reduces processor voltage

How to extend your laptop battery life without losing power: reduces processor voltage

Earlier saw to lengthen the battery life (and your computer is overheating,) also extending his life tweaking the settings of graphics card. This time we will do the same thing, but without any risk to your computer, and without losing speed, lowering the voltage of the processor.

Wonder and continue to operate the same, it will be safe? Effectively. And I will explain why.

Computer system builders purchased the components (including the processor, AMD, Intel, or whatever) to join them then in assembly lines. However, at the time of manufacture the processors are manufactured in batches of thousands of units, and each one comes with its own characteristics (may have tiny flaws, with a different quality, which may slightly affect the performance of each), a certain "batch" is proven by sampling, and they are marked with the required voltage for it to work safely and trouble-free, usually with a wide margin of error.

We we're going to find out what the lowest possible safe voltage for each frequency of processor riding our laptop, and apply it using a program (RM-Clock for the intel or K10Stat for the AMD K10), so our team will spend to do the same job, but with less energy, less warming, extend its life, and therefore making more last battery. Sounds complicated, but you will see that it is not.

This applies above all to previous processors; for the current (I3/I5/I7, Phenom) can that not find programs that can set them or that you may have to make the change through the BIOS (I think that the Intel now come marked with fixed voltage from the factory without possibility of change "on the fly").

In this entry we will see How to reduce the voltage (undervolting) processors AMD K10, in this case a AMD Turion X 2 64, already is quite "gluttonous" battery.
This processor in particular comes with an excess of voltage, which we will notice much change in temperature and battery life (and power consumption, which may involve some eurillos per month).
If you have an Intel Core 2 Duo use RMClock (there are libraries for 64-bit also), you can search for it in Google.

This is completely safe, as in case of mistake, just turn off the computer and turn it on again (if it is blocked to hold on longer than 5 seconds button so that it is off), to return to try other values.

Option 1: install the already configured task
You have two options, either install K10Stat already set up (click) for this processor (with voltages tested in 3 different Toshiba computers and operating properly), and in the event that you do not hang the equipment, you save the entire process of trial and error, or follow the steps in option 2 (to finally add the task).

If you have decided for this first, and you have downloaded the zip file , and only have to add the task to the Windows 7 Task Scheduler (the option import),

Or set up a new one to run ' c:\directorio where este\k10stat. exe "with options" - lp:1 - ClkCtrl:1 - stayontray - nw "(without quotation marks, as in the following image)

And that it triggers whenever any user logs or resumed session.

Option 2: the tortuous path of trial and error
We have to download K10Stat from here (click), the latest version 1.54, and as shown in the tutorial noticias3d, try to lower the voltage to a certain frequency (the operating system automatically changes speed processor according to the demand for labour to save energy).

To lock the frequency, e.g. in P0, have to activate the option "K10Stat clock control". All this is already explained . I'll just explain over.

Using Intel Burn Test (program for "stress" to the CPU and check if it gives errors or crashes), we can start lowering of 0.025, and for example, 2.2 GHz the processor is fed to 1.1 volts, descend to 1,075 and see if it is stable. To check if you have really lowered voltage, come well a program similar to AMD Power Monitor, which shows us in time real speed and voltage for each core processor, utility created by AMD:

Before applying the changes

In this case, and for the version of AMD CPU mounted laptops TOSHIBA Satellite L300D, gets down to 0.1 volts voltage in the case of the P1 to 1.1 Ghz, and 0.075 Volts at 2.2 GHz (still, but is quite noticeable at those speeds).
The battery has gone from barely used an hour (with average Internet usage) almost an hour and a half.

AMD Power Monitor: already changed voltages

It should lock us the computer, we will have to try to get something less, to find a voltage in which the computer does not hang for 1 to 2 hours with the program Interburn working.
Once found the best voltage to each State or frequency of the processor, disable the frequency control, save the changes in the K10Stat, and schedule the task so that it starts automatically whenever we start session, as indicated in the above-mentioned Guide.

Greetings and happy saving!