Upgrades and software mods to SAVE BATTERY

Is there any upgrade or harddrive mod that can be done to save battery life on a laptop? By "save" i mean run more efficiently, making the battery last longer on each charge.


I'm doing everything I can do cut here and there and make the battery last longer. I've already done a lot of the software optimization stuff like disabling windows search/index, startups, etc.


Will upgrading from a 5400 rpm harddrive to a 7200 rpm, 7200 hybrid sdd Momentus XT, or a pure SSD have any effect on better battery life?

What about a way to downclock the CPU to run at 20% -50% when on battery mode? (i dont see that option in windows 7 power management).

 

You'd be better off buying an extended battery rather than pulling your hairs out trying a software fix to get 5 extra minutes of battery life. My SSD in my Vostro 1500 significantly increased my battery life, like 45 minutes over my old Hitachi 5400 rpm 160 GB HDD.

 

your screen/backlight is probably pulling 50% of your total, espec if you have a conventional cfl backlight.

 

the problem is, i cant find any extended batteries for my laptop. They dont exist! otherwise id just buy it and be done with it.

thats interesting the ssd gave you 45 minutes worth though.


I always leave my screen at 1 bar or 2 out of 10 so unless there's a mod for less, I'm kind of stuck.

Ah, i guess i deal with what i have. that or an ssd..

 

What laptop do you have?

Also note that is a rare case. It was a 3 year old 5400 rpm drive, the newer 5400 rpm drives are alot more efficient than from 3 years ago. Also not all SSDs give you good battery life as htwingnut found out. I believe it was a Kingston that gave horrendous battery life.

 

Use batterybar or battstat to check your idle power consumption and go from there. wifi/bluetooth/hdd/LCD brightness/soundcard can all be tweaks to get that number as low as possible.

Consider too purchasing a second battery and doing a hibernate, swap batteries, resume to extend your on time.

 

i just installed batterybar and my laptop is consuming 50 mwh on a 53 mwh batterie no wonder i have no batterie life

 

If you are talking about that Alienware in your signature, it was never built for battery life................

 

7200RPM drives will use more battery life, either get a SSD, or buy a new 5400RPM drive (WD Scorpio Blue). Next set windows power management to balanced, and keep your display backlight at the lowest you can (1-2). Also make sure you have the latest bios, drivers, firmware for your devices. If you have bluetooth, make sure to turn it off.

 

Many benchmarks show that 7200 rpm drives hardly use anymore power than 5400 rpm drives, the trade off to 7200 rpm is worth it.

 

that

i know but im still wondering what is consuming so much with my cpu at idle, screen at its lowest back lighting, cfx disabeled (the remaining gpu at its lowest consumsion setting possible) wifi bluetooth shutdown and even my drive shut down

i mean the chipset alone cannot be consuming that much

 

the OP say's he's looking for maximum battery, to the point of downclocking his CPU, I doubt he cars about maximum performance. You're right that 7200 RPM drive's are close to 5400RPM in power consumption, but they do still use more power. I replaced my 5400 Hitachi 5k500 with a WD scorpio black (then hitachi 7k500) and I did loose 30 mins of battery life with the 7200 RPM drives. For absolute maximum battery life 5400RPM or a SSD is the way to go. 7200RPM offers great performance compared to 5400RPM no doubt, but it still will use a bit more power.

 

If you don't care about capacity or price, go with a SSD, if you don't care only about capacity, a new generation single platter 5400RPM drive would consume the least power.

 

A battery repacker may be able to fit in 2900ma cells to replace lower capacity ones. If you have 2200ma cells then that equates to 32% extra battery life without extra weight.

 

To the OP, I don't know what laptop you have, but if you are using a Core 2 CPU, I HIGHLY recommend CPUGenie. It will let you undervolt your Core 2 CPU. I was able to do this on a Core 2 Extreme laptop. The only negative was that you aren't able to undervolt lower than 1.0v idle voltage at least for my CPU, but at least I was able to undervolt SIGNIFICANTLY the voltages when the CPU was at load. I also tried this program on an SU9300 ULV Core 2 Duo ultraportable and was able to lower the voltage to the lowest possible even at highest load.

 

Yeah, undervolt (and downclock, if necessary) -- CPUGenie or RMclock, does not matter as much. There's a thread on how to do it right here @ NBR: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...arket-upgrades/235824-undervolting-guide.html

 

CPUgenie is really lousy.. i suggest RM clock..

Panther214

 

edited: sorry I made a duplicate post, see my reply 2 posts up.

 

THanks guy, this thread got lost but I just checked up on it. So, I did purchase an SSD which seems to have very good power draw and controller (samsung) to replace my stock HDD. I also decided to look up the undervolting options, thanks for that.
I really care about performance (and not a whole lot of it) when on AC but on battery I would do the undervolting for sure.

For what its worth, I do have a Core 2 Duo. I just recently got a Macbook Pro 13 (latest model) but at the time of starting this thread was speaking about my Lenovo y460. Either way im glad to know that undervolting could be a viable option.



What is a battery repacker??? That peaks my interest.....I thought about removing the optical drive (usually to replace with HD) and adding some secondary battery or something but I havent found any viable options yet. A repacker sounds interesting though..