[AW 17 R3] Tips to take care of new battery

Hello, my battery that came with the laptop is dead (got my laptop in Dec 2015) and I got a new one from the warranty. I want to know how to start using it and how to take care of it.

1) Since it is new, what are the first steps I might have to take? (Like complete discharge and charge cycle?)
2) And how low can I let it go and how high can I allow it to reach?
3) Do I need to use a surge protector?
4) What can I do if I have to use my laptop where there is no Earthing in the house and I get shocks from touching the laptop when it is plugged in? Does it affect laptop's battery or laptop in anyway?
5) Does the heat emitted from ssd affect the battery? (considering the placement of ssd and battery in AW 17 R3)

And more?
Please give your best tips from your experience.

Thank you.

 

Update your laptop to the latest bios (1.3.10 for 17 R3), go to the bios settings and disable Quick/Express charge if it's enabled

other than that the basic rules of Li-ion batteries apply eg: never fully discharge to 0%, discharge it once in awhile (as in using it NOT FULLY DISCHARGING) if your laptop remains plug in most of the time (use desktop mode if you're pretty sure its not gonna leave the desk for a long period)

 

Oh didn't know it is safe to use laptop while it is plugged-in even after reaching 100%. But I use Ubuntu. So I don't think there is desktop mode there. Yes I use it on desk most of the time. But I unplug it as soon as it reaches 100 and plug it in when it reaches 30.

 

Oh yeah that's bad lol. Batteries are perfectly fine to be plugged in day to day. Just discharge to 30 once a month. Otherwise, you're just needlessly putting on cycles and usage.

Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk

 

Oops my bad, so that is how my battery is dead in just 14 months smh... I made uncountable cycles. So can I leave it plugged in even when the laptop is turned off?

Edit: Just found out that heat is also another cause of battery destruction, which my laptop went through when I was living in hot conditions and also heat from ssd.

 

The constant cycling of your battery was the biggest killer in this case. You made I suspect about 500~800 cycles in just that time alone.

YOu can keep it plugged in also when it is off. The battery controller is fairly intelligent. It will cut poweer when its full and go to AC mode when its at 100%.

 

Yes, cycles are bad, so keeping it hooked up to the AC is fine.

However, one thing that will also wear out batteries sooner is high voltages, which happens when you charge it to the full 100%. A battery conservation option in the bios or a laptop-specific tool made by the manufacturer will do exactly that; make it possible to set a maximum charge percentage. If this system has that option the set it to 70-80% when it is stationary for a long time and set it to 100% just prior to taking it on a trip.

See Battery University's ' How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries' for other tips and background information:

1. more cycles = more wear
2. full cycles are worse than partial ones
3. high temperature are bad
4. high voltages are bad (= 100% charge)

 

Thanks but is there a way to limit it to 70-80% in linux? I don't think so and there is no such setting in Windows either apart from dell's desktop mode. Also there is no such setting in bios of this model.

Edit: It looks like the desktop mode doesn't help either: https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/..._2017_laptops_limit_battery_charging/dd42we5/
So I am not sure how I can make it stay at 70-80%. I guess the only way is to remove the battery connection by opening back panel.

 

Well ... unfortunately not all manufacturers have implemented this option. It does get more common, but older systems are simply out of luck.

Suppose you could take direct control over the battery firmware and force a partial charge. This may be possible, at least on a one-off write, but getting it back to 100% would need writing back the old value again. An automated script would work, but it all hinges on whether we actually have write access to the firmware. Let me check and get back to this; have pulled and re-written battery fw data directly from the eeprom before, so now know where to look for in the SMBus hay stack.

Something to consider; smartphone (and tablet) batteries are also Li-Ion, so all of BU's measurements apply here, too. Now, if you bring a new phone in the market one of its selling points is obviously battery life. With warranty expiring after only a year it is very tempting to set the battery's full-charge voltage as high as possible. The specification sheet and reviews will now show a very good battery life, but of course they will not mention that the offset of this is that the capacity will deteriorate much, much faster than if the same battery were set to more conservative full charge voltage.

 

for newer alienwares in particular you want to disable express charge in the BIOS, this is the biggest destroyer.

other than that, the batteries are good, i've had my laptop for 9 months and it's always plugged in, wear level is currently 2.3% on my battery.

 

Wow thanks for that "wear level" term. I just checked mine using HWMonitor and wear level is already 4%. Hmm... Is it probably dell's desktop mode working to prevent it from full charging?

 

first of all, HWMonitor rounds numbers up, it will report 3.1 as 4, second thing is i found that the whole desktop mode thing does diddly squat, but i enabled it just to be safe, didn't see any performance drops with it enabled so i kept it on..