Computers are often on for many hours each day and therefore while they don’t consume much electricity per hour, when you factor in the number of hours the costs can still mount up.
When assessing the running costs of your computer, you need to establish what your computer draws and then factor in how many hours it’s used a day. What matters is what your computer uses and whether you can reduce the Wh without affecting your productivity. Even small reductions in Wh will make a significant difference to the annual cost.
The 15th generation Arrow Lake Intel CPU processors were widely touted to offer significant efficiency improvements compared to the previous 14th generation. This turned out to be somewhat of a a damp squib. The Ultra 9 285K is the flagship processor model from this generation, and is the natural successor to the Core i9-14900K. While it’s true that the newer chip consumes fewer watts, the reduction is fairly modest in most applications, and certainly nothing like the difference expected. This is also the case for the other desktop processors in the 15th generation Arrow Lake series (Core Ultra 5 245K and the Core Ultra 7 265K)
There’s a good range of Linux software which helps to reduce the running cost of your computer. Software solutions offer things like processor frequency scaling, advanced power management including GPU power management, Wi-Fi power saving, and much more. And this software endows other advantages too. A computer using fewer resources will be easier to cool and may therefore generate less noise. And if your computer runs on battery power, you’ll be able to extend battery life and reduce the lifespan of the battery. We feature our favourite software in this roundup.
Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style ratings chart. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion here.
Read more about each power management tool.
| Power Consumption Tools | |
|---|---|
| TLP | Power management package; features in Essential System Tools |
| auto-cpufreq | Automatic CPU speed and power optimizer |
| PowerTOP | Enable various powersaving modes |
| cpupower | Linux kernel tool |
| power-profiles-daemon | Makes power profiles handling available over D-Bus |
| cpupower-gui | Tool to set CPU frequency limits |
| TuneD | Daemon for monitoring and adaptive tuning of system devices |
| asusctl | Control aspects of ASUS laptops |
| system76-power | Utility for managing graphics and power profiles |
| thermald | Thermal daemon for Intel Architecture |
| CPUFreq | System monitor and power manager |
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |