CPUof A515-45-R58W forcefully clocks down to 0.40GHz when charging up to around 40%

Fellow community!

I am a (mostly) happy owner of Acer Aspire 5 (A515-45-R58W) - R5 5500U, 8GB RAM (not swapped), 512GB M.2 SSD, not tinkered with at all, just debloated 😅

Windows 11

I am facing an issue with CPU clock and performance during an early stage of charging.

Around 10s after I plug in the charger when the laptop is below about 40% battery, the CPU clocks down to firmly stable 0.40 GHz and the performance is absolute [content removed] compared to the laptop unplugged.

The issue is gone as soon as the battery is charged to about 40% or when I unplug the charger.

I reinstalled all the official chipset and APU drivers, tried Asus's utilities that came previously pre-installed and had a read through all the bios settings, with no findings at all in the last part, mind you.

I am slowly starting to lose my mind, because using the laptop plugged is something I sometimes have to do and the performance drop is not only about games, but even the file explorer feels like I'm running in the 90's again.

The problem has been present since the day I got it (approx. 2 months ago)

I did not find anything remotely similar to this issue on the internet, maybe any of you has an idea what I could try doing to get it going early on power again?

[Edited the content to hide senitive information]

Accepted answers

All comments

JackE

When battery charge level drops below about 50%, battery charging usually takes precedent over heavy processor demands even if plugged in.

ghostAcheque

Thank you @JackE for your input, I am fully aware of such behavior, nevertheless clocking an entire machine down to like 10% of performance is something I stutters during will not believe is intentional really.

As highlighted, I am not talking about demanding tasks by any stretch of imagination; operating in file explorer or browsing this forum is a nightmare for modern standards and for what this apu is capable of and I do not even have anything running in the background

JackE

Check to make sure it's on the Windows Balanced Power Plan, not Acer Power Plan. Then check advanced power plan processor state settings if available. Change max processor state to 90% on both battery and plugged in. Then also please generate this batt report.

(1) Search 'cmd' in Windows start menu.

(2) Right click command prompt near top of menu.
(3) Click run as administrator.
(4) Enter 'powercfg /batteryreport' at command prompt.
(5) Then return to the desktop. Open file explorer.
(6) Then search for' battery-report.html' in the c:\windows\system32\ sub-folder. Double-click to open it in the browser.
(7) Post screenshot of the first part of the report if possible that compares design full charge capacity with its remaining full charge capacity.

adnhuman

Hello,

I have the same problem with my Acer Aspire, A515-45. CPU clocks down to 0.40 GHz when battery is under 40%. This may be an issue of the 45 W charger. A powerfull charger of 90 W, I think may be the solution. Let's hope that there will be a Bios update that will remove this limitation.

Until then, good luck!

adnhuman

Problem solved:

Recently a new BIOS update was relased v 1.12. This update solved the problem for me. I have updated from BIOS version 1.10.

Thank you!

JackE

Thanks for update notice. 🙂

ianyap

I have an Aspire 5 A515-45-R2A6 (Ryzen 7 5700U) that also suffered the same issue of downclocking to 0.4GHz when charging below 40% battery. My charger is also 45W. The BIOS update to v1.12 seemed to improve the situation somewhat. The computer is more usable when operating below 40% while charging but I think the performance is still poorer below 40% charge than above 40% charge, with my CPU clocking bouncing in the GHz region (using Task Manager) under normal use. However, stressing the CPU (using CPU-Z) will lower the clock to ~0.58GHz consistently.

Do you all face such an issue as well?

JackE

Once battery drains below about 50%, charging the battery takes precedent over the gaming CPU/GPU load and performance drops. Time to stop gaming and allow battery to charge back up to 100% before starting gaming again for maximum play time.

Quick Links

Top Members

Weekly

Puraw 150

Swift Series Intel^® Evo™

Game Pass

Acer Corner

Gaming on Chromebook

Swift Series Intel® Evo™

Game Pass

Acer Corner

Gaming on Chromebook

Swift Series Intel^® Evo™