Improve your Mac’s energy efficiency to keep it cool and extend battery life

IT WILL TAKE

15 minutes

YOU WILL LEARN

How to allocate CPU resources more efficiently across your Mac

YOU’LL NEED

Turbo Boost Switcher Free or Pro, AppPolice

Naturally, running your processor at the faster speed means it generates more heat

Your Mac is usually very smart when it comes to optimising its energy usage, whether it’s maximising the battery life of your MacBook, balancing the demands between multiple applications running at once or simply preventing your Mac from overheating. That said, there are times when you may wish to reduce energy consumption further, and we’ve dug out a pair of complementary apps that let you sacrifice raw power for longer battery life and a cooler Mac. Pair them with Macs Fan Control (bit.ly/mac357fanctrl - see issue 354) and you have the ultimate toolkit for keeping your Mac running optimally.

Take control of Turbo Boost

Your Mac’s CPU supports Intel Turbo Boost Technology, which is basically an official way of overclocking the processor to deliver faster performance when resource-intensive applications like games or video-editing applications demand it. Unlike traditional overclocking, Turbo Boost has been cleverly engineered to avoid overheating, using a process known as CPU throttling to cut the processor’s speed if it runs over a certain temperature (typically 100° C).