Power Settings

[Spoon Boy]

Not sure if this belongs here or if i should have posted in the CPU/MoBo section, But recently i came across the setting in the registry that enables the disabled options in the control panel power options and couldn't find a post about them using the search function.

At first i was playing around with enabling the cores to park when the system is idle, But this lead me to enable all the disabled setting just to experiment with lowering the power draw of the system with the theory of reducing temperature and thus fan speed.

So now i get a full list of what can be changed in the control panel power options but why there disabled by default IDK.

Some questions i have and could do with some advise about are.

1) Does parking a core reduce power consumption and thus reduce temperature ?
2) How to get the CPU to underclock more and would this in turn reduce power/temps ?
3) Are the options disabled because the CPU/MoBo don't support them or M$ don't trust the end user not to mess up there PC ?
4) And lastly do you have any suggestions on lowering power draw thus lowering temps, allowing me to run with slower fans or possibly no fans at all ?

[edh]

Undervolting is able to give the most drastic across the board reductions in power. Do you have a power monitor? They're not very expensive and are very handy for this work and also monitoring household appliances too:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/plug-in-mains-p ... itor-38343

My order of doing things:
1. Remove any hardware that is not required. For example do you need a power LED?
2. Set things at the jumper level on the motherboard if required, some boards have a jumper to enable/disable undervolting and clocking in the BIOS.
3. Disable everything in the BIOS that is not required. Extra controllers may use a tiny amount of power.
4. Reduce voltages in the BIOS to reduce power consumption, stress test quickly to make sure system is still stable. If it fails to boot, most BIOSs will revert changes when you restart.
5. Then look at what may be possible in software, this is very hardware dependant.

[Spoon Boy]

No i don't have a multi meter and TBH im not sure i trust my self to not go sticking it where i shouldn't

I have got my system setup with as low a voltages as i think i can get away without the system becoming unstable/crashing.

The settings in the registry i was refering to are located at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Power\PowerSettings
Each sub, sub key that has a Attributes value that is normally set to 1, if this is changed to 0 or deleted entirely it enables hidden setting in the power control setting.





When the are enabled they do have small tooltip but a fair few of them i don't know what they do, i have managed to enable core parking but would like it to be more aggressive as to when it parks a core and also be more aggressive with underclocking as by default Window 7 only drops the core clock by a small amount.

[edh]

No i don't have a multi meter and TBH im not sure i trust my self to not go sticking it where i shouldn't

I didn't mean a multimeter. What I linked to there is a power meter. It measures power consumption amongst other things. If you're going to be makeing changes to try and reduce power use, you need some way of measuring the impact of the changes that you make.

[Spoon Boy]

Oopppss sorry didn't read your first post properly, boxing day merriment

Call me a scrooge but £20 seems like a lot, I'm guessing the settings in the control panel are going to be a bit hit and miss then ?
Unless i can find some more information on why they are disabled by default or what some of the more obscure one do.