The Great Power Savings Race (+ tips)

dura · 2012-12-05 18:29:52

You got it. This is a thread dedicated to power savings. It has a few purposes: to collate all material regarding power savings into one thread, giving all the proper links to other threads; and, also, and more importantly, to stage a competition with watts consumption. The world is dying, man, and who likes a hot, dollar crunching thing?

I have:

ThinkPad x121e (Intel)
Waldorf
Siduction kernel 3.6.8
TLP
Hardran's power savings script.

My baseline watts consumption via powertop is 3.69w. It idles around 5w, and gets up to about 9w or something when busy.

Come on suckers, do you worst.

On making this thread, I couldn't find another dedicated entirely to power saving tips, and bringing them all together. It seems Mr. Bacon had already started one. But it fizzles out. Here it is anyway- there is a few tips:

http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=241973

The lesswatts site is ok:

https://lesswatts.org/

el_koraco has made a thread dedicated to solving the power regression issue effecting kernel 2.6.8 to 3.4 on intel machines:

http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=23445

Up until recently I was using the grub parameters suggested by el_koraco, drawing from phoronix. On my x121e I used the grub parameters specified for it at the arch forum. If your intel machine suffers from the power regression issue (i.e. you have i3, i5, or i7, and are running a kernel between 3.6.8 and 3.4), you can either follow el_koraco's thread, or install either the liquorix kernel:

http://liquorix.net/

Flying with liquorix has a dedicated thread:

http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=10817

Or the siduction kernel:

http://siduction.org/

I found the liquorix kernel to gain great power savings, but it has recently gone up since some recent updates . I now use the siduction kernel, and last night also compiled the most recent debian kernel- 3.6.9- both of which gain great power savings, bringing power consumption down to under 4w.

Easiest way to get liquorix and siduction going is through smxi:

http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=22740

Bluetooth, as noted below, is not needed if you don't use it. Disable it easily via rcconf, or bum.

Screen brightness consumes a massive amount of power- the most by far- almost all power consumption. Horrible sitting there at night with a really bright screen- bad for your eyes, bad for the world, man.

TLP is a script written for thinkpads, but can be used on most (all?) machines. Find it here:

http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-faq.html

Hardran's power savings script is great. It kicks in when on battery power, and gains you more than 30 mins on battery power. Find it here:

http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=11954

SuperNathan has a script for restricting cpu core performance when on battery:

[url=ht

Last edited by dura (2012-12-30 13:55:59)

Unia · 2012-12-05 19:21:44

I have my own script, based on Taylorchu's Powerdown. View it here at my Github:

https://github.com/Unia/powersave

On a quick overview, it's a lot like Hardran's script. However, my script works without pm-powersave and relies on udev rules instead to detect whether the system is on battery or on AC.

My current watt consumption when on battery is 11W, but I am browsing with five open tabs and, according to Powertop at least, my wifi power save is off

EDIT: Funny enough, when I closed Firefox to measure watts, it reported to be 19W You got my interest again in lowering my power usage, so I'm going to look into more aggresive settings now.

Last edited by Unia (2012-12-05 19:26:11)

dura · 2012-12-05 22:49:22

It would be interesting to see if any members of the, so-called, 'Sub 100 Club' would enter into this competition.

Last edited by dura (2012-12-05 22:50:40)

Unia · 2012-12-05 23:27:11

I don't think low memory equals low power

dura · 2012-12-05 23:31:00

Me neither. Memory is virtual; watts is the rain forest, man. That's why I want to see what they can put up.

Super-Nathan · 2012-12-06 00:56:22

I have no use for bluetooth, I would love to save power by having my computer pretend it doesnt exist, how would I do that?

dura · 2012-12-06 01:00:26

Don't ask me. You're the developer ]:D I've just got it turned off via rcconf, and off also by TLP, apparently...

Last edited by dura (2012-12-06 01:14:53)

omns · 2012-12-06 01:35:35

dura, I would suggest you become the maintainer of this idea and regularly edit the first post of this thread on an on-going basis. When someone posts a link to a new script or tip you could add/do a brief (one line or so) description with the link mentioned. If it's something outlined in a post then provide a link to that post. Eventually you should get a nice list of power saving ideas and scripts.

