Power Optimization on Flow X13?

[ShadowChaser]

Been really struggling in the battery life department on my latest laptop. My previous daily driver was an XPS 13 9350 and it would consistently last through an 8 hour school/work day with 30% of battery left, and when needed could be stretched to about 12 hours of light use (google docs). My current daily driver can barely get 5 hours of use in a similar use case - note taking (both typing and writing) and video playback (YT or twitch). 

Granted, I am only charging it to 80% via the MyAsus app, which is the equivalent of a 50Whr battery instead of 56Whr in the older XPS, but the newer laptop is pulling 10-13W when the older drew 5-7W under the same circumstances. Brightness was roughly matched to my eye, all running the same background apps. Relevant details below.

 

The power settings I've tweaked with (Win 10) are:

• Silent profile in Armory Crate
• Battery Saver profile in Windows
• CPU utilization limited to 30% on battery
• dGPU disabled
• Screen refresh set to 60 instead of 120

It's worth noting that all I needed to do on the XPS was a mild undervolt and activate battery saver mode, but that was also a much simpler laptop.

I was able to undervolt the 8250U to get the extra juice to get from 10 hours to 12 hours on the XPS via ThrottleStop, but I can't seem to find anything for mobile ryzen cpus that is comparable. As a student having to plug in between classes or carry an extra battery bank around is mildly infuriating. I haven't had to ration my battery like this in forever...

 

My X13 is the 5900HS/3050Ti MQ spec with 16G/1TB if that matters.

 

Any suggestions would be welcome!

[Darkseth]

Well, one of the Reasons is a -H CPU vs. U-CPU. The 5900 just draws more Power, simply because "it can".

 

I actually don't believe, you can get XPS Levels here, it's simply different Hardware.

 

How did you limit the CPU utilization to 30%? Inside the batteryplan?

 

Maybe try: https://github.com/JamesCJ60/AMD-APU-Tuning-Utility

 

Or: https://ryzencontroller.com/

It looks like you can tweak tdp settings here. Might use a <10w TDP setting for those light workflows.

[ShadowChaser]

6 hours ago, Darkseth said:

Well, one of the Reasons is a -H CPU vs. U-CPU. The 5900 just draws more Power, simply because "it can".

 

I actually don't believe, you can get XPS Levels here, it's simply different Hardware.

 

How did you limit the CPU utilization to 30%? Inside the batteryplan?

 

Maybe try: https://github.com/JamesCJ60/AMD-APU-Tuning-Utility

 

Or: https://ryzencontroller.com/

It looks like you can tweak tdp settings here. Might use a <10w TDP setting for those light workflows.

I'd just think that a few generations later an 8 core can idle at the same power as a quad core.

I had limited the cpu % in the battery plan, yes.

 

With either of these programs it seems the lowest I can set the cpu tdp is 8W. That's still not amazing since it runs constantly at 8W doing anything so overall power draw is still 10-12W when I'm working. System power sits at 7W and change when on the desktop doing absolutely nothing.

 

Surely a mobile cpu should not be idling at such a high power draw?

[Qyygle]

The ASUS control software and background tasks actually take a ton of system resources just sitting on desktop. Have you tried clean wiping windows and reinstalling only the MyASUS app to allow control of the battery limiter? It does help with battery a bit, though you lose some of the options that Armory Crate had, in terms of power modes.

AMD doesn't have the same options as older Intel chips did with Throttlestop, though to be fair, new Intel chips don't have that option anymore either with all the non-sense fixes they've put out for plundervolt and such. I feel the 8th gen U chips were probably the pinnacle of end-user power tweaking for now, unless UncleWeb or someone else comes up with a new way to unlock the current chips. 

 

I wouldn't bother with editing the CPU utilization limits in windows or fiddling with ryzen controller for battery btw. When I monitored battery draw in HWInfo, I found ironically leaving most of those settings stock, I was discharging less power, even if the shown CPU usage was higher. Maybe that was just a weird config issue on my machine though. If you want to play with power limits in games or other stuff, Ryzen controller can be useful.

When I was done power tweaking, I usually saw it sitting around 5W discharge sitting on desktop completely idle. Word editing and random other stuff would draw ~7-10W on average.