How to reduce power consumption

Reducing system power consumption will extend battery life, reduce system temperature and (on some models) reduce system fan noise. This page summarizes the known techniques for reducing power consumption on ThinkPad laptops under Linux.

System power states

• Power Management
• How to make use of Power Management features

CPU

• How to make use of Dynamic Frequency Scaling
• Pentium M undervolting and underclocking

Graphics

• How to make use of Graphics Chips Power Management features
• Problem with high power drain in ACPI sleep
• Rovclock
• Reduce LCD brightness
• Disable CRT output

Hard disk

• Laptop-mode
• How to make use of Harddisk Power Management features

Optical drive

• Eject the UltraBay optical drive, or just turn off its power supply (i.e., run the appropriate eject script but leave the drive inserted). This saves close to 1W.

System fan

• ACPI fan control script

Wireless network

• Activate power saving on the wireless network card
  • For Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Mini-PCI Adapter and Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Mini-PCI Adapter, see instructions for the ipw2200 driver.

Related toptics

• How to measure power consumption
• Battery maintenance

External resources

• Power Management Guide from the Gentoo Linux documentation
• When/where/what for low power consumption? (thread on Linux-Thinkpad)