This will save members having to work through the whole thread and discussion to find something that works.

Enjoy

fog · 2012-12-06 02:03:49

Nice topic. I like the idea of reducing power consumption.
A fresh -super bloated- mint 14/cinnamon installation on a thinkpad e320 with no special tweaks or custom kernel.
Some exotic services and a few ttys disabled but wifi etc working with default settings.
Kernel 3.5.0-19-generic.

Idle 7.95 watts

porkpiehat · 2012-12-06 03:02:37

nw68868 wrote:

I have no use for bluetooth, I would love to save power by having my computer pretend it doesnt exist, how would I do that?

sudo apt-get remove bluetooth

Super-Nathan · 2012-12-06 04:32:55

porkpiehat wrote:

nw68868 wrote:
I have no use for bluetooth, I would love to save power by having my computer pretend it doesnt exist, how would I do that?
sudo apt-get remove bluetooth

I was hoping to leave it installed, just disabled via config, thanks

I was just about to write "In Arch this is easy, but how would I do it in Debian"
and then I was like "DUH" (facepalm)

sudo update-rc.d bluetooth disable

Last edited by Super-Nathan (2012-12-06 04:36:20)

porkpiehat · 2012-12-06 17:38:24

If you "have no use for bluetooth" why keep it installed at all? it's wasting disk space, and every time it's updated in the repo you will waste time updating it on your machine, even if it's disabled. If you remove it and later decide you need it, it's a quick apt-get install away.

rkwurth · 2012-12-09 13:36:23

It's been mention by other people in different places, but since we're on the topic: The best thing I do for powersaving on my laptop is adding these kernel parameters:
nmi_watchdog=0 acpi_backlight=vendor pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 i915.semaphores=1

P.S. You'd need a tiny computer for bluetooth to waste space. Un-installation of a service is not the right way to temporarily disable it, especially since there are multiple, less invasive ways, of doing it.

@ nw68868: You could also use rcconf, which provides a TUI, or just "sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth stop"

Edit- "nma_watchdog" to "nmi_watchdog"

Last edited by rkwurth (2012-12-09 13:38:17)

dura · 2012-12-09 13:43:56

Yup. I've started using siduction kernels, and also compiled the latest debian 3.6.9 kernel last night, which renders these intel grub parameters redundant.

Can you give some information as to nmi_watchdog please? The parameters you suggest only relate to particular machines, and as el_koraco notes will not be necessary on all machines.

Disabling bluetooth makes a big difference on my machines. I just do it via rcconf.

Edit: I just looked up the nmi_watchdog setting. It's interrupt counts watchdog.

Give us your power consumption measure!

rkwurth: try sticking quiet at the beginning of your grub parameters otherwise you get a longer boot up time.

Last edited by dura (2012-12-09 13:49:21)

rkwurth · 2012-12-09 13:55:28

According to powertop, with Terminator and Chrome open, I'm at 8.15W-8.36W. Also, I did leave "quiet" in my parameters, but left it out of the post as I didn't consider it powersaving- Although, I suppose a faster boot time means less power used!

pidsley · 2012-12-09 13:56:38

rkwurth wrote:

P.S. You'd need a tiny computer for bluetooth to waste space. Un-installation of a service is not the right way to temporarily disable it, especially since there are multiple, less invasive ways, of doing it.

I agree with porkpiehat -- I don't have bluetooth installed, because I have no use for it, but If I used a distro that installed it by default, I would happily uninstall it.

Last edited by pidsley (2012-12-09 16:05:41)

el_koraco · 2012-12-09 16:19:59

I'm not all that good with power savings, really, you guys said pretty much everything. The biggest drain usually comes from wireless adapters (most of them also have bluetooth built in these days). Some are better at this, like Intel's adapters, some not so much like Atheros. I have Atheros on my laptop, and a pretty high discharge rate compared to you guys.

Then you have sound cards and CPU. hardet's script includes soundcard power savings, and I generally suggest configuring the machine to run on the powersave governor while on battery. The governor change gets you anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, depending on the CPU. Again, Intel is better than AMD for CPU savings, Intel's soundcards are better than Realtek's, Connexant's and AMD's.

