Introduction:
If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you want to learn something new. I love sharing knowledge with others, so I hope you do as well. With that being said, please understand that I’m doing this in my spare time, and have no degree of any kind on this topic. What I’ve compiled here is a pretty good guide to explain and hopefully educate some of you on a highly talked about, but widely misunderstood concept of CPU architecture.
Before we begin, I need to make sure you all understand a few basic concepts of electricity. I can’t teach you new material if you don’t know the language, right?
Terminology:
Voltage
The first term is, of course, voltage. Voltage is defined as the difference in electrical potential between two points. What does that mean, I’m sure you wonder? Well, to put it simply, think of a fire hydrant. When the valve is opened to let water into a hose, from the hydrant, it rushes in all at once to the end of the hose. It sits there in the hose until the nozzle is opened to put out the fire. The force that pushes the water forward is called water pressure, and like water pressure, voltage pushes the electrical current along as well. So, we will think of voltage itself as the force or pressure being applied behind an electrical current to keep it moving.
Amperage
Next up is the term, amperes. In short this is the electrical current itself. An ampere, or amp for short, is the actual unit of measurement for the amount of electricity passing a single point in a circuit at one time. This might seem confusing, so let’s just keep it simple and think of an amp as the electrical current itself. In the fire hose example, the amperage would be the water inside the hose.
Wattage
Last up is something called a watt. Now, this one can get tricky, so stick with me. A watt literally measures the rate of energy conversion or the transfer of energy. So, essentially, the watt measures the amount of work done over time. This is where it gets tricky and a little confusing. Wattage, in the fire hose example, would be the amount of water that the fire hose can hold. This is the work, or wattage, generated by the hose while operating under a constant flow of water. Now, that’s the tricky part right there. ‘Work’ in this example isn’t a normal 9-5 job. It is, more simply put, the overall capacity of the hose. A normal household lightbulb is rated around 60 watts. This means that while it’s on, it is producing a constant amount of light. This constant amount is 60 watts, which is its peak brightness under constant current.
So, to sum these three terms up as simply as possible, think of voltage as pressure, amperage as the current, and wattage as the capacity.
Example
One final example should help with this analogy. We’ve all seen those wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tubemen before, right? If not, or if you’ve never seen Family Guy before, it’s basically a long, nylon tube that is open at both ends. One end is attached to a fan at the bottom, while the other end is left open for air to escape. When the fan at the bottom is turned on, it begins to generate wind that inflates the tube and causes it to rise off the ground and flail about in the air. In this example, the voltage is the air pressure keeping the tube floating, the wind flowing through the tube is the amperage, and the amount of wind needed to make the tube rise off the ground is called the wattage.
Undervolting:
Myth or fact?
Let’s go ahead and start off with a bang, shall we? First, let me make it clear to you that no matter what people tell you, undervolting your CPU will not magically make your battery last five days longer than it should. I’m not saying it doesn’t save battery at all, because it does. It just doesn’t save as much as you’ve probably been led to believe. On any average smartphone battery under normal conditions, you should not expect an increase of more than a few percent while undervolting.
Does this mean you should stop undervolting altogether? Not at all! Quite the contrary, actually. Undervolting is actually a very good thing for your smart phone when you do it correctly. Undervolting has one major positive effect on your CPU: it will extend the life of your processor by allowing it to do demanding things with lower heat generation. In the tube example from before, undervolting would be like reducing the fan speed as low as possible while still keeping the tube in the air. The air pressure lowers along with the wind current, or amperage. Due to the now lower amount of pressure, the amount of wind being pushed through the tube (amperage, remember?) is lowered slightly as well. This, in turn, prolongs the life of the nylon tube itself by putting less strain on it while it’s flapping around in the breeze. It’s kind of like how a flag flying in the breeze will last longer than one you fly on the back of your truck while you drive down the highway.
Summary:
Now that we’ve learned all this, what does it all mean? Well, going back to the nylon tube example, the tube itself is the CPU. So, all three properties discussed before come into play here around the nylon tube (CPU). The air pressure forces the wind up through the tube and causes the tube to raise in much the same way as the voltage from your battery causes the electrical current to flow along the circuits through the CPU. Wattage is simply the maximum amount of juice flowing from the battery keeping everything running at the same current.
All this nylon tube talk is only here to show you how the act of undervolting your CPU actually affects the processor itself. Yes, it does reduce stress on your CPU. Yes, it does reduce the drain on the battery. No, it will not likely produce a result that you’ve been hyped up to believe. The effects of undervolting your CPU are minimal at best, and should, in my opinion, only be used if you want your CPU to run a bit cooler under demanding tasks, such as using a heavy GPS app, like CoPilot, for a few hours, or while playing graphics intensive games for a while. Outside of that, you may gain about 30 minutes of extra run time on your battery on average (everyone’s phone is different, this is a rough average), or another couple of months of life on your CPU. Keep in mind that CPUs last many years on average under normal use, notwithstanding defects or abuse.
I’m certainly not telling you to avoid undervolting. I undervolt all my devices, including my personal computers. This post is meant to be informative since most people do this without understanding most of the concepts, while they buy into the hype generated around this. My main point is that the main reason you should undervolt is to keep the heat down on your device while you do demanding things. After all, you have a device in your hands today, most likely, that is more powerful than most desktop PCs just a few short years ago. Why wouldn’t you want to get everything out of it?
