@@EdwardSnowden125 Other people complains that its slow and forced updates. For me its the snap store being proprietary and being shoved by Canonical. In the end its Linux, do what the hell you want, you own your OS edit : pretty sure Chris has a video about it
I actually used to just undervolt my cpu and gpu using tuxclocker and amd-clocks and boy did it help power consumption noise but more importantly battery life went from around 3-3.5hrs to a full fat 8hrs while web browsing and lightly threaded work and from 2 hrs to about 4hrs when under full load and this is without losing a drop of performance.....I'll definitely check this out thank you Chris for this (all of the testing was done on my asus dash 15)
Before to install auto-cpufreq my cpu usage it was always at over 50% when i was watching youtube, but now is around 10-14% that's amazing. Also the battery life improved 2x.
i am thinking of installing Mint. currently my windows OS gives me around 5-6 hours of SOT , will using this AutoFreq and Mint give me equivalent or better battery life with same performance ?
"it works with tlp" means turbo boost stays on when both tlp and autocpufreq is installed. Additionally tlp manages usb power and other things to increase battery life.
@@fuseteam I stopped using TLP. I Tested my machine with: TLP-powertop (powertop itself does nothing, what really worth is the tunnable tab), TLP-autocpu-freq and with auto-cpufreq-powertop. After the tests I decided to uninstall TLP, because I got the best battery and performance with just powertop-auto-cpufreq. What I really use to configure the powertop advices is "tuned-adm" which can be installed with the "tuned-utils" package. I created the powertop profile with one utility in that package and I configure the scripts with most of the "Tunnables" proposed by Powertop (I DON'T use all the advices, there are some of them that I detected provoke bad behaviors in my laptop, for example, I was having issues with the "tuned" bluetooth because after suspending my machine I was not able to connect anything (so I removed that part of the powertop script).
@@burhanbudak6041 I tested it too, however, Slimbook battery is based in TLP. It was like another UI for TLP. At this moment, I am just using just the scripts generated with powertop, and some scripts I created to get the cpu in the lower freq possible and boost always disabled (of course, this when the laptop is ik battery mode). In my case, it is more important to keep the consumption as low as possible, over the performance. Auto-cpufreq is still installed in my machine, in case I need to enable it again in some specific moment.
i am thinking of installing Mint. currently my windows OS gives me around 5-6 hours of SOT , will using this AutoFreq and Mint give me equivalent or better battery life with same performance ?
I've used this in the past. Just a heads up: TLP does NOT disable turbo boost unless you specify it in the config file. I install tlp on all my machines to better control the max/minimum frequencies. You should read the config file from top to bottom, i never heard about TLP sucking because it turns off turbo boost
This is amaaazing 🙂 !! This tool just completely change my battery life with Linux. This tool must be shared all over the Linux community. The power save is a huge constraint for users when they consider to switch to Linux on a laptop. Thank you so much for this video. TLP does nothing compared to this tool....
my Ryzen laptop idles at 41 C degrees on Linux but it goes down to 34 C degrees on Windows 10... something tells me that the cpu is not being able to rest properly on linux
I ended up switching back to Windows 10 for a myriad of other reasons that Linux wasn't able to get their shit together... But anyway, battery life also sucks on Windows 10, I found the problem is with AMD chips in general, it's so curious to me their marketing team seems to focus on this "low power consumption" trend, but when you really notice it your battery rarely lasts more than 2 and a half hours... even my 2009 laptop achieved more battery life than this... AWFUL...
same reason why people have been avoiding the Steam Deck as well: AMD chips are DOGSHIT at battery life (despite of being Low Power) Something is wrong with their engineering
The power was one of the main issues I noticed moving to linux, thanks for find the solution and share it with us .. nowadays everthing is moving towards the "on the go" life style, so this is a great step towards that, again thank you so much 😄
i am thinking of installing Mint. currently my windows OS gives me around 5-6 hours of SOT , will using this AutoFreq and Mint give me equivalent or better battery life with same performance ?
