Maximising battery time when not plugged in

dgvr

Anyone have examples of getting more than (or even a full) 2hrs out of the machine when on battery? Any useful settings/undervolt figures to share? I'd like to be able to make a profile of sorts I can switch to when on battery to maximise the number of minutes I get, just to literally be able to keep the machine on and run light tasks, no need for good processor performance etc. My understanding is there's no way at all to underclock the GPU ever, I guess that would have helped a lot...

xapim

Optimize windows and undervolt follow the links on my signature @sri369 might be able to give you some more input on this as i never use the battery i am always on AC 24/7 for a full year now non stop and when i play its 10h+ non stop and my battery never drained in any game so far

sri369

dgvr said:

Anyone have examples of getting more than (or even a full) 2hrs out of the machine when on battery? Any useful settings/undervolt figures to share? I'd like to be able to make a profile of sorts I can switch to when on battery to maximise the number of minutes I get, just to literally be able to keep the machine on and run light tasks, no need for good processor performance etc. My understanding is there's no way at all to underclock the GPU ever, I guess that would have helped a lot...

@xapim thank you

@dgvr
What tasks do you plan to do on battery? Are you too like me, with only light to medium tasks on battery mode - like basic email, document editing, surfing, movies and such (definitely no gaming).
I:
1. fully optimized my system,
2. updated the power plan to my own custom values,
3. tweaked ThrottleStop for CPU power adjusted to the levels I need and then
4. finally adjusted the browser to not use GPU since CPU can handled literally all needed rendering.
Before all these changes I used to get about 2 hours on battery, and now get about 5-6 hours at 50% screen brightness.

dgvr

sri369 said:

dgvr said:

Anyone have examples of getting more than (or even a full) 2hrs out of the machine when on battery? Any useful settings/undervolt figures to share? I'd like to be able to make a profile of sorts I can switch to when on battery to maximise the number of minutes I get, just to literally be able to keep the machine on and run light tasks, no need for good processor performance etc. My understanding is there's no way at all to underclock the GPU ever, I guess that would have helped a lot...

@xapim thank you

@dgvr
What tasks do you plan to do on battery? Are you too like me, with only light to medium tasks on battery mode - like basic email, document editing, surfing, movies and such (definitely no gaming).
I:
1. fully optimized my system,
2. updated the power plan to my own custom values,
3. tweaked ThrottleStop for CPU power adjusted to the levels I need and then
4. finally adjusted the browser to not use GPU since CPU can handled literally all needed rendering.
Before all these changes I used to get about 2 hours on battery, and now get about 5-6 hours at 50% screen brightness.

That's insane, even after all the changes I've made and keeping brightness low I'm still just scraping 2hrs battery.
I'm on the AMD model so can't use ThrottleStop it seems (but have strongly underclocked/volted Ryzenmaster)

Not sure what you might mean by #1. above...

What I *have* done so far is

-Undervolted GPU as much as possible in MSI Afterburner

-Set AMD Graphics Powerplay to 'Max battery savings' in Windows advanced power options

-Set maximum CPU load to 25% in Windows Power options (advanced) - it seems to only truly let you clock down to around 50% of the CPU base clock though. I notice all readings show the cores running 1.55Mhz

-Set various other little settings to favour battery saving in windows advanced power options

-Turned on the Windows 10 green leaf "battery saving mode" when on battery

-Used ParkControl to allow maximum parking of Cores when on battery (I think the whole idea behind ParkControl was that Windows already did maximum parking though so I'm not sure how much this even helps - but it's nice to know when Plugged In Charging I get better performance I suppose)

-Set my browser to NOT use hardware acceleration

In Ryzen Master I'm trying drastic settings like CPU voltage at 0.775 and core clocks all down to under 1.5Mhz.

No idea how you're getting 5-6hrs, any more specifics you have please let me know!

Red-Sand

You might also benefit from disabling "SysMain" in Services which is the auto caching service as well as right clicking your drives and going to properties then unchecking the box for indexing the files ..
If you disable indexes just click ignore all to the prompt.

Also check for auto updating services which will ping frequently to check for updates as well as setting Windows internet connection to a "metered connection" will help.

Lastly if your using Chrome..... Stop
It destroys resources. If your going for max battery like use a small browser that isn't so RAM hungry.
(Vivaldi, Brave, Edge etc)

sri369

dgvr said:

That's insane, even after all the changes I've made and keeping brightness low I'm still just scraping 2hrs battery.
I'm on the AMD model so can't use ThrottleStop it seems (but have strongly underclocked/volted Ryzenmaster)

Not sure what you might mean by #1. above...

