RPi3 device tree hacking and power consumption

[sgtgrumbles]

I was thinking of using a Pi 3 in my next build but was concerned about power consumption. I know the CM3 uses the same SoC so that got me thinking if it'd be possible to lower the the power consumption on the Pi 3 by disabling unused hardware in the device tree. Does anyone have experience hacking the dt? Any idea if that'd be an effective way to conserve mAh?

[sgtgrumbles]

Welp, this appears to be uncharted territory so I've settled on just using the dt overlay to disable onboard bluetooth/wifi, in addition to disabling all but 1 CPU core and underclocking the CPU. The Cortex A53 chip doesn't need to run at full tilt to play SNES/16-bit games.

If that's still not enough then I'll use a Pi 2 B v1.1 (not 1.2) which has a Cortex A7 chip. It uses less power than the Pi 3 but should still be OK. I would consider using another board but need RGB support for a DPI screen and compatible alternatives aren't well documented (e.g., NanoPi boards).