Battery Life on the new Alienware 17 (m17X R5)

I have to ask the new laptop seem to have way worse battery life the old generation , I know the battery there is difference but its not that much especially since the R5 consume about 21W per hour with maximum battery saving feature activated, but i saw Notebookcheck review of the R4 which only consume 15W even though it does not have hasewall !!!

There is other observation i saw i replaced my with other one now my battery is actually not 86wh it is actually 88wh ??? can anyone confirm the same thing ