More suggestions for lower power draw

I've gone through the undervolting guide but this system doesn't see much benift from it and now I'm wondering if there's any other ways to lower power consumption. I tinkered with the throttle settings in RM Clock, but throttling back seemed to increase demand on power. Of course there's also lowering the LCD brightness, but I use it in bright areas and that hurts me being able to see it. I don't care if it sacrifices performance, because I wouldn't need much during times of low power needs.

My idle clock is 2 GHz, and I'd be fine if that was all it did, or even forced underclocking that and/or the graphics. Or maybe a way to lower the max load on the CPU at a given speed? If so, how would I go about doing so, or am I just out of my mind? Running an E8400 proc w/8800M GTX.

 

9262? it's gonna be hard

 

mooncatt are u running vista or xp?

 

Shouldnt the E8400 idle much lower than 2Ghz?
Most dual core processors can idle a 1-1.2Ghz, You should be able to set the profile to only use the lowest multiplier on battery. That will help save a bit more power, so if you can get an extra few minutes that would be your best bet.

Unfortunately their are not many more ways, since other parts cannot be undervolted and such.

K-TRON

 

Somewhere in the guide I`ve made( link in the sig) there are guide to improving battery life, at the end.

 

Well turn off anything not in use thats not required. I do not know what your laptop has but that would be your wireless card, bluetooth card ect.

Screen brightness will help a good amount so if your not willing to lower it down, cant help there but if you have an external monitor handy you can use that and turn the screen off and thats even better.

Your video card, you can try to underclock it depending on what type it is.

If your using the speakers to listen to somthing, small earbuds would use less energy isntead.

Hard drives, a SSD would be best, but in general a 5400rpm current generation drive is best, they use less than a 7200rpm drive in most cases, and belive it or not they use less than older 4200rpm drives while giving a huge boost in performance (and also keep in mind anything you can do faster, means less on time wich means more battery/less power use)

Also keep the idea in mind for a bigger or spare battery. Thats all I can think of off hand that you didnt already mention.

 

i've increased my battery life by about 50%- i've undervolted my cpu, disabled 2 usb ports, disabled my expresscard port, disabled bluetooth, disable dvd drive, disabled ethernet/modems, toned downd sreen brightness a bit, and of course tweaked out vista. I will be installing a mydigitalssd in 2 weeks or so, so I should see some battery life gained there.

if you're using vista, click on the battery icon in the taskbar, select more power options, select power saver, then select change plan settings, then select change advanced power settings, then select processor power management, then select maximum power state, then click on battery and change your cpu processing power to any percentage you want.

hope this helped!

 

*Really needs to put system specs in sig now...it's on list of things to do*

Pro-Star 9194 (Sager 9262 equivalent). E8400, 8800M GTX, 200 GB@7200RPM, 1920X1200 LCD, XP w/SP3. I've got bluetooth and wi-fi disabled, and tried undervolting, but even the lowest multiplier in RM Clock is 2.0 GHz. Lowest setting I have available is 1.0375V, and no BSOD there but can't go any lower if I wanted. Since I use it for GPS, it's not really long term battery life I'm needing, but lower spikes in my proc usage (maybe gfx too) as it updates my positions and screen. I have a power inverter I run it off of in a lighter plug, but it's pulling so much power that I need to hardwire the inverter if I cant reduce power. Since it's not my own truck, I can't really do that (company policies and all). It runs fine at idle and not charging the battery, but when it spikes (even at the lowest multiplier), the inverter alarm sounds from the power draw. That's what lead me to want to lower CPU loading, but not sure if there was a way to do that. I set power settings to Max Battery, but haven't tried much in any aftermarket programs.

I knew I'd be risking it being to powerful for a regular DC/AC inverter, so I kept my old one just in case to use in the truck, but would like to be able to make use of the new one too.

 

Why dont you get a more powerful power inverter?
I have a 750 watt one from Vector which I bought from Northern Tool for like $90 a year ago. My system would not run for long off of the 400watt I had. When I would load the cpu, the overload protection would kick in.
I basically had the same problem, so I had to get a 750 watt inverter.

