Save Battery Life on Dell Inspiron 1525 Hackintosh
**THIS POST IS OUTDATED PLEASE REFER TO THE SNOW LEOPARD GUIDE**
There are many speedstepping alternatives but in my experience VoodooPower.kext has been one of the best. It keeps the temperature of your computer down all while being customizable.
With a 6 cell battery you should be able to squeeze a decent 2 hours and 30 minutes out of this.
It’s important to remember that the battery’s time calculator isn’t particularly reliable and you should have it set to something like percent.
1) Alright first we have to get rid of all of your previous speedstep kexts if you have any. Below is a list of kexts that you would have to delete if you installed them.
GenericCPUPowerManagement.kext
IntelEnhancedSpeedstep.kext
2) Download VoodooPower Kext and GenericCPUPowerManagement Application as well as voodoopower-manual from Superhai
3) Place the “Voodoopower.kext” in “Kext Helper b7” click “Advanced” and “Tag Cache Rebuild” then “Run” and Reboot
4) On startup run “GenericCPUPMControl” to see if speedstepping is working. You should see “Load” and “Frequency” moving. On startup your frequency will probably be a bit inconsistent but let it balance out.
5) The Kext automatically autosteps so you don’t have to adjust it.
6) **If you want you can read the manual written by Superhai and you can edit your VoodooPower.kext accordingly.**
Now you should have your computer functioning at peak battery performance!
Well I have a strange situation here. Before installing voodoopower.kext, ‘ About this Mac’ shown frequency of my processor 2.00 GZH and on geekbench, it shown (i dont know why) frequency 720 MZh. My score was 2660. With new voodoopowerkext I now see in abt this mac 1.81 gzh and the same in geekbench. The score is approximately the same 2680.
I don’t know what conclusion I can draw but I’ll keep testing both the battery life and processor activity. I dare to expect a faster processor. Get rid of IntelEnhancedSpped.
I have Inspiron 1525 Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.00 Gzh
Keep you posted guys
I’m not too sure about it but I’ve been using it and it seems to work a lot better than IntelEnhancedSpeed.kext.
Spread the word about it.
I can confirm that battery life increased with 20 minutes which is very good for me
Thanks Genaro for your dedicated work for all of us.
I can confirm it is working here but I do not have any idea on what the impact on battery life is.
I’ve had no problem with IntelEnhancedSpeed.kext. Verified with SpeedStep.app, my CPU drops to a cool 800MHz (from 1.87GHz) when I’m idling or viewing a web page using Firefox. My CPU is a 1.87GHz Pentium Dual Core.
In my experience VoodooPower.kext steps a bit better but in addition to this you can manually alter the kext in order to get it to your ideal settings.
The is working great for me. I’m going to try to modify the kext so when on battery it stays cooler and last longer (i.e Takes longer to speedstep up, max frequency at 1.4ghz, and a higher threshold for stepping up). I did this for the 1525 in XP with rmclock, it’s great. If anyone has made a custom kext you should share it here.
The battery meter for me stays at “calculating…”. Anyone else have this issue when they are running off battery?
This happens to everybody running 10.5.6 when you plug out the cord while you are running OS Also at the full charge the battery would show charged completed 109%
I followed the instructions, but when I run GenericCPUPMControl it says Kernel Extension: Offline.
What am I missing?
That’s very strange, you can attempt to remove AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext.
That might fix things up.
You should also kext helper it again it might have just not gone through.
my inspiron cpu temperature is always 56 to 58c shown by generic CPUPM control.fans are also not working.please help.
sometimes it goes to 68 to 70 when applications like photobooth are running
Open terminal and run the following which should delete AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext and leave your system running well.
sudo -s
rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext
thanx.now the temperature is below 50c always
what should be the appropriate temperature while playing games and using applications like photobooth.when i play games the temperature is nearly 75c injust a minute.and that too incase simple games.what should i do.while using applications like iworks,safari it is 46c.while watching movies it is nearly 55c.
That sounds about the right idle temp and movie temp, I unfortunately don’t play games much so I wouldnt know what temp then but everything else sounds about right.
i do eveything like u write, when i run GenericCPUPMControl.app but not happen, i no see it. help me
With all voodoo kexts installed for any average task including idle my processors stay around 60-65C. I removed the AppleCPUpowermanagement kext but this did not affect it. Would could be causing the high temp?
Also with my battery when fully charged it says 2hr 20min when I unplug then rapidly drops after 20 minutes or so, The battery is fine.
