[Swift SF314-57G]: USB-C charges delivers not enough power

Hi there!

I have a Swift SF314-57G, which has a USB-C port with Thunderbolt that is supposed to support USB-C charging. Recently, I got a new monitor (Dell 2520D) with USB-C, which is supposed to deliver up to 90 Watt (USB PD 90 Watt from the specification) via USB-C. However, it seems that it does not even deliver enough power to maintain the battery level once I am using the computer a bit more. For example, when in a Zoom call, the battery level slowly decreases.

I asked a colleague to connect a different laptop via USB-C to the monitor and he gets full power - so I suspect the problem is on the site my laptop.

Thanks in advance for any help!

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Easwar

Hi Gretchen1273,

Are you using the charger which comes along with this unit.

Gretchen1273

Hi Easwar,

I am not sure I am getting you right, I don't want to charge my laptop with the regular charger, but via the Thunderbolt/USB-C port so I use a specific USB-C cable that is connected to my monitor?
My laptop says it is recieving power, and if it is idle this works, but already intermediate applications are not sustained. I am not sure how to check excactly how much power I get this way, but it must be quite low.
Given that it works for my collegue (he has a Mac), I suspect that there is some setting / problem that prevents recieving the full power?

Easwar

Hi Gretchen1273,

If you are not using the charger which comes along with the unit means there will be some issues on that. Although you are in the right specific USB-C cable that is connected.

Gretchen1273

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but there is no such thing as a "USB-C charger" that comes along with it. With the laptop there comes a regular power adapter, of course, but that is something else and is using a different port. I connect my monitor with the laptop USB-C to USB-C, nothing else.
I agree there are issues, but that is what I want to find out: What is the problem and how to solve it...

billsey

What voltage is the monitor providing on the USB-C port? I don't see any indications in the specs that say the Thunderbolt port allows charging, only that you can charge devices (up to 15W) from it. If it does support charging the laptop it will need 20V at 65W, so your setup should work.

Gretchen1273

Hi Billsey,

thanks for your answer! Indeed, the specification is a bit unclear, but it does support it: Beside the fact that I do get power (just not enough), I also found a thread on this:
https://community.acer.com/de/discussion/594761/acer-swift-sf314-57-ueber-usb-c-laden
Sorry, it is German, but tldr: Somebody asked if it is possible to charge the laptop via USB-C. That person also got told it should work at 20V at 65W and apparently managed to do it with this charger:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07GXYWDPB/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

While this shows it is generally possible, the way via the monitor seems to be more complicated. As stated in the beginning, the DELL monitor can deliver up to 90W via USB-C, so more then enough. Now it seems that one of the two sides is slowing this down,not only to 65W, but even more. I am not excactly sure why and if there is either something that could change this?

billsey

Is the Dell providing 20V or only 12V?

Gretchen1273

Hi @billsey,
sorry for the late reply! To answer your question, I am not 100% sure since I did not explicitly find it in the monitor documentation. However, it says it is a PD 90W, which is - following other websites - supposed to have a "handshaking approach" that supports different voltage steps incl. 20V, i.e. they should communicate via the USB-C cable and the voltage should be adjusted accordingly, if I got it corretly .

EDIT: Sorry, I just found it is PD 3.0 which nowadays do seem to have a fixed voltage, they just vary the current to get to the desired power. Nethertheless, it should "negotiate" the power so maybe the problem is indeed somewhere buried in this protocoll

billsey

Yeah, what often happens is they assume all devices use one of several voltages and don't bother to provide the others. If it's putting out 12V it will be too low to deal with your 19V needs.

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