@@Shubhampalzy what can I say! I'm facing problems installing the app, earlier I did not have this problem but now I don't know how to resolve it ... I'm using Debian. So instead now I'm using tlp, I still need time to get a real sense of how long the batteries last but honestly it feels forever 😄
Ehi, Chris, nice video! The only downside of auto-cpufreq is that it slows down a little bit everything, even on performance mode. But it's normal for what it does. It'd be great if he add some toggle to completely disable it, maybe through a systray icon or some nice shortcut
can you tell me how many hours of battery life you would get before using this tool and how many hours of battery life you get now and also how many hours of battery life were you able to get while using windows cuz i'm planning to switch from windows to ubuntu on my laptop
Well that's sad. I'm on a 2019 MacBook Pro running on Fedora 36 and battery is just 3 hours like yours. My battery has been through 600 or so cycles so that could be it as well.
Awesome video chris, been using auto-cpufreq for a while, but recently came across power-profiles-daemon. It's a similar project that tries to use the D-Bus to set power-profiles to save power.
what about C-States on Linux? do these work on linux side of things? because my idle temps on linux never go below 41 C degrees, while they drop to 34 C on Windows
E6410 max ram and processor (qm). Thank you! This works. I don't know why distros don't have this as an option. My big problem was the Heat just watching a RU-vid video on 720. I'm rediscovering just how well built the hardware is. I have bhodi Linux and it's been so much fun. Done with 11 and it's crap!
This can depend pretty heavily on what distro you are running. Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Pop OS all have their own tools for doing this. If using one of these distro's it's as simple as right clicking an icon and selecting the GPU you want to use (Integrated, Graphics Card or Hybrid). For all Arch based distro's there is optimus-manager. This does need a little bit of user configuration and trial and error, but is easy enough to setup with the relevant documentation on the GitHub page. There is also a GUI for Optimus-Manager, however I've never felt the need to install it. I should also mention, I'm speaking about these tools from a Nvidia user POV. I don't know if the same applies for AMD user's.
@@yasiranower7045 I think in terms of Power management you have two choices: either accept some "waste" but enjoy the comfort of a Desktop Environment (there are some lightweight ones like XFCE) or be rallye lean by using a window Manager. The distro does not matter so much- the larger distros all seem to perform the same with regards to Power management.
@@StefanSchindewolf from what i have seen even the same DE on different distros perform different Elementary OS and Pop Os both use gnome But I have noticed awesome battery life on eOS than Pop I guess I have to try all the distros to find my better option
honestly just from the first 10 seconds of the video it kind of depends. my laptop has jumped from maybe only lasting 3-4 hours from full charge to 12-14 hours using pop os
For Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Pop OS, there is a dedicated tool that should already be installed. It's a simple right click on the icon and select which GPU to use. For all Arch based distro's (including Arch Linux) there is optimus-manager. This needs a bit of user configuration plus some trial and error, but once working you can switch between GPU's with a simple terminal command. There is also a GUI for optimus-manager, however I've never felt the need to install it. This is from a Nvidia user's POV, I'm not sure if the same applies to AMD users
Since you intend to not use it then you can just disable it in your firmware settings. This can be done with either through your boot interface or mashing the correct key on boot. BUT there's a sure option which is rather easy: 1. open up your terminal. 2. type "sudo systemctl reboot --firmware-setup. Once you're in your UEFI firmware settings (or BIOS but probably UEFI these days.) go to the appropriate setting (changes between laptops so google yours) and simply change it to UMA graphics/Integrated graphics from probably either Discrete graphics/Switchable graphics. Hope this helps
I have tested this tool with ryzen 5625u and the result is far from ideal. The cpu min freq with this tool is 1600mhz while on windows it's less than 400mhz, so the battery life on windows is much better.
I just write my own udev rules to react to the plug/unplug events and adjusts the settings I care about. Regarding the professor frequency, it's often less power efficient to downclock. There's a concept referred to as Race to Idle or Race to Sleep, which says that because modern processors are so power efficient in sleep states, it makes more sense to process tasks as fast as possible so the processors can go back to sleep. If it's working for you to change the frequency, do what you are comfortable with. I just never see Race to Idle factored in to power use analyses, so wanted to simply point it out to raise awareness. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@CurtisShimamoto I'd say Skylake and above is modern, if we care talking idle power efficiency. Difference is pretty significant in my experience. Also, price gap between LGA1151 and newer server parts compared to 1150 is very proportional partly due to this exact reason. Yeah, there is even "Race to Halt" UEFI setting and I noticed too that it really makes good decisions to keep higher clocks longer resulting in great average power. But I noticed that Windows power management system has this logic too unless you force Power Saver scheme. And there are dozens of settings to tweak it hidden in every power profile. You can make them show up by modifying Registry.
