[GUIDE] Cool'n'Quiet on 10.6.x

[Jayden Silmore]

Here's how to get Cool'n'Quiet working on AMD K8 and K10 processors running Snow Leopard.

For your information; this method was tested on a system with an "AMD Phenom II X3 720BE" processor running OSX 10.6.4 using the Legacy 10.6.4 Kernel.

 

1. Install the included "VoodooPower.kext"

2. Optionally configure the installed kext (information can be found in the included manual)

3. Update your Chameleon using the included files (they were compiled from RC5 SVN r368)

5. Add the following option to your "com.apple.Boot.plist".

 

<key>GeneratePStates</key>
<string>Yes</string>

 

6. Reboot and enable Cool'n'Quiet in your BIOS

 

Cool'n'Quiet should be working for you now:)

You can verify this by running

 

sysctl -a | grep freq

 

it should display frequency changes based on cpu demand.

You can also use the included "GenericCPUPMControl.app"

 

All kexts in this package were compiled for i386 and x86_64 (Snow Leopard Only)

CoolAndQuiet.zip

[Quingy22]

Thanks, this seems to work nicely on 10.6.4 with the anv rel4 kernel.

 

I can see CPU Frequency changes with the Generic CPU Power Management Control application. It's not reporting CPU temperature correctly but that's ok, just need to substract what it's reporting from a 100 to get the correct temperature. Fans are really quiet now.

 

Can you post the source to the kext that you included up there? I can't get my processor to get into P-State 0 and seeing the bug reports on the voodoo forums I suspect it needs a little tweaking.

[Quingy22]

Ok, have some more results from testing this with Chameleon RC5 (trunk r451):

 

• Provided kext dynamically alters voltage/frequency of cores based on usage
  
• Provided kext doesn't allow you to go into P0 state (i.e. operating frequency of CPUs is limited to half their normal frequency, P1 state) - this seems related to VoodooPower Bug Report (My CPU never reaches highest p-state)
  
• Provided kext causes System Profiler to show CPU frequency as P1 frequency and for my RAM, to incorrectly report DDR3 1600 instead of DDR1333
  

In addition, it also seems that fan operation is automatic and not controlled by the kext, as there is little difference between running with it and without it (aside from obvious differences resulting from P0 vs. P1 state of operation)

[Neolo]

Anyone have a problem with idle halting? I have AMD Phenom II X3 N830 on laptop, which when idle goes almost in zero... When playing music, it goes slower and crackling sound (moving mouse makes it play fine again). I don't have any C'n'Q options in bios. What to do?

All stuff like idlehalt=0 in boot loader, NullCPUPowermanagement.kext, VoodooTSCSync.kext, VoodooPState.kext, cpus=1 - ARE HELPLESS.