Arch Linux

LionsSharks15

Member

Registered: 2022-02-01

Posts: 13

CPU always running at base clock speed, eating battery, any tips?

I have a Gigabyte G5 KD laptop with an Intel i5 11400-H CPU and I noticed that my CPU is always running at 2700MHz (the base clock), which is really eating through my battery. Are there any user-friendly (I'd like to avoid config files. If there's some GUI method, that is preferred) ways that I can throttle my CPU so that it isn't running so fast all the time when I'm doing light browser work? I'm moving from Windows 11 and I'd typically keep the power mode on "Power efficiency" mode as much as possible which would typically make the CPU run below the base clock. Any tips to make the most of my battery life on Arch are greatly appreciated! Also, I already use the "Laptop Mode Tools" program.

ugjka

Member

From: Latvia

Registered: 2014-04-01

Posts: 1,957

Website

Re: CPU always running at base clock speed, eating battery, any tips?

set your governor to "conservative", lookup cpupower

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/CPU_frequency_scaling

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https://ugjka.net

LionsSharks15

Member

Registered: 2022-02-01

Posts: 13

Re: CPU always running at base clock speed, eating battery, any tips?

set your governor to "conservative", lookup cpupower

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/CPU_frequency_scaling

I'm struggling to make cpupower work. I did pacman -S cpupower and I'm typing in the right command to set a governor and I keep getting the following errors.

Am I typing in the wrong thing or do I need to set something up prior to running the command?

LionsSharks15

Member

Registered: 2022-02-01

Posts: 13

Re: CPU always running at base clock speed, eating battery, any tips?

set your governor to "conservative", lookup cpupower

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/CPU_frequency_scaling

I'm struggling to make cpupower work. I did pacman -S cpupower and I'm typing in the right command to set a governor and I keep getting the following errors.
https://i.imgur.com/OMQ66Dd.png
Am I typing in the wrong thing or do I need to set something up prior to running the command?

Oh, I just figured it out. I needed to remove the "cpupower" part because I have an Intel. Solved!

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,263

Re: CPU always running at base clock speed, eating battery, any tips?

powersave should be the default governor. If it isn't/gets replaced on boot check your laptop-mode-tools config on whether it configures something wrongly here.

As for your GUI using goal, if you're on GNOME or KDE/generally the bigger DEs you might be interested in power-profiles-daemon instead of laptop-mode-tools. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/CPU_fr … les-daemon

Last edited by V1del (2022-10-25 13:45:59)