What I *have* done so far is

-Undervolted GPU as much as possible in MSI Afterburner

-Set AMD Graphics Powerplay to 'Max battery savings' in Windows advanced power options

-Set maximum CPU load to 25% in Windows Power options (advanced) - it seems to only truly let you clock down to around 50% of the CPU base clock though. I notice all readings show the cores running 1.55Mhz

-Set various other little settings to favour battery saving in windows advanced power options

-Turned on the Windows 10 green leaf "battery saving mode" when on battery

-Used ParkControl to allow maximum parking of Cores when on battery (I think the whole idea behind ParkControl was that Windows already did maximum parking though so I'm not sure how much this even helps - but it's nice to know when Plugged In Charging I get better performance I suppose)

-Set my browser to NOT use hardware acceleration

In Ryzen Master I'm trying drastic settings like CPU voltage at 0.775 and core clocks all down to under 1.5Mhz.

No idea how you're getting 5-6hrs, any more specifics you have please let me know!

1. means removing all unwanted services from windows including the superfetch aka sysmain service, disabling search, removing all unwanted components from windows store (i removed windows store completely; all i need is available as installable software), and such.
2. My GPU doesn't even get turned on when on battery (done by setting the apps I use when on battery to NOT use hardware acceleration or by forcing them use integrated GPU).
3. Power plan is lot optimized for lazy bumping up levels and quick going down on levels.
4. CPU speed and max states reduced from max of 2.8 (non turbo max) down to about 1.6 max. This is more than enough for low to mid level tasks.
5. Windows 10 makes sure 0 cores are parked. My power settings ensure to put all cores possible into parked state (both battery and power on modes). Screenshot below is from power on mode - see cores are turned on only as necessary. It barely effects performance (i play lots of intensive games as well as development work.)
Low use mode (all i am doing is typing reply to you).


Turned on benchmark in TS (screenshot right after I turned on benchmark). It barely takes a moment to ramp up all cores.



6. Below are the values of additional options enabled via park settings options (you can close park control after enabling these options). And don't worry these would degrade performance; it barely takes a split second more to ramp up parked CPUs into use when needed.

WARNING: DO NOT REDUCE CPU OR GPU VOLTAGE TOO LOW. THAT IS NOT GOOD FOR THE SYSTEM IN THE LONG RUN, PLUS WOULD CAUSE SYSTEM CRASHING WHEN DOING INTENSIVE TASKS.
My TS has CPU under volt the same on both battery and power.

sri369

One more easy way to know how long your system might come when on battery is using a tiny utility called "battery bar". Divide the battery cpacity by discharge rate to give a rough idea of number of hours. Keep in mind that this rate varies based on load on system (not just CPU, but all parameters combined).
When idle, this rate reaches as low as 4000 on my laptop. And under low-mid use it normally hovers between 6-11k giving me about 4.5 - 6 hours.

I did a quick run on mine for a couple hours and below is its detail:
About 50% battery for about 2.5 hours on battery.
I watched some videos on youtube (youtube puts considerable load on system with all those new video codes), and then some on VLC.
When on youtube the discharge rate was about 12k and on vlc it was about 8k.



Oh yes, one more thing... when on battery... disable the aero transparency effects.

strider16

sri369 said:
WARNING: DO NOT REDUCE CPU OR GPU VOLTAGE TOO LOW. THAT IS NOT GOOD FOR THE SYSTEM IN THE LONG RUN, PLUS WOULD CAUSE SYSTEM CRASHING WHEN DOING INTENSIVE TASKS.

Can you elaborate more on this? Are you talking about software errors accumulating over time? Or hardware damage?

sri369

strider16 said:

sri369 said:
WARNING: DO NOT REDUCE CPU OR GPU VOLTAGE TOO LOW. THAT IS NOT GOOD FOR THE SYSTEM IN THE LONG RUN, PLUS WOULD CAUSE SYSTEM CRASHING WHEN DOING INTENSIVE TASKS.

Can you elaborate more on this? Are you talking about software errors accumulating over time? Or hardware damage?

For any device to work properly, it needs a minimum amount of power. Manufacturers tend to add a buffer here so the systems do not crash given that each manufactured chip isn't identical to the other. We try to work on reducing this buffer voltage by undervolting. Going below the recommended voltage would only starve the chips resulting in frequent restarts/systems hangs. These restarts abruptly kill power to not just CPU but also to other on board devices instead of powering them down the normal way. And this in turn results in hardware wear n tear in course of time.