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m15 R2, Battery Drain while gaming if it's ALWAYS Plugged?
I purchased an M15 R2 via Dell Outlet a little over one week ago.
Specs:
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6GB GDDR6
RAM 16GB (2x8GB) 2666MHz DDR4
Intel Core 9th Generation i7-9750H Processor (6 Core, Up to 4.50GHz, 12MB Cache, 45W)
It came with a 240W power pack, which is the biggest available.
If I do gaming for more than about 45 minutes, I see the Power button flashing Yellow & Blue, which means the battery is charging. I am wondering why this is happening and why my battery is being drained when I always have the laptop plugged in. Is this normal procedure for this laptop?
This is my first Alienware but not my first Dell product. i just found out yesterday why the power button was flashing blue/yellow. I contacted Alienware support on this issue several times, told them what was happening & when it happens, but they never mentioned the battery was being charged. Even went as far as doing a clean install of Win 10 with tech support to make sure is was not a corrupt install of Windows. They also ran GPU & CPU tests without errors.
I have yet to call them back since so I thought I would ask here with my original question; Is my laptop getting enough power when I am gaming and why is power being drawn from the battery when it's always plugged in?
Is there a setting in Windows 10 or Control Center that will stop this?
Thanks in advance
jphughan
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July 28th, 2020 11:00
@DELL-Chris M Thanks for linking that article. Wasn't aware this was officially written up somewhere. Although I take issue with the section "Benefits of the Hybrid Power Design", specifically the claim that "It protects the battery", for two reasons:
And the other claimed benefit that "It prevents system throttling" could also be achieved by simply shipping systems with adequately sized power adapters.
Ironically the only benefit of Hybrid Power Design that could LEGITIMATELY be claimed -- "It allows systems to be shipped with smaller, lighter, and cheaper power adapters" -- went completely unmentioned in that section. And of course whether users would prefer to reduce bulk and weight or have a system that can operate without drawing from the battery and ultimately throttling is an entirely separate question.
jphughan
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July 28th, 2020 11:00
@tscan2004 If how the XPS 17 operates is any indication, the system won't drain the battery to dead if you have a sustained load. Instead, when the battery drops to a certain level, the system throttles its performance enough to allow it to run "sustainably", i.e. without needing to continue drawing power from the battery. But that of course just means poor performance. And at that point it might not be charging the battery either, so in order to get BACK to full performance, you'd have to reduce the load long enough to allow the battery to charge again.
Alienware Area-51 ALX 2006
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July 28th, 2020 12:00
Any game can drag a computers performance down to a level if the game is set to a Very high preset or ultra settings.
I was playing NFS Rivals on my area51m with the RTX 2080 / i9 version on Ultra Settings @1080p 60FPS with Render settings 4K down to 1080p. My GPU and cpu heatsinks reached 200F and my laptop was getting hotter and hotter.
i did that on my 15 R1 and the battery started discharging even though it was plugged in. I had the 240watt instead of the 180watt that usually comes with it. I had to then connect the 330watt to prevent discharging but it shows how if your system comes with 1 power supply and it’s being used to it’s limit it’s going to draw more power than the adapter can provide.
FYI it was the 980M and the 4710HQ model which only is supposed to draw 180watts.
tscan2004
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July 28th, 2020 12:00
The gaming I’m doing isn’t even that demanding. It’s Football Manager for crying out loud! The M15 gets as hot as a super nova in no time at all.
I thought I was buying a high performance laptop.