How to lessen power consumption with your Phenom II x6

Six-core processors are powerful in multitasking, multimedia playback, and even gaming – but as you use more cores – they also eat us much power. My Phenom II x6 1075T has a maximum thermal design power (TDP) of 125 watts. This means if I am gaming or doing sorts of stuffs with my computer at the same time, I am expecting to empty my pocket for the month because of power consumption. I did even tried to overclock (which is very easy with AMD’s CPUs) my 1075T up to 3.8 GHz. I used the HW Monitor (temperature monitor) from CPUID and found out that at average use, power consumption goes as high as 138 watts. While I do not really care how much I pay for the bills during that time, I just keep on extending the capabilities of my computer. However, I am not in gaming now and I have bought another computer. My wife will now use this six-core rig and I think it is just an overkill to keep the settings up. By the way, she will just use this PC for browsing, Microsoft Office, YouTube and Facebook. To lessen power consumption, I decided to change some settings in the BIOS.

Steps:

1. Turn off your computer and while you are in POST screen, press DEL or F2. Your BIOS key might be different from that but you can always read the manual or the website of your motherboard. My Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H motherboard uses the standard BIOS (the one with text and blue background).

2. Go to MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T):

CPU clock ratio – AUTO

CPU Northbridge Frequency – AUTO

Core Performance Boost – ENABLED

CPB Ratio – AUTO

I did overclock my processor so I need to bring back the default settings. I turn the clock speed to AUTO to keep it running at stock speed. You may choose to DISABLE AMD’s Core Performance Boost technology to stop the processor from running to its BOOST speed, in my case 3.6 GHz. I ENABLED mine because as much as I want save energy I do not like compromise performance as well. My wife sometimes watches 1080p videos, so this setting will be of benefit to her.

3. Go to Advanced BIOS Features:

AMD K8 Cool & Quiet Control – AUTO

CPU unlock – DISABLED

CPU Core Control – AUTO

You need to set AMD K8’s technology to AUTO so that your fans will not run crazy all the time. CPU unlock might not be applicable to your Phenom x6 but I choose to DISABLE it. The most important part is the CPU Core Control. I choose to set on AUTO because I enabled Core Performance Boost. This means if my wife does not need all the six cores to run, the computer will just use three cores and run it at BOOST speed. This is a great way to save energy. However, if you do not like this technology, you can set the CPU Core Control to MANUAL and just choose a number of cores to enable. While this might affect total performance, this is a sure way to save energy.

4. Press F10, click Y, and then ENTER.

Using HW Monitor, I can now see that Power Consumption drops to 68 watts and goes to 80 watts in average use. This means I just successfully lessen power consumption with some changes in the BIOS settings with my Phenom II x6 processor.