Normally it's helpful to have Chrome running in the background, but if you want to maximize battery life on a laptop, and reduce memory usage on any computer, it's very easy to disable background. The default windows drivers from mac don't have a good fan control profile, so the laptop hits 80-90 before the fans even start.
Had the same problem, would idle around 80-90 without any programs opened. My current solution is to limit the 'Maximum Processor State' and now it idles around 60-70 with nothing open, still not ideal but better.
Go to:
- Settings
- Power & sleep
- Additional power settings
- Change plan settings (for whichever plan you have selected)
- Change advanced power settings
- Processor power management
- Maximum processor state (NOT Maximum processor frequency)
I recently found this setting so I'm still playing around with it but I currently have 60/80% for battery/plugged in respectively.
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Hope this helps
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also i would leave max processor frequency at 0