Bonus example:
Yet another example of voltage and amperage is your own cell phone charger. Most cell phone chargers now are 5V (volt), 1A (ampere/amp) chargers. This means that there are 5 volts pushing the 1 ampere electrical current to your phone over the USB cable. Wattage comes into play here in the electrical outlet. Most US electrical outlets are rated at 125 watts. Most cell phones are rated at 4-5W (watts) per hour. This means, that the outlet will still have a capacity of 120 or so watts per hour left over while your phone is charging.
How to undervolt:
The procedure for undervolting is different for each device (normally), so I’m not going to show anyone how to do it here. There are a few apps on the market that can help you do it if your kernel supports this feature. If you don’t know if your kernel supports this feature, please ask your ROM chef. Most, if not all, stock ROMs do not support this.
Apps:
The following apps will allow you to tweak your voltage settings if your kernel/ROM allow it. Root is required. There are many more on the market, but these are a few of the most popular ones.
System Tuner Pro
Set CPU
Voltage Control
IncrediControl
Reserved
Thanks for the info CFB
Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
cajunflavoredbob said:
Introduction:
If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you want to learn something new. I love sharing knowledge with others, so I hope you do as well. With that being said, please understand that I’m doing this in my spare time, and have no degree of any kind on this topic. What I’ve compiled here is a pretty good guide to explain and hopefully educate some of you on a highly talked about, but widely misunderstood concept of CPU architecture.
Before we begin, I need to make sure you all understand a few basic concepts of electricity. I can’t teach you new material if you don’t know the language, right?
Terminology:
Voltage
The first term is, of course, voltage. Voltage is defined as the difference in electrical potential between two points. What does that mean, I’m sure you wonder? Well, to put it simply, think of a fire hydrant. When the valve is opened to let water into a hose, from the hydrant, it rushes in all at once to the end of the hose. It sits there in the hose until the nozzle is opened to put out the fire. The force that pushes the water forward is called water pressure, and like water pressure, voltage pushes the electrical current along as well. So, we will think of voltage itself as the force or pressure being applied behind an electrical current to keep it moving.
Amperage
Next up is the term, amperes. In short this is the electrical current itself. An ampere, or amp for short, is the actual unit of measurement for the amount of electricity passing a single point in a circuit at one time. This might seem confusing, so let’s just keep it simple and think of an amp as the electrical current itself. In the fire hose example, the amperage would be the water inside the hose.
Wattage
Last up is something called a watt. Now, this one can get tricky, so stick with me. A watt literally measures the rate of energy conversion or the transfer of energy. So, essentially, the watt measures the amount of work done over time. This is where it gets tricky and a little confusing. Wattage, in the fire hose example, would be the amount of water that the fire hose can hold. This is the work, or wattage, generated by the hose while operating under a constant flow of water. Now, that’s the tricky part right there. ‘Work’ in this example isn’t a normal 9-5 job. It is, more simply put, the overall capacity of the hose. A normal household lightbulb is rated around 60 watts. This means that while it’s on, it is producing a constant amount of light. This constant amount is 60 watts, which is its peak brightness under constant current.
So, to sum these three terms up as simply as possible, think of voltage as pressure, amperage as the current, and wattage as the capacity.
Example
One final example should help with this analogy. We’ve all seen those wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tubemen before, right? If not, or if you’ve never seen Family Guy before, it’s basically a long, nylon tube that is open at both ends. One end is attached to a fan at the bottom, while the other end is left open for air to escape. When the fan at the bottom is turned on, it begins to generate wind that inflates the tube and causes it to rise off the ground and flail about in the air. In this example, the voltage is the air pressure keeping the tube floating, the wind flowing through the tube is the amperage, and the amount of wind needed to make the tube rise off the ground is called the wattage.
Undervolting:
Myth or fact?
Let’s go ahead and start off with a bang, shall we? First, let me make it clear to you that no matter what people tell you, undervolting your CPU will not magically make your battery last five days longer than it should. I’m not saying it doesn’t save battery at all, because it does. It just doesn’t save as much as you’ve probably been led to believe. On any average smartphone battery under normal conditions, you should not expect an increase of more than a few percent while undervolting.
Does this mean you should stop undervolting altogether? Not at all! Quite the contrary, actually. Undervolting is actually a very good thing for your smart phone when you do it correctly. Undervolting has one major positive effect on your CPU: it will extend the life of your processor by allowing it to do demanding things with lower heat generation. In the tube example from before, undervolting would be like reducing the fan speed as low as possible while still keeping the tube in the air. The air pressure lowers along with the wind current, or amperage. Due to the now lower amount of pressure, the amount of wind being pushed through the tube (amperage, remember?) is lowered slightly as well. This, in turn, prolongs the life of the nylon tube itself by putting less strain on it while it’s flapping around in the breeze. It’s kind of like how a flag flying in the breeze will last longer than one you fly on the back of your truck while you drive down the highway.