@@Mr.Leeroy that is probably a fair take on what "modern" would be these days. Although, with that said, Ivy Bridge was a processor generation where Race to Halt most certainly applied. Especially since they were getting the various power saving features to a pretty good point of development. But really, I appreciate your response and general take on these things, @Leeroy.
Chris, thanks for the video! I am planning to install Pop!_OS on a 10+ year old ASUS G73JW-A1 gaming laptop that has a discreet nvidia 460M graphics chip. The laptop was meant to be plugged in all the time because it came with a tiny battery pack, and it can't hurt to install this app also.
I would actually like to use a balanced power mode (like in Windows) on my Linux Desktop-PC, yes to save power in idle and low load. I wonder if I can somehow enforce that with this tool.
Also, I have not seen any videos on your channel about undervolting GPUs under Linux as well. For AMD there is a cool utillity called CoreCtrl. Would be awesome, if you would show people how to use it.
Thanks, computer Lars! (you look kind of like Lars Ulrich but less douchy). I have been running PopOs to get my 3 year old gaming laptop to work properly. It never worked right on Winblows. I learned how to use linux in cs classes several years ago but battery on laptops has always been a problem. I am having to use this slightly old gaming laptop as my computer for freelance web development until I earn enough to justify an ultrabook purchase. It's nice to get more than 15 minutes out of it now. Once again thanks.
Nowadays most of these tools are pointless for most modern laptops (with passable firmware implementations) and I'm so glad. It was always a rabbit hole optimizing Linux for laptops. The kernel and firmware apply all relevant and safe configurations automatically with no user input required. In fact, most of the time changing the governor won't even do anything since modern CPUs handle the clockspeed by themselves (intel_pstate and amd_pstate just use the powersave governor all the time for example, even when plugged in, without disabling turbo or anything). The only tool I use is power-profiles-daemon, which just hints to the firmware whether I want performance or efficiency.
Chris, I am confused. Linux is a lightweight system which is obviously true as it can easily be installed and used on old hardware without issue. However, you are saying it eats battery life on laptops (I am experiencing this now as I recently installed vanilla Debian with KDE Plasma on my 2010 MacBook Pro). How can both be true at the same time?
just great video sir you are my favorite RU-vidr and I feel you have thought me a lot. I have a dual boot of Manjaro and Windows 10 and I just prefer using Linux for any work, Just love it
I'm using TLP right now, and I'm seeing 6 hours on it. It goes into powersave when I'm on battery, and performance when I'm on AC. I dunno if TLP has changed in the last 2 years.. but I've been really impressed with it so far. It's as good as my windows install battery life wise. Granted I'm only streaming videos with it. I've been severely underwhelmed with my gaming experience on this laptop. Switching between NVIDIA and my intel graphics does result in a change.. but NOTHING like it does in windows. Luckily my intel graphics are good enough for most of my gaming needs.
Hey Chris, could you revisit this topic just as a sanity check and perhaps focus on VM / LXC / Docker use so as to reduce host system and server demand? Seems like this could be really useful to further improve performance/energy pull for such scenarios.
@@kentamammadli8009 it definetly does not make window movement jittery and its exactly as it says it only adjusts based on what is happening on the pc. This utility does turn off turbo boost and downclocks but only when not required. battery life is great, is just as if i was using tlp tbh. soo yes this is good. I'm on opensuse tumbleweed.
This looks like the same type of governor toolset that the Android kernel uses. If not the same, then similar. I wouldn't be surprised if you could recompile it with several governors originally made for Android loaded into it. I'd run the OnDemand governor for running on battery, myself, but powersave works as well, locking down the frequencies even when there is a load that could use the power.
I did it years ago, I am so happy that I dont need to reinstall Windows every few months (min every 3) Linux is so more easy to maintain, backup and to update. I just love it.
@@LinuxDog Ahh I get you! It's so lovely not having to deal with the pains that Windows brings to the table! (: I couldn't agree more! I made the switch on my desktop about a year ago and haven't looked back since, now this video gives me the incentive to make the switch on our laptop since the battery drainage was my main concern.
I'd install this even on a desktop, saving power is nice to think about. An essential for my laptop though. Do you know of any utilities that can restrict the battery charge to 80%?
