How do you underclock your CPU?

[Legolessed]

I was curious if I could increase my battery life on my laptop by underclocking the CPU and turning off the fans when I'm just doing some web browsing or word processing. I'm using an i5 3340m and I'm running Linux mint.

[Shimejii]

Quick answer would be NEVER under clock your CPU for something as simple as that. It can cause some issues for some laptop and desktop CPU's, as they are designed to run at certain frequencies and if they go below that then shit can hit the fan. 

 

Just turn down the Backlight, or some of the LED lighting for the keyboard, and go into battery saving mode. 

[paps511]

Check in your settings for a "performance mode" or "Battery saving mode"

 

Most modern CPUs' frequency is their "Max" frequency.

Ex. My cpu is OC'd to 4.8 ghz, but if I ma doing nothing on the computer it will run at 800MHz

[RS2007GOD]

22 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

Quick answer would be NEVER under clock your CPU for something as simple as that. It can cause some issues for some laptop and desktop CPU's, as they are designed to run at certain frequencies and if they go below that then shit can hit the fan. 

 

Just turn down the Backlight, or some of the LED lighting for the keyboard, and go into battery saving mode. 

Lol i had a althon 6000+ 3ghz chip which would no run stable at 3ghz so downclocked it to 2.7ghz without a problem. But thus being just one use case and i only continued using it for a few months after.

[Enderman]

Just go into your "power saving"mode on your laptop and that will limit the CPU usage.

A CPU already underclocks itself when not at high load, so by limiting its load % you can have it run slower.

[RS2007GOD]

16 minutes ago, paps511 said:

Check in your settings for a "performance mode" or "Battery saving mode"

 

Most modern CPUs' frequency is their "Max" frequency.

Ex. My cpu is OC'd to 4.8 ghz, but if I ma doing nothing on the computer it will run at 800MHz

Yes in battery saver mode the cpu cstate are usualy set to only use a low % of the cpu. You can manualy change it in advanced option with minimum/maximum cpu usage on battery or power. Setting both to say 5% max with help alot but will be sluggish and unsure how safe it is. I do it on my laptop when playing rs on long trips.