Summary:
Now that we’ve learned all this, what does it all mean? Well, going back to the nylon tube example, the tube itself is the CPU. So, all three properties discussed before come into play here around the nylon tube (CPU). The air pressure forces the wind up through the tube and causes the tube to raise in much the same way as the voltage from your battery causes the electrical current to flow along the circuits through the CPU. Wattage is simply the maximum amount of juice flowing from the battery keeping everything running at the same current.
All this nylon tube talk is only here to show you how the act of undervolting your CPU actually affects the processor itself. Yes, it does reduce stress on your CPU. Yes, it does reduce the drain on the battery. No, it will not likely produce a result that you’ve been hyped up to believe. The effects of undervolting your CPU are minimal at best, and should, in my opinion, only be used if you want your CPU to run a bit cooler under demanding tasks, such as using a heavy GPS app, like CoPilot, for a few hours, or while playing graphics intensive games for a while. Outside of that, you may gain about 30 minutes of extra run time on your battery on average (everyone’s phone is different, this is a rough average), or another couple of months of life on your CPU. Keep in mind that CPUs last many years on average under normal use, notwithstanding defects or abuse.
I’m certainly not telling you to avoid undervolting. I undervolt all my devices, including my personal computers. This post is meant to be informative since most people do this without understanding most of the concepts, while they buy into the hype generated around this. My main point is that the main reason you should undervolt is to keep the heat down on your device while you do demanding things. After all, you have a device in your hands today, most likely, that is more powerful than most desktop PCs just a few short years ago. Why wouldn’t you want to get everything out of it?
Bonus example:
Yet another example of voltage and amperage is your own cell phone charger. Most cell phone chargers now are 5V (volt), 1A (ampere/amp) chargers. This means that there are 5 volts pushing the 1 ampere electrical current to your phone over the USB cable. Wattage comes into play here in the electrical outlet. Most US electrical outlets are rated at 125 watts. Most cell phones are rated at 4-5W (watts) per hour. This means, that the outlet will still have a capacity of 120 or so watts per hour left over while your phone is charging.
How to undervolt:
The procedure for undervolting is different for each device (normally), so I’m not going to show anyone how to do it here. There are a few apps on the market that can help you do it if your kernel supports this feature. If you don’t know if your kernel supports this feature, please ask your ROM chef. Most, if not all, stock ROMs do not support this.
Apps:
The following apps will allow you to tweak your voltage settings if your kernel/ROM allow it. Root is required. There are many more on the market, but these are a few of the most popular ones.
System Tuner Pro
Set CPU
Voltage Control
IncrediControl
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great post but I still have a few questions - How do we know what are safe values to undervolt to and what aren't? I'm on the HTC Mecha so my issue may be slightly different.
Klonopin said:
Great post but I still have a few questions - How do we know what are safe values to undervolt to and what aren't? I'm on the HTC Mecha so my issue may be slightly different.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Re-read the heading in the OP that says "How to undervolt."
Great guide for anyone wanting to learn about undervolting and CPU. So simply stated that Even an apple user could understand this. :thumbup:
AT&T SGS3
ParanoidKangDroid 1.1.0
KT747 10/28 OC'ed & UV'ed
Medical MJ Supporter
Dankest said:
Great guide for anyone wanting to learn about undervolting and CPU. So simply stated that Even an apple user could understand this. :thumbup:
AT&T SGS3
ParanoidKangDroid 1.1.0
KT747 10/28 OC'ed & UV'ed
Medical MJ Supporter
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Aww. That's not nice. Lol
cajunflavoredbob said:
Introduction:
If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you want to learn something new. I love sharing knowledge with others, so I hope you do as well. With that being said, please understand that I’m doing this in my spare time, and have no degree of any kind on this topic. What I’ve compiled here is a pretty good guide to explain and hopefully educate some of you on a highly talked about, but widely misunderstood concept of CPU architecture.
Before we begin, I need to make sure you all understand a few basic concepts of electricity. I can’t teach you new material if you don’t know the language, right?
Terminology:
Voltage
The first term is, of course, voltage. Voltage is defined as the difference in electrical potential between two points. What does that mean, I’m sure you wonder? Well, to put it simply, think of a fire hydrant. When the valve is opened to let water into a hose, from the hydrant, it rushes in all at once to the end of the hose. It sits there in the hose until the nozzle is opened to put out the fire. The force that pushes the water forward is called water pressure, and like water pressure, voltage pushes the electrical current along as well. So, we will think of voltage itself as the force or pressure being applied behind an electrical current to keep it moving.
Amperage
Next up is the term, amperes. In short this is the electrical current itself. An ampere, or amp for short, is the actual unit of measurement for the amount of electricity passing a single point in a circuit at one time. This might seem confusing, so let’s just keep it simple and think of an amp as the electrical current itself. In the fire hose example, the amperage would be the water inside the hose.
Wattage
Last up is something called a watt. Now, this one can get tricky, so stick with me. A watt literally measures the rate of energy conversion or the transfer of energy. So, essentially, the watt measures the amount of work done over time. This is where it gets tricky and a little confusing. Wattage, in the fire hose example, would be the amount of water that the fire hose can hold. This is the work, or wattage, generated by the hose while operating under a constant flow of water. Now, that’s the tricky part right there. ‘Work’ in this example isn’t a normal 9-5 job. It is, more simply put, the overall capacity of the hose. A normal household lightbulb is rated around 60 watts. This means that while it’s on, it is producing a constant amount of light. This constant amount is 60 watts, which is its peak brightness under constant current.
So, to sum these three terms up as simply as possible, think of voltage as pressure, amperage as the current, and wattage as the capacity.
Example
One final example should help with this analogy. We’ve all seen those wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tubemen before, right? If not, or if you’ve never seen Family Guy before, it’s basically a long, nylon tube that is open at both ends. One end is attached to a fan at the bottom, while the other end is left open for air to escape. When the fan at the bottom is turned on, it begins to generate wind that inflates the tube and causes it to rise off the ground and flail about in the air. In this example, the voltage is the air pressure keeping the tube floating, the wind flowing through the tube is the amperage, and the amount of wind needed to make the tube rise off the ground is called the wattage.
Undervolting:
Myth or fact?
Let’s go ahead and start off with a bang, shall we? First, let me make it clear to you that no matter what people tell you, undervolting your CPU will not magically make your battery last five days longer than it should. I’m not saying it doesn’t save battery at all, because it does. It just doesn’t save as much as you’ve probably been led to believe. On any average smartphone battery under normal conditions, you should not expect an increase of more than a few percent while undervolting.
Does this mean you should stop undervolting altogether? Not at all! Quite the contrary, actually. Undervolting is actually a very good thing for your smart phone when you do it correctly. Undervolting has one major positive effect on your CPU: it will extend the life of your processor by allowing it to do demanding things with lower heat generation. In the tube example from before, undervolting would be like reducing the fan speed as low as possible while still keeping the tube in the air. The air pressure lowers along with the wind current, or amperage. Due to the now lower amount of pressure, the amount of wind being pushed through the tube (amperage, remember?) is lowered slightly as well. This, in turn, prolongs the life of the nylon tube itself by putting less strain on it while it’s flapping around in the breeze. It’s kind of like how a flag flying in the breeze will last longer than one you fly on the back of your truck while you drive down the highway.
Summary:
Now that we’ve learned all this, what does it all mean? Well, going back to the nylon tube example, the tube itself is the CPU. So, all three properties discussed before come into play here around the nylon tube (CPU). The air pressure forces the wind up through the tube and causes the tube to raise in much the same way as the voltage from your battery causes the electrical current to flow along the circuits through the CPU. Wattage is simply the maximum amount of juice flowing from the battery keeping everything running at the same current.
All this nylon tube talk is only here to show you how the act of undervolting your CPU actually affects the processor itself. Yes, it does reduce stress on your CPU. Yes, it does reduce the drain on the battery. No, it will not likely produce a result that you’ve been hyped up to believe. The effects of undervolting your CPU are minimal at best, and should, in my opinion, only be used if you want your CPU to run a bit cooler under demanding tasks, such as using a heavy GPS app, like CoPilot, for a few hours, or while playing graphics intensive games for a while. Outside of that, you may gain about 30 minutes of extra run time on your battery on average (everyone’s phone is different, this is a rough average), or another couple of months of life on your CPU. Keep in mind that CPUs last many years on average under normal use, notwithstanding defects or abuse.
I’m certainly not telling you to avoid undervolting. I undervolt all my devices, including my personal computers. This post is meant to be informative since most people do this without understanding most of the concepts, while they buy into the hype generated around this. My main point is that the main reason you should undervolt is to keep the heat down on your device while you do demanding things. After all, you have a device in your hands today, most likely, that is more powerful than most desktop PCs just a few short years ago. Why wouldn’t you want to get everything out of it?
Bonus example:
Yet another example of voltage and amperage is your own cell phone charger. Most cell phone chargers now are 5V (volt), 1A (ampere/amp) chargers. This means that there are 5 volts pushing the 1 ampere electrical current to your phone over the USB cable. Wattage comes into play here in the electrical outlet. Most US electrical outlets are rated at 125 watts. Most cell phones are rated at 4-5W (watts) per hour. This means, that the outlet will still have a capacity of 120 or so watts per hour left over while your phone is charging.
How to undervolt:
The procedure for undervolting is different for each device (normally), so I’m not going to show anyone how to do it here. There are a few apps on the market that can help you do it if your kernel supports this feature. If you don’t know if your kernel supports this feature, please ask your ROM chef. Most, if not all, stock ROMs do not support this.
Apps:
The following apps will allow you to tweak your voltage settings if your kernel/ROM allow it. Root is required. There are many more on the market, but these are a few of the most popular ones.
System Tuner Pro
Set CPU
Voltage Control
IncrediControl
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the information!!!
Good job guys. Why don't I requote the entire passage to thank the op instead of hitting the thanks button.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Xparent ICS Tapatalk 2
hariskoirala said:
thanks for the information!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for quoting a long post like a douchebag.
Markuzy said:
Good job guys. Why don't I requote the entire passage to thank the op instead of hitting the thanks button.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Xparent ICS Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, please do. You're not cool unless you do it. /sarcasm
I don't understand those guys...
cajunflavoredbob said:
Thanks for quoting a long post like a douchebag.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He's probably post farming with useless "Thanks/me too/excellent/this is useful" posts to get the min 10 posts...
All such people should be reported.