Any suggestions are greatly apprecated.
That’s really strange that the temp is that high, after removing the AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext did you “Clear Kext Cache” try that and restart and see what you idle at.
The Voodoo kext make no difference in temperature. Neither does removing AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext, Also tried removing AppleCPUthermo.kext and extensions.mkext which seemed to have helped some and this made no affect at all. I’ve tried all combinations of these with no avail. All followed up with ‘Clear Extensions Cache’. The temperature changes rapidly even at idle (61c-75c) but usually stays around 62c
The only thing I could think of is that before I tried that ACPI fix was that I’m fairly sure it wasn’t running this warm. I don’t think that fix has any affect from what I know but I’m going to give it a try. Figure i’ll recieve the same temperatures.
I wonder how many people actually have an issue with the processor overheating and just don’t know about it.
Anyways so I got my system to work without the ACPI fix, but this overheating issue is still a problem. Same as before.
Nothing I tried with iPC worked, still resulted in the 60C+ idle temp with it reaching up to 80C
So I gave iDeneb v1.4 a try, Without removal of any kext or Voodoo power installed it runs at around 51C idle with proper removal of kext and Voodoo Power kext package installed it sits around 45C and gets up to around 65C at time of use. Atleast I can see a good temp. drop now. (Usually when it gets around 65C it drops back down.) Now while this feels like a more normal idle temp the fact that it gets up to 65C still worries me. What do you think about this temp range? (it got up to 68C during the 10.5.7 update)
All in all I’m unsure as to why iPC stays so hot. I know its a kext or combination thats off but I haven’t found anything to drop the temp.
Btw, I have the Intel T5750
Dell 1525 (122B model)
I’ll keep updated on any fixes that help me incase anyone in my situation needs the same help
@Ryan I don’t see a MAX of 65C as cause for great concern. The processor is rated to 100C before it slows down and then halts. However, cooler is always better. There are so many variables that could account for the heating problems you have had running iPC vs iDeneb, I wouldn’t know were to start. I do however suspect that it was mdworker and/or mds, which are involved with keeping spotlights index up-to-date.
A couple of questions; did you notice the process activity levels (load average or % processor utilization) before and again now? does the fan run more often and faster (louder) now than with iPC? What is you bios version? Has you machine ever taken a fall or been knocked around more than normal? I ask because the way these things are designed, the heatsink/thermal pipe/radiator assembly is made to be cheap not effective. The thermal paste is applied as a “tape” which makes it easy to get a bubble or a bare spot. Banging it around can flex the heatsink assembly also creating a bubble.
Neither system had a issue with CPU peaking out. The load average stayed consistent with the task performed. The difference was just in the temp. I now have a idle temp of 41C on 10.5.7 iDeneb vs the higher 65C+ idle on iPC
I’ve actually hit 78C during the CS4 Collection install while watching a movie but it quickly decreases on iDeneb. All the temp. seem to fluctuate greatly is this how processors normally tend? I’ve never really watched this closely to CPU temps haha
Oh yeah and latest bios just updated the other day, and never been dropped.
BUT! I’m happy to report that I have 10.5.7 running smoothly with iDeneb and the 2 driver packs used with this iPC install and the ACPI Kext used to fix the trackpad and keyboard after 10.5.7 update.
Something interesting: With iDeneb, Temperature Monitor reads 44C idle, With iPC I was using GenericCPUPMControl showing an idle of 60C+. When I used GenericCPUPMControl on iDeneb it showed a similar idle. Now when I altered GenericCPUPMControl’s TJMAX setting to 85C it showed the same temp or very close with Temperature Monitor. (44C idle)
Temperature monitor seems much more accurate (Hopefully) Maybe I just didn’t have the right TJMAX setting in iPC when viewing the temps? Thus it showing the incorrect temp. and I never tried Temperature Monitor on iPC to show a differen’t temp.
OR maybe I really still don’t know and my laptop is overheating
I did everything and everything fine: 47C or 51C at most.
Only one problem: I think I got confused with the VoodooBattery.kext and installed twice (and then I installed the VoodooPower.kext completely ok) but now I have TWO batteries indicators (and one battery percentage) at the top of my screen.
Do you know how can I get rid of the second one ??? Thanks in advance.
I have to got intel speedstep enable on BIOS in order to this work?
It’s working now…
Hi
i have followed the guide above and looked all over the site but i cant seem to find anything to help. i believe the laptop is overheating and this is causing it to lock up. i am running 10.5.7 and both GenericCPUPowerManagement.kext and IntelEnhancedSpeedstep.kext in my extensions folder. using GenericCPUPMControl typing this cpu is at 70C the load is changing but the frequency constant in the middle under load installing office the cpu is at 100C and the bottom of the laptop is hotter than the sun. It also shows voodopower.kext kernel extension online and auto throttling is indented.
Thanks Rich
Rich: You need to use either IntelEnhancedSpeedStep OR VoodoPower not both. The current recommendation is VoodooPower. So get rid of IntelEnhancedSpeedStep and remove the AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement kext as well.
See the latest posts for instructions on how to do these things without making a mess of things.
The temps reported by GenericCPUPMControl are not always accurate. Do you fans run a lot? Do they ‘roar’ even when your doing nothing? Does your Laptop feel hot? If you are truly running hot you’ll feel it over the area around the t, y, g, h keys (right over the cpu) and over the radiator in the upper felt corner… Let us know how you make out.
I have the same problem, with the same processor, but in my case it gets up to 68c without a task
and till 98c on vmware.
The only ting worked for me with over heating to turn off the AutoThrottle feature of the GenericCPUPMControl at the startup it keeps the temperature to 70c average at normal use.
Could you, Genaro, tell us about if you modified your Info.plist ?
I am getting about an hour on battery (and I think 6 cells is the lower battery, the one I have), and the app show that it is working a VoodooBattery 1.2.3.
I followed your guides from iPC 10.5.6 hackintosh and upgrading to 10.5.7
Everything works properly, but I wanna know about this issue with battery.
Also, I can tell you that in my Settings – Energy Saver there isnt any of “power saver” “balance” or that kind of things that should be there.
[delete this is for notifying of followup comments]
my battery meter does not appear, in the the system preferences (energy saver) shows like my inspiron is a desktop computer, no option about ac power/battery.
How can I fix it? (sorry about my english)
fixed it, just kexthelped voodoobattery.kext again, thnks
Does it work well with the 9 cells battery too?
Yes it does and lucky you if you have a 9 cell battery, I’m envious.
Hi Genaro, what about sharing your settings? (I mean, the step 6)
Because as it is, I’m not getting 2hrs and 30 min, just 50min or 1hr… :S something must be wrong (I didn’t modify any file)
Thanks in advance.
I didn’t edit my voodoopower.kext, What sort of processor do you have and what brightness are you using your laptop on?
Dell Inspiron 1525, 3gb ram, intel pentium dual core T2390 processor.
Brightness on battery power is the minimum.
Finally tried modifying the kext. I use rmclock in windows and I know it’s safe to have a max voltage of 1.015V (1015mv) so I entered in the kext, set voltageoverride to true and set min voltage to 850. The processor is locked to a min 950 though, I just wanted to give it a try. My max temp is hovering around 58. Idle temp is 46. I’ll have a battery test tomorrow. I may try changing the other setting to throttle up slower and throttle down quicker. copy and paste this over the original section in the kext if you want to use, the kexthelp it and repair disk permissions.
UseEfiFsb
UserVoltageMax
1015
UserVoltageMin
850
VoltageOverride
VoltageProbe
Got a solid 2 hours 10 min with the standard battery. What I had going on (real heavy wifi n’ disk usage):
Music/itunes 9 through homeshare with headphones-about an hour
RDC to control a windows 7 pc-on almost the whole test
Web Browsing
Low screen brightness
Stream hypem music through headphones-15 min
Stream hypem through speakers-15 min
Streamed video from pc-15 min
Ran xslimmer 3gb of 10 freed
Ran monolingual, 609mb freed
I’m going to test a lower voltage. I read someone with the same proc in an Acer laptop successfully had 950mv setting for all steppings.
I am getting 4hrs and 20 min in windows7 with a 6 cell battery. Should I be able to expect the same performance after using the ktext. I go to school and battery life is very important to me. If I can get at least 3 hours out of the battery I should be good. is this possible?
Hey guys, could anyone here help me out?
I went through the 10.5.6 installation guide and got stuck right here on the Battery stuff. Since the installation i haven’t seen any battery options for my dell, i tried removing both IntelEnhancedSpeedStep and AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement, then installing the voodoopower.kext again and still my battery meter does not appear, anywhere, no options for ac power/battery and on the Power Management Control application it says “Kernel Extention: Offline”
10.5.6
2.00 core2duo,
4GB 667
batt – 6cells
any help would be most welcome!!! thanx in advanced