Could a defective laptop battery cause excess power drain?

[PotatoSupremacist]

I currently have an Alienware m15 with the 90 watt--hour battery, but I'm getting abysmal run times of only around 3 hours of web browsing/video streaming and around 4 on pure idle. Battery saver on, display at minimum brightness, lighting effects turned off.I I've even disabled turbo and undervolted the CPU, but run times are still awful.

 

I did some more digging and I think I found the cause. For some reason, my idle power consumption is at 6-18 watts, and streaming video brings that up to 23-25. This is substantially higher than what other users say they get. Could a faulty battery be discharging extra power? Dell support did a diagnostic on my system and found nothing wrong with the battery, and I've done a clean install of Windows to no avail.

 

Does anyone know what could be taking this extra power?

[genexis_x]

1. Do a clean Windows install

2. Do a custom Throttlestop profile with undervolt applied and lower turbo boost ratios while idling / in light loads

[PotatoSupremacist]

I have done that though, and there was no improvement. 

[Imglidinhere]

11 hours ago, PotatoSupremacist said:

I currently have an Alienware m15 with the 90 watt--hour battery, but I'm getting abysmal run times of only around 3 hours of web browsing/video streaming and around 4 on pure idle. Battery saver on, display at minimum brightness, lighting effects turned off.I I've even disabled turbo and undervolted the CPU, but run times are still awful.

 

I did some more digging and I think I found the cause. For some reason, my idle power consumption is at 6-18 watts, and streaming video brings that up to 23-25. This is substantially higher than what other users say they get. Could a faulty battery be discharging extra power? Dell support did a diagnostic on my system and found nothing wrong with the battery, and I've done a clean install of Windows to no avail.

 

Does anyone know what could be taking this extra power?

The 8750h is not a very good processor for those that like saving power. Undervolting the chip via Intel XTU or throttlestop (XTU is easier for me) can trim off a little on the power consumption, but typically it isn't gonna do much.

[PotatoSupremacist]

2 hours ago, Imglidinhere said:

The 8750h is not a very good processor for those that like saving power. Undervolting the chip via Intel XTU or throttlestop (XTU is easier for me) can trim off a little on the power consumption, but typically it isn't gonna do much.

Thing is though, this is substantially less than what other owners report.

 

 

 

 

[Imglidinhere]

I'd RMA, personally if that's the case.

[PotatoSupremacist]

3 hours ago, Imglidinhere said:

I'd RMA, personally if that's the case.

Thing is, I don't really have another system I can use while I ship it back, then they take forever to ship their product. 

 

I'm not really well versed in how batteries work which is why I'm hoping that a defective battery could "leak" power or something so that it could be fixed by getting a replacement battery. I honestly don't know what other kind of defect could cause this. 

[markr54632]

Honestly sounds pretty average to me.

 

Are you running the battery saver profile and dimming the screen brightness?

[Imglidinhere]

21 hours ago, PotatoSupremacist said:

Thing is, I don't really have another system I can use while I ship it back, then they take forever to ship their product. 

 

I'm not really well versed in how batteries work which is why I'm hoping that a defective battery could "leak" power or something so that it could be fixed by getting a replacement battery. I honestly don't know what other kind of defect could cause this. 

And you're positive people aren't embellishing that battery life at all? Also if you're not willing to RMA, then you just gotta deal man. Like... that's what you're supposed to do when something goes wrong like this. I've been there and it sucks yeah, but I'm glad I did it. What if it propagates into something far worse and ends up being a faulty battery that kills the whole laptop? Better safe than sorry.