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Show HN: Turbo Boost Disable for macOS

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Re: Show HN: Turbo Boost Disable for macOS

#11

Post by WanderPanda »

jphoward wrote: post #7

This is not at all meant to be a criticism, but more a question: is taking a 20% performance hit, as the author writes, really worth it for a theoretical improvement in the lifespan of some integrated circuits? Are ICs actually how modern laptops break? What do you think the odds are in him realising this benefit? Assuming he bins the laptop after, say, 5 years? (he's rich enough to buy a £1.3k minimum laptop, assumi…

I use it (the turbo boost switcher by rugarciap) because of the increased battery life, decreased battery wear (frame gets less hot) and more silent fan. This is on a 2012 MBA which is still doing very fine as my daily driver (except for the display joint getting quite soft)

Re: Show HN: Turbo Boost Disable for macOS

#12

Post by neilalexander »

nicebill8 wrote: post #4
aaronharnly wrote: post #2

Looks neat! Shouldn't there be a better way to get the required permissions than asking the user to put their login password in a plaintext file?

There's likely a way to get root without having to read the password each time, this is just what I managed to hack together. If anyone has any ideas/suggestions I would be happy to fix this ASAP!

You could do this as a launchd service, which will run as root and will happen automatically with startup. No sudo nor brew required.

See /Library/LaunchDaemons and launchctl.

Re: Show HN: Turbo Boost Disable for macOS

#13

Post by robin_reala »

There are some hints that a “Pro Mode” might be coming in macOS[1] that unlocks power in exchange for fan noise, etc. I wonder if that could be extended into a “battery saver” node like iOS has that does effectively the opposite?

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/13/macos-beta-hints-at-future-pr...

Re: Show HN: Turbo Boost Disable for macOS

#15

Post by smaccona »

georgebarnett wrote: post #6
nicebill8 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's likely a way to get root without having to read the password each time, this is just what I managed to hack together. If anyone has any ideas/suggestions I would be happy to fix this ASAP!

Allow the script to run under sudo without a password.

Looks like the author already addressed this - the README now has instructions on configuring /etc/sudoers to run the script without requiring the user’s password. See https://github.com/bradleymackey/turbo-boost-disable/issues/... although https://github.com/bradleymackey/turbo-boost-disable/issues/... points out another security hole with that approach.

Re: Show HN: Turbo Boost Disable for macOS

#16

Post by akx »

aequitas wrote: post #5

I know it's not protocol to talk down Show HN submissions. But this is just a shell script loading a core component of TBS [0] during login without password prompts: by saving your password in a plain text file. I can agree that password prompts at login are not the best user experience but security is there for a reason. Maybe TBS should implement this using the privileged helper pattern [1] which allow a small daem…

TBS's Pro version uses a privileged helper, says so in the readme. :)

Re: Show HN: Turbo Boost Disable for macOS

#17

Post by jrockway »

jphoward wrote: post #7

This is not at all meant to be a criticism, but more a question: is taking a 20% performance hit, as the author writes, really worth it for a theoretical improvement in the lifespan of some integrated circuits? Are ICs actually how modern laptops break? What do you think the odds are in him realising this benefit? Assuming he bins the laptop after, say, 5 years? (he's rich enough to buy a £1.3k minimum laptop, assumi…

It seems highly unlikely to me that the CPU running hot does it any harm. Intel turbo boosts up to 100C and starts thermal throttling there because that's what they designed the chips for. Maybe other parts will break because of too much heat around the laptop; if it's on a desk made out of PLA or something, you'd want to keep the computer as cold as possible. Maybe the heat melts the adhesive holding the battery in place and it starts rattling around. Maybe the heat ruins the keyboard. I have never heard of any of these happening... but who knows.

The reality is that what seems "pretty warm" to your hand is nothing to a computer. 100C is hot for them. Dip your hand into some freshly boiled water. Is your computer that hot? Then it's fine. (Don't actually do this.)

It is also unclear to me that disabling frequency scaling results in a cooler computer. Someone should collect some data on how the power is actually used; does it use less power to perform a calculation for 2 seconds at 1000MHz or 1 second at 2000MHz?

Finally, my experience with overclocking is that it's AVX that really makes Intel chips heat up, regardless of frequency.

All in all, I think this probably does nothing. Personally I just use an iPad Pro as a laptop and keep my computers in a datacenter. No fans.

Re: Show HN: Turbo Boost Disable for macOS

#18

Post by em500 »

aequitas wrote: post #5

I know it's not protocol to talk down Show HN submissions. But this is just a shell script loading a core component of TBS [0] during login without password prompts: by saving your password in a plain text file. I can agree that password prompts at login are not the best user experience but security is there for a reason. Maybe TBS should implement this using the privileged helper pattern [1] which allow a small daem…

> I know it's not protocol to talk down Show HN submissions. But this is just a shell script loading a core component of TBS [0] during login without password prompts: by saving your password in a plain text file.

And TBS itself is (self-admittedly) largely a graphical wrapper around this kernel extension: https://github.com/nanoant/DisableTurboBoost.kext

Re: Show HN: Turbo Boost Disable for macOS

#19

Post by floatingatoll »

Relevant quote for those wondering how it’s done:

> This is just a shell wrapper around a kext to disable Turbo Boost on 64-bit macOS, taken directly from TBS.

> We have to use the direct TBS kext because for some reason, their kext can run on macOS, but we cannot sign our own version to work on macOS. They must have signed it with an Apple key or something? Anyway, to get around having to use the crappy Turbo-Boost Switcher GUI, we take the core kext, which is directly enabled/disabled with the shell scripts in this repo.

The kext in question is from this app:

https://www.rugarciap.com/turbo-boost-switcher-for-os-x/

The benefits of disabling Turbo Boost can be studied more closely at this prior post about Turbo Boost (28 days ago, 6 dupes, 0 comments):

https://marco.org/2020/01/13/macos-low-power-mode-redux

-62% power draw (Watts), +59% build duration (seconds), -28% heat levels (Celsius)

Re: Show HN: Turbo Boost Disable for macOS

#20

Post by nicebill8 »

robin_reala wrote: post #13

There are some hints that a “Pro Mode” might be coming in macOS[1] that unlocks power in exchange for fan noise, etc. I wonder if that could be extended into a “battery saver” node like iOS has that does effectively the opposite? [1] https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/13/macos-beta-hints-at-future-pr...

I hope something like this comes soon. Until then, I'll keep my Turbo Boost disabled!
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