"Do you know of any utilities that can restrict the battery charge to 80%?" I think it's the battery itself that needs to have this capability, so any software would just be interfacing with the battery's firmware. Older Thinkpads used to have this capability (so maybe even TLP could do it? It was created for Thinkpads, after all). Unfortunately, I don't know about any modern laptops that can do this.
No, it is not "Windows". You need your laptop to be compatible with that, like some asus laptops. The file responsible for that is called "charge_control_end_threshold" and it is under "/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/" directory. Either that, or BAT1, depending on the model. You have to edit that file: sudo nano /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_control_end_threshold (or BAT1, remember) and just change the 100 value to 80 or 60 (in case of asus laptops). Easy. That file doesn't even have anything else on it, just a "100". Change it, and done. That would be a change just for that moment. If you want to make a regular change (I do), for example to 80, you can create a "cron" job to run at every boot (install cron package if you don't have it "sudo apt install cron" or "sudo pacman -S cronie", deppending on if you use Debian/Ubuntu or Arch based. Enable the service with "sudo systemctl enable cron.service" (or cronie.service, in arch) and "sudo systemctl start cron.service" (or cronie). Then, edit the file /etc/crontab: sudo nano /etc/crontab and create this rule (either with 80 or 60 and either with BAT0 or BAT1, depending on which direcroty you have): # Change baterry threshold to 80/60 @reboot root echo 80 > /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_control_end_threshold # Done. I have the cron job set to 80, that is the normal setting I have. And if I know I will need more battery, edit the file quickly to put back 100 and charge it full (and I also have an alias for that, so I do it quicker!). Edit your ~/.bashrc (if you use bash as your terminal) and create an alias: alias bat100="echo 100 | sudo tee /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_control_end_threshold" Then you just tipe bat100 when you need to charge full, and the rest of the days, it goes to 80.
Testing this right now!! I just bought a new laptop some days ago and I have been searching for alternatives to improve my battery. I have been using TLP but I cannot get what I want, even when my laptop has a great battery life.
i am thinking of installing Mint. currently my windows OS gives me around 5-6 hours of SOT , will using this AutoFreq and Mint give me equivalent or better battery life with same performance ?
@@Shubhampalzy TBH I cannot answer your question right now, because I am not using autocpufreq anymore because I changed my laptop to a newer one with a 6000 AMD processor (power efficiency is a lot better), but according to what I can remember about autocpufreq, it changes the governor of the CPU, so the performance decreases, even if boost is enabled. In my experience, before having my current laptop, I got the best results for battery life with powertop and the tunables tab, but has been some time that I was juglging with that. Currently I am using a Thinkpad Z13 and I need to do nothing to get it optimized in Linux, so I forgot several of the tools I was using for improves the battery.
I am learning Linux so I installed Ubuntu in my laptop (dell), something that I noticed and hate is that the battery draining is so fast compared to my windows dual boot (from 4 hours windows to 1 hour ubuntu) so I installed tlp but I notice it decreases performance by a lot (and still draining a lot of battery). So now I will try this program to see how my laptop behave in terms of power consumption,
it worries me a bit that linux uses cpufreq tool which was developed in 2009, lots of things in the CPU world happened since then... that might be one of the reasons linux is having problems to tune up cpu
i use a gaming laptop with manjaro (80Wh, 8 hours aprox) that uses only the iGPU and i get wayyy better battery life than windows, but i’ll take a look at the packages you mencioned
it does - but bear in mind, for instance in TLP there's many more options for Intel than for Ryzens and AMD in general. Also be sure to install the latest version of TLP from github - it works with Renoir APUs.
Hi, first of all thank you for your review! I need some information; I'm not a tech person, so someone please explain the following: - If I install this on any laptop I have at home, old and new, then my battery life will improve dramatically? - If I install just TLP, it will help a little bit but also reduce performance, for example when video editing? - If I install this and TLP (or other similar software), it will prolong the battery life even more, but slow down the cpu? - How does it work? It understands what you are doing, when the cpu is in need of power and when not, when you are plugged in and when you are not, etc... Correct? - Will it also help with cpu temperatures and fan noise? - Can you change the settings like in Windows (battery saver, balanced, performance)? - Is it safe? Is it not a vulnerability or potential malware? - How come this type of software isn't implemented in Linux distros like Ubuntu by default? Please, answer only if you really understand and know a bit about this topic. Thank you all!
you need to configure TLP yourself if you want it to really work. Don't just leave it on default because weird stuff might happen. Be sure to read-through the manual on what everything does.
Helo chris please make a video on decreasing cpu and ram and heat on linux laptop, specially when playing videos on browsers or on laptop .. hardware acceleration and such things .. with easy solutions for non experts. Thank you
I am using it for a while now. Works great! Can you make a video about configuring UPS monitoring on Linux? Mainly, how to showdown the computer on power loss. Thanks!
anyone with Ryzen APU out there? I'm noticing that my Ryzen never goes below 41 C degrees on idle, while it does cool down to 35 C on Windows 10. Besides cpufreq, is there another tool that I can use to monitor frequencies in real-time with more accuracy? Or even monitor the Watts Power that is being drawn by the CPU in real time? That would help me diagnose if the CPU is able to idle into C-States or not (do these even exist on Linux side of things?) It's intriguing to me because my previous laptop had intel cpu, and I got same idle temps on windows and linux.
Would you recommend it for use on a work laptop? I would really benefit from such tool, but not if this comes with a price such as security vulnerabilities.
Hi Chris, love what your doing and love my beastly gaming pc but its no good for music production so I use a Mac for this job. Any chance you can do a debloat video for Mac, I hate the dock and it would be great to have the trash in the menubar.
isn't tlp more feature rich than auto-cpufreq, i mean tlp can configure and optmize power states pcie slots while auto-cpufreq only changes the cpu clock speed
this messed my battery indicator up totally. It now says I have 30 hours left and the laptop just shuts down without battery warning, even after I uninstalled it. Now I am trying to troubleshoot how I can fix this again ...
For any Linux Mint user that have tried this (or TLP), what were your results? Was the battery life improved to some extent? I'm asking because I'll eventually make usage of either program to try to extend the battery life in my own laptop, which only lasts up to about 3hrs and 45mins after a full charge.
I've been using TLP and it does the job in Linux Mint 20.3 in an old modded Aspire 4752. It does the trick but I need the performance so I'll try the cpufreq. I'll update how it goes
guys i am thinking of installing Mint. currently my windows OS gives me around 5-6 hours of SOT , will using this AutoFreq and Mint give me equivalent or better battery life with same performance ?
@@Shubhampalzy Even with autocpufreq I've found it has worse battery life on Linux yet I feel it's worth it. Also I should mention you should change the CPU management driver from intel_pstate/amd-pstate to acpi-cpufreq for best results.
I have tlp installed and auto-cpufreq and my battery life is just as bad as it used to, haha. I didn't notice any changes, even after a month of using it. I actually don't know what else to do :'v
Another problem that I just noticed on Linux a few weeks ago: Seems like the system does not switch back after you unplug power cable out of the power outlet (AC Adapter, charger) After I unplug the cable and plug it back, I noticed my Ryzen APU seems to be locked down in "battery save" mode which results in a lot of stuttering on the desktop and internet browser for example
For me Windows 11 is using more ram while using 40% more battery compared to Zorin OS 16 wich is using around 30% less ram than Windows. CPU and GPU are around the same most of the time. Windows even a little more hungry occasionally when running windows things in the background.
not only that, but for me my Ryzen APU temperatures on idle go down to 35 C degrees on Windows, while they never go below 41 C on Linux... something on linux is interfering with cpus, preventing them from fully resting and wasting power
and it's important that people like you come here willing to write down comments... otherwise we would be limited to the preach-to-the-herd bullcrap like "linux is so much better than windows", etc... these types we know very well...
@@victor7ultimate just found out about this: try rolling back to distros that were released before October 2020, or try downgrading the package linux-firmware (chipset drivers) I am able to get idle temps of 38 C once again, similar to Windows temps
@@victor7ultimate the issue is: rolling back to these older chipset drivers kinda break video quality of GPU encoder for VAAPI recording, artifacts on screen and lower video quality... currently looking if I can update only that portion of the system, but I have no idea what file actually is responsible for it
The installer is not working. I raised a bug, but the developer suggested using snap. I do not have the intention to install a snap. My OS is Linux Mint 19.1. Another guy with Zorin 15.3 raised the same issue. I hope the developer fixes the installation issue.