K-TRON

 

@elleron: I'll read over your guide soon. Thanks.

@K-Tron: I'm using a 400 watt Cobra now, but since all I have is a cig lighter plug to put it on, it's not supposed to be used with anything above 150 watts. Too much current could melt the wires, assuming it didn't pop the fuse first. The new system uses a 240 watt power brick, but I know it doesn't hit full power much in general. Haven't found a Kill-a-watt to put on to see what my system draw's are, but may just stick a multi-meter to it and find the amperage and do a little multiplication. Is your 750 watt inverter plugged into the cig lighter, or hardwired to the battery? I have a feeling if I had mine hardwired with thicker cables, it could pull the current it needed easily. To my understanding, that's the bottle neck on inverters... the thin lighter plug wires are too small to handle higher currents like I need.

 

I had to cut a hole in the firewall of my peterbilt and then I attached the wires directly to one of the batteries. I have two 1200cca batteries in my truck so I am not worried. Plus my CAT usually turns over in a few revolutions anyways.
I did use heavier wire to the cigarette lighter, actually you can buy the plugs rated for much higher current. All it is, is higher quality steel. I plug the inverter in and it takes the 12volts from the battery and then converts it to safe clean 120volts which I can plug my beast of a power brick into. By the way, I think my inverter can use from 8-16 volts in to convert to 120volts, so it is safe to use on a car battery.

K-TRON

 

That's what I figured. Not something i really want to do. I'll just keep using this one until I have the time (and AC outlets needed) to try underclocking the new system for "mobile" use. I'll get this beast tamed at some point.

 

Bit of an update (and specs in my sig now)

I've been looking into underclocking the CPU and GPU, to no avail. I used Rivatuner and was able to downclock, though didn't see any noticable difference in performances, temps, or anything. I benchmarked it in PC Wizard 08 (maybe not the greatest, but all I have so far), and the supposed "underclock" seemed a tad better in performance than stock. I'm about convinced that maybe something isn't set right and even though I apply the setting in Rivatuner, it's not really taking effect.

As for the CPU, I'm having trouble finding the PLL to use. I have Clockgen and SetFSB (not running both at the same time, of course), but I've yet to find one that works. I've seen several people talk about the trial and error method, but no luck and sometimes it even locks up my system when I just try to read the FSB settings. I know I should be able to find it on the mobo, but don't know where to look. If it's under the heatsinks over the proc, are those simple removal and reattach? I've tried googling everything I can and searching here, but can't find anything better to help me on this one.

The closest I've thought I came was with the clockgen list that came with SetFSB. I found the entry "CV174CPAG (Intel DG965LV/DQ965GF/DG965RY/DG965WH/DP965LT)". According to CPU-Z, I have a P965/G965 chipset, but I got an ID error in SetFSB when I tried that PLL and clockgen didn't even have it as an option.

I'm thinking it's underclocking the CPU I need mostly because I won't be doing much graphic intense stuff when on the inverter, but it would be nice if it drops power consumption. And is there a minimum I should underclock to to make sure things stay stable, or could I just drop all the sliders to minimums and still have everything work about right?

 

then leave the CPU at its lowest multiplier of in some CASES run only one core. That would save you some power but then your C2D because a core solo. To disable one core just go to bios and there is an option to disable multi core processing.

 

I'll check out the BIOS setting for that later. At my lowest multiplier, it still idles at 2GHz. I was hopping to get it down to 1.0 GHz or so (assuming that would be possible).

 

Check the BIOS for desktop and mobile mode.

 

well if you disable multi core functionality your not runnign 2 core at 2 ghz each anymore. You will be runing 2 ghz on only one core while the other core is disabled. that should reduce your cpu voltage by half.

 

Just checked the BIOS but didn't see any options like those. where would I find them, or do I need a different BIOS all together?

 

The only place to disable a core is in the BIOS. However, it's better to leave the 2nd core enabled since it was proven by someone on this forum that it leads to decrease power usage since 2 cores working at low load is better than a single core working at high load.