Finally, there's screen brightness. You'll see much higher battery drain when running at 90 percent vs 60 percent than 60 percent vs 20 percent.

The rest is really nitpicking. Of course, battery life doesn't exist in a vacuum. If you turn off your wireless or spend two hours reading a long HTML page, with no music playing, screen at 30 percent brightness and running only one or two applications, you'll get very low discharge rates and long battery life, but in that case you might as well turn the computer off and read a book. If you take your laptop to the bathroom to watch porn in Flash, the battery will drain fast, but you won't have to explain stuff to your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife.

dura · 2012-12-09 16:41:28

^Nicely put.

Last edited by dura (2012-12-09 23:43:20)

zubcho81 · 2012-12-16 17:51:32

Dell D600 1.71 Pent.M. 20gb HDD

baseline: 8.93w
idle: 10.1w

working - wifi,skype, iceweasel

using Crunchbang 10, 2.6.39-4.dmz.1-liquorix-686 kernel. Very happy with this settings and the CPU is undervolted to the max

Shinkanzen · 2012-12-20 19:43:39

i used linux-phc (found in the liquorixkernel) to undervolt my cpu (Pentium M) which shaved a whoppin' 20°C off the Temps at full load, saved my sanity through lowering fannoise. Never measured savings, but i can only recommend it.

sunfizz98 · 2012-12-21 02:27:16

@el_koraco
I was under the impression that AMD strives to be more efficient than Intel, unless there is something I'm missing. Hopefully it is not from subjective data but objective data.

Last edited by sunfizz98 (2012-12-21 02:28:35)

dubdub · 2012-12-27 20:43:55

on an HP 2510p, i am managing under 6W idle, using a combination of Hardran's and Unia's scripts; I also got help disabling services from bum (i.e. boot up manager- via synaptic), which provides quite detailed info on the individual services, unlike rcconf or sysv-rc-conf (saves you from googling every service).

To dura (or anyone with experience running siduction kernel in waldorf), did powertop 2.0 work out of the box for you with 3.6.8 and/or 3.7.1 ?
mine does not report actual figures (spits out n/a on the top readings wakeups, cpu usage) but the suggestions good/bad seem to work, with 3.7.1 looking more efficient at managing device power management ( the audio codec hwC0D0 issue was dealt with without a hitch).

More powersave suggestions if you please

dura · 2012-12-28 01:08:14

^I have experienced some n/a readings when moving up the kernels. As fog has suggested at the bbq forum - 3.6.9 seems to be running coolest and lowest watts. Will be fiddling with bbq escargot a bit more in a few days so might have watts down more as it is looking promising at the moment. 3.6.9 without any additional scripts is getting some power savings in powertop already and with a lower range; from 5 idle, to 10 busy, on this x121e.

Last edited by dura (2012-12-28 01:11:23)

dura · 2012-12-31 01:45:36

Kernel 3.7.1., + TLP + Hardran's power savings script all options are 'Good' in Powertop. Lowest temperatures- not above 50c with video.

Last edited by dura (2012-12-31 01:47:02)

mishle · 2013-01-01 17:23:41

3.7-0.towo-siduction-amd64

TLP ON
The battery reports a discharge rate of 7.97 W

TLP OFF
The battery reports a discharge rate of 9.89 W

Battery went to 4.5hrs to just over 6 hours

CrunchBang Linux

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#1 2012-12-05 18:29:52

The Great Power Savings Race (+ tips)

#2 2012-12-05 19:21:44

Re: The Great Power Savings Race (+ tips)

#3 2012-12-05 22:49:22

Re: The Great Power Savings Race (+ tips)

#4 2012-12-05 23:27:11

Re: The Great Power Savings Race (+ tips)

#5 2012-12-05 23:31:00

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#6 2012-12-06 00:56:22

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#7 2012-12-06 01:00:26

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#8 2012-12-06 01:35:35

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#9 2012-12-06 02:03:49

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#13 2012-12-09 13:36:23

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