Markuzy said:
He's probably post farming with useless "Thanks/me too/excellent/this is useful" posts to get the min 10 posts...
All such people should be reported.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably so. Those guys don't understand how easy it is to make ten useful posts.
Epic thanks for the guide its pretty easy for dummies like me to follow
nikufellow said:
Epic thanks for the guide its pretty easy for dummies like me to follow
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I was hoping to make it as simple as possible. I'm glad it worked.
Very useful info
Thanks
Sent from my ST25i using Tapatalk 2
Really informative thread. Helped clear a lot of confusions. Wish everyone explained things this nicely.
Very nice. Thanks be clicked.
WHO DAT!!
Can you please tell a rough estimate of safe range. Or is there no danger in undervolting?
Sent from my IM-A770K using xda app-developers app
When I undervolt, I do a little at a time and make sure things are stable before trying again.. Make sure u do a nandroid and if u have any trouble, you can always boot into recovery and restore if u can't change ur voltages back to where they were stable.. Just my 2¢
From my rat infested note ii
Related
Hi,
I have a quite naive, ambicious and just theoretical question. HTC HD has a thermometer on CPU as probably most of todays PDAs. But, wouldn't be possible to count the temperature in the room(or wherever you are) due to the informations from this thermometer? Of course you would have to count a bit with the current performance of CPU(find out how much the CPU temperature affects data going out of the thermometer. But maybe after some mathematical operation it could work. I know it is very naive questin, but I just wanted to ask.
So thanks for the response
Nice idea, but cant see how this could work accurately as the variable (cpu/battery temp) various wildly depending on how heavily you are using it.
Be better (and more accurate) to rely on the weather app/msn weather widget for the external temperature.
Saying that, a developer might like the challenge
the thermometer is build into the cpu chip itself
and cpu usage have a much bigger impact on the temp
then area temp does
more so when these devices don't have big air grills for air circulation
so doubt it would ever work well as a room temp measuring device
I realize it would be complicated if not impossible .. but it was just an idea so I put it here.
Shooter92 said:
I realize it would be complicated if not impossible .. but it was just an idea so I put it here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actualy it was an application like that, it was for smartphones running wm2003, it wasn't so accurate.I was lookinking for something like this on the net but nothing found for pocket pc
Theoretically, a program could measure the temperature of the device overtime, taking the cpu usage, battery drainage, etc. to determine an equation to use in calculating the only missing variable: the outside temp. The equation could mathematically deduce that based on a given temperature with given variables (cpu usage, battery heat based on drainage, etc.).
However, the program would reasonably need to be device specific. Otherwise, small changes in hardware would change the results dramatically. Of course, the program could determine that, as I mentioned above, but it would introduce an entirely new set of variables and would probably need to run for a given time to sample the device (at least a week). It still may not even be possible that way because the device would not be able to reach the maximums and minimums of each variable...still, math could theoretically fill in the gaps.
That being said, it still would not be very accurate because there is actually 2 blank variables. If the temperature surrounding the phone was static (the same all the time) then this would work. BUT since you will be changing air temps quite frequently, the air temp would not have time to affect the device. It would be a slow increase or decrease until it finally levels out. Its like taking water and putting it in a freezer. It won't freeze immediately, but it will freeze over the course of several hours. You can be outside in 90 degree weather for several hours then walk back inside to 70 degree air. Your phone would still calculate the air temp as some where around 90 for quite a while.
Does that make sense?
Seems like some recurring discussion in past threads:
1 - why should we even bother overclocking if we’re not a gamer.
2 - won’t we damage our device with overclocking.
I haven’t seen definitive answers posted anywhere, and I certainly don’t have one.
Maybe in that case (I have no definitive answer), I should probably just keep my mouth shut.
It may be the case, if so let me know.
For whatever reason, I have some strong opinions and I feel it would be useful to share my opinions and the reasons I have formed those opinions.
Take them or leave them or add to them... up to you.
Point out to me if you think I am grossly mistaken.
1 - why should we even bother overclocking if we’re not a gamer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is constant tradeoff between battery and performance.
Underclocking will help you save battery. How low you want to underclock depends on what you can tolerate.
But what you can tolerate depends on your user experience, which can be dramatically impacted by use of overclocking at other times.
The perfect example for me is a program which is slow to start up. In my case it is Memento database with 1000+ records, takes a long time to read in (I think the program does some sorting every time it opens). That is a minor annoyance. If I were to underclock it will start even slower, I’m going to get impatient and set my speed back up.
But think about this:
1 - Using Tasker you can apply cpu profiles upon application launch and remove them after a predetermined length of time. I can give the program a blast of 1600M-hz when it starts, then set it back where it was after predetermined period (for example 10 seconds).
2 – Setcpu is not quite as flexible as tasker in this regard. With setcpu we can create a profile to occur when we launch the program like Memento, but we just can’t incorproate a time delay into the logic (it will stay on the higher profile as long as the program runs in the foreground).
3 - There may be circumstances where this setcpu behavior is what you want... it will give you faster response whenever the program is in the foreground, and will yield to lower priority profiles whenever the program goes to the backghround.
(I haven’t investigated how to make make Tasker and setcpu play nicely together yet).
So, if you speed up the things that cause noticeable delay for only a short time, or particular applications which seem to run slow then you can probably be more satisfied with your underclock in the other times. In the overall picture, I think the overclock capability can ironically be used as part of a strategy to save battery (unless you just like overclocking just to see things zip accross your desktop and menu’s pop in and out faster than you can blink, I’m starting to get spoiled with that behavior on my phone in its new configuration, partially from overclock..I’m sure others get even better in their configuations..).
2 - won’t we damage our device with overclocking.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On this I would say no, as long as you are careful about not running it in conditions that create high temperature. .
(you may have stability problems as you guys know, an entirely different subject).
The physics of the damage are all related to temperature. There are many variables affecting temperature that the designer is unaware of and so he builds in margin for the worst cause unknown future occurence (he has to consider maybe phone will be in desert with 100F ambient, and on the charger, while the user tries some heavy surfing with gps, all at the same time, so he limits cpu to 1200Mhz).
We on the other hand know what are the conditions of our phone and what it’s likely to see and what it’s doing at any given time, and setcpu provides additional ability to monitor and adjust.
Here are example setcpu profiles I came up with to protect myself from damaging temperatures (Zen's kernel A/1600)
Priority 100: If batter temperature > 50C (122F),establish conservative governor 100-400Mhz
Priority 90: If batter temperature > 45C (113F),establish conservative governor 100-800Mhz
Priority 80: If battery temperature > 40C (104F), establish conservative governor 100-1200Mhz (in the event I was overclocking, this profile will stop it when battery temp exceeds 40C, all other profiles that may invoke overclocking are lower priority than 80).
This is just from judgement, knowing that I’m normally < 104F battery temp during light use and don’t want to overclock when I’m outside that normal light use zone. Some further curtailment of cpu max frequency occurs as battery temperature climbs above that. (which I would not have even had the benefit of if I were casual user with no overclocking and no setcpu).
As long as you’re limiting temperature, you should not be worried about damage imo. By the way, of course overclocking is not the only thing to affect temperature: things like phone case (thermal insulation), charging, gps, heavy use etc all have an effect. I'm not quite sure why sometime cpu overclocking gets singled out in a dangerous category all its own without any discussion of other things that affect tempertaure.
In fairness, you may point out that what we monitor is battery temperature and not the same thing as cpu temperature. It’s a good point. Increase in heat generated at the cpu causes more of an increase in temperature at the cpu then it does at the battery. But it's question of how much different. there's a matter of how much. Why do you think it is that Samsung didn’t give us cpu temperature indication? I think because they knew battery temperature is close enough. Even on newer flagship Behemoth Samsung Note, I’ve read you still only get battery temperature, no cpu temperature. If cpu temperature was that much different, they surely would have provided a separate indication of cpu temperature (cpu is after all a much more critical component than replaceable battery).
And why should we expect battery temperature to be representative of cpu temperature on our phone, when the same is not true on a pc? I think I can answer that:
* PC has things all spread out. There is air flowing through. The air picks up heat from each component from heat sinks by convection. The component temperatures are not tightly coupled together.
* Phone (in contrast to pc) has everything compact inside one itsy bitsy case. There is no air flowing through. That means heat transfer inside the phone is not by convection but by conduction. For most effective conduction, all components are attached with high thermal-conductivity path to the phone structure and the exterior surface of the phone. The heat transfer from phone to ambient is primarily convection. So we have effective heat transfer (conduction) among the components of the phone and less- effective heat transfer (from phone to environment). It tends to tell us that there will not be big difference in temperature among phone components. The big temperature difference that occurs is between the phone and the ambient air.
I don't have access to a phone which has both cpu and battery temperature indicators. If someone does, it would be interesting to hear how close those two temperatures follow each other.
===================================================================================
Edited to add: searching other threads suggests there can maybe be a substantial differencebetween cpu temperature and battery temperature. That makes me a little less certain. At least we can use battery temperature as a gross indicator that the cpu isn't seeing excessive extra heat from other non-cpu sources while we're overclocking it. Certainly having profiles in place to limit overclocking when battery temperature is high can only help protect us. But is it a false sense of security which can lead us astray? I dunno. I have already done a stability test at 1600 for quite awhile and there's no damage in sight, so if there is any damage potential, then it is only an accumulation over time. I don't plan on leaving Fmax at 1600 all the time anyway, since it would kill the battery. My planned strategy reserves the 1600 overclock for occasional playing around, and boosts when I need them like like my Memento database. My gut says that approach is just fine. Interested in hearing any other thoughts, experiences, links that may shed light.
Hi all i want to ask if overclocking is a good think because i have a galaxy w and some month ago i clock my processor from 1.4 to 1.8 gHz (single core).. now the battery life is very reduced, but i don't know if it is caused by the clock or if is the time that have my phone.. i used the clock speed for one week max just for play a hard game with good graphics :eek. :good:
If you've already returned to stock clockspeed it's probably not the overclocking that's causing it. But just to be sure, go and check that the clock is at standard. It has happened for me that the phone has raised the clock by it self for some reason. If thats not the case just try going to the battery stats to see if any app is using a lot of battery. If not I dont know what could be wrong. Maybe it's just time for a new battery (or phone)
Overclocking is not a "good" or "bad" thing. It will use more battery while you're doing it and you can damage the hardware - it's a risk you choose to take.
It's possible something was damaged, but it wouldn't be my first guess.
I'd use something like BetterBatteryStats to find out why your battery is draining and go from there.
Honestly there's really no point your phone is engineered to a certain clock everything in your phone is engineered to run with that clock when you overclock now your straining not just the processor but your battery as well and everything(electronic component wise) is now going to run a lot hotter then it was engineered to run and you have tiny little low voltage surface mount transistors and diodes that don't like heat. So they stop the clock at where they do so they can achieve the best speed they can without harming components and without killing your battery. The more you run that phone like that the less and less your battery is going to last. Its like your poisoning it slowly. Just to archive less then microseconds of snappyness. Its not really worth it there's no point in breaking (not all devices will break but you don't know if you have one with a weak component in it somewhere or not. It might not break until you stress it out) something that intelligent entity's after pulling in matter and from this cosmos and putting it together to engineer such an amazing device. Why break it. Its very possible to do so. Some phones will run a year like that without starting to lag on you from burning out contacts inside components and creating tiny little spark gaps that takes signal and current longer to get where it needs to go so now you start to lag....that can start to happen the next day or an hour after you do it. Or even a year from now. Do you really need to be faster where you barely notice it that badly?
Sent from my SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2
Just underclock it a little. Saves battery and reduces heat.
i would be glad if someone provides this so i can play more on my phone p9 is pretty sensitive
rhaegon36 said:
i would be glad if someone provides this so i can play more on my phone p9 is pretty sensitive
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
check this out: http://forum.xda-developers.com/p9/help/huawei-p9-overheat-protection-feature-t3441315/
As i already stated over there, if you disable termal throttling you will not get better performance, well, actually you will, for a whole lot of 15 minutes, then you get a dead phone.
Termal throttling is there for a reason, if the components get too hot they will get damaged. If you want to disable termal throttling, you need to improve heat dissipation first, and, as far as i know, there is now way to do so.
noki57oo said:
check this out: http://forum.xda-developers.com/p9/help/huawei-p9-overheat-protection-feature-t3441315/
As i already stated over there, if you disable termal throttling you will not get better performance, well, actually you will, for a whole lot of 15 minutes, then you get a dead phone.
Termal throttling is there for a reason, if the components get too hot they will get damaged. If you want to disable termal throttling, you need to improve heat dissipation first, and, as far as i know, there is now way to do so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well trinity kernel tool exist but its way too old, no new update, trinity kernel tool where u can optimize voltage disable thermal throttling etc., my phone slows down at 39-40 sometimes even at 36 when i know my phone can handle maybe like 45-50 without damage.. ive seen old posts on LG phones where there is a kernal.zip with thermal throttling disabled and you can install it. i know it can be disabled but havent found any links for p9. i was just posting here to by chance get some from the devs here. i can control my phones temp i can cool it off on my AC while playing, i just want it to maybe if not disable it then set its throttling lvl to like 50degrees because i think the p9 throttling is set to a very low trigger point where it could be higher and still be OK
rhaegon36 said:
well trinity kernel tool exist but its way too old, no new update, trinity kernel tool where u can optimize voltage disable thermal throttling etc., my phone slows down at 39-40 sometimes even at 36 when i know my phone can handle maybe like 45-50 without damage.. ive seen old posts on LG phones where there is a kernal.zip with thermal throttling disabled and you can install it. i know it can be disabled but havent found any links for p9. i was just posting here to by chance get some from the devs here. i can control my phones temp i can cool it off on my AC while playing, i just want it to maybe if not disable it then set its throttling lvl to like 50degrees because i think the p9 throttling is set to a very low trigger point where it could be higher and still be OK
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"i know my phone can handle maybe like 45-50 without damage"
"i think the p9 throttling is set to a very low trigger"
You know? You think? I'm sorry man, your knowing and thinking, unless based on official documents of Hisilicon, is just that, guessing, and it's not worth anything.
Just because some LG smartphone could do it, it doesn't mean it can be done. Also, you need to take into account the manufacturing process, the same chip could handle different temps if not built by the same company, or even if built by the same company, all the chips are different even if they are pratically the same. Guess what happens if you take different chips, or even different smartphones...
Termal throttling is not there to bother you, it's there for safety reasons, if the temperature is any higher than what the manufacturer had intended you could cause a lot of permanent damage.
Also keep in mind that if you disable termal throttling you will keep increasing the temperature, as the heat produced is the same at any given time under costant load and the passive dissipation system can only get rid of a small amount of what you produce (that's why it needs termal throttling at all), which means that if not stopped at 50C, your phone would just reach 70, or 80, or even 100C in a small time frame, and just keep rising until it eventually dies. Also, the throttling could even be power based, perhaps the battery is too hot, so if you keep going it could even "blow" up.
If you take into account undervolting and underclocking perhaps you can achieve the same result, but termal throttling has to stay.
I hope that explains it, so rather than asking for a kernel without termal throttling, ask for one with undervolting, it makes much more sense.
noki57oo said:
"i know my phone can handle maybe like 45-50 without damage"
"i think the p9 throttling is set to a very low trigger"
You know? You think? I'm sorry man, your knowing and thinking, unless based on official documents of Hisilicon, is just that, guessing, and it's not worth anything.
Just because some LG smartphone could do it, it doesn't mean it can be done. Also, you need to take into account the manufacturing process, the same chip could handle different temps if not built by the same company, or even if built by the same company, all the chips are different even if they are pratically the same. Guess what happens if you take different chips, or even different smartphones...
Termal throttling is not there to bother you, it's there for safety reasons, if the temperature is any higher than what the manufacturer had intended you could cause a lot of permanent damage.
Also keep in mind that if you disable termal throttling you will keep increasing the temperature, as the heat produced is the same at any given time under costant load and the passive dissipation system can only get rid of a small amount of what you produce (that's why it needs termal throttling at all), which means that if not stopped at 50C, your phone would just reach 70, or 80, or even 100C in a small time frame, and just keep rising until it eventually dies. Also, the throttling could even be power based, perhaps the battery is too hot, so if you keep going it could even "blow" up.
If you take into account undervolting and underclocking perhaps you can achieve the same result, but termal throttling has to stay.
I hope that explains it, so rather than asking for a kernel without termal throttling, ask for one with undervolting, it makes much more sense.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
alright man thanks, just kinda pissed i cant play too long on my phone
noki57oo said:
"i know my phone can handle maybe like 45-50 without damage"
"i think the p9 throttling is set to a very low trigger"
You know? You think? I'm sorry man, your knowing and thinking, unless based on official documents of Hisilicon, is just that, guessing, and it's not worth anything.
Just because some LG smartphone could do it, it doesn't mean it can be done. Also, you need to take into account the manufacturing process, the same chip could handle different temps if not built by the same company, or even if built by the same company, all the chips are different even if they are pratically the same. Guess what happens if you take different chips, or even different smartphones...
Termal throttling is not there to bother you, it's there for safety reasons, if the temperature is any higher than what the manufacturer had intended you could cause a lot of permanent damage.
Also keep in mind that if you disable termal throttling you will keep increasing the temperature, as the heat produced is the same at any given time under costant load and the passive dissipation system can only get rid of a small amount of what you produce (that's why it needs termal throttling at all), which means that if not stopped at 50C, your phone would just reach 70, or 80, or even 100C in a small time frame, and just keep rising until it eventually dies. Also, the throttling could even be power based, perhaps the battery is too hot, so if you keep going it could even "blow" up.
If you take into account undervolting and underclocking perhaps you can achieve the same result, but termal throttling has to stay.
I hope that explains it, so rather than asking for a kernel without termal throttling, ask for one with undervolting, it makes much more sense.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no, you're wrong. cpu will safe at 100°C, cpu far away not enough warm the battery and kaboom. and voltage is set too high so phone become too hot in a short time it scaling to max frequency, max voltage in voltage table is used. temperature is closely related to voltage, not about cpu frequency. many manufacturers always set the voltage to too high, this is what causes overheating, I have undervolted and overclocked: I get 3 things: phone always cold cool!, huge battery life and speed of light as I want, I'm very please about it when I can control my phone, also my pc
Hey everybody,
Since I work at a phone repair shop I have access to a lot of little parts and things to do modifications to phones.
Lately I've been thinking of taking a heatpipe from something, and slapping it into my Pixel 3 just to see what kind of difference it may or may not make.
I have a heatpipe from a Samsung S10 already pulled just waiting for install.
But I'm hoping some people can chime in with the temperatures that their stock pixel 3 devices generally reach, so that I can compare after the "mod".
Preferably three temperatures:
Idle
Load (Video)
Load (3d game)
And if your feeling generous a fourth temperature from using a CPU burn in app.
I'm currently using CPU monitor to check my temps, so using that would be prefered so that there are no different temps between apps.
And yes I realize this won't be a perfect test due to what apps everybody may have running in the background, but ballpark figures are better than none at all lol
For reference my temps stock:
Idle: 31°-33°
Load (Video): 35°-37°
Load (3D game): 36°-40°
Ok so the heatpipe has been installed since later in the afternoon yesterday.
The heatpipe has cooler Master thermal paste on either side to help heat transfer.
It sits directly under the motherboard, and runs underneath the battery.
Initially the temps were a little worse of course since the thermal paste had to "set"
But I now have some base figures.
At idle: 25°-31° (this large variance is likely due to background apps updating/running such as Facebook, messenger, email and ambient temperature however it mostly sits around 29°)
Load (Video): 29°-34°
Mostly used YouTube, but watched a movie on Netflix
I did have a 3 hour google duo video call with my favorite lady. After about an hour and a half the cpu hit 47° and stayed between 45°-47°
Fairly hot, but prior to this I've seen it hit 49° on a duo call so I'm not complaining.
Load (3D game):35°-37°
Obviously this one is subjective due to the game, and what settings it's on. Though temps didn't seem to change much.
One thing I have noticed from all this is that cpu monitor also tells you your battery temperature, and weirdly enough the battery has actually gone down in temp 2°-3° from where it would normally sit.
What I mean is that at stock the battery was usually 1°-2° celcius higher than the cpu temp. Where as after this mod it usually runs the opposite 1°-2° lower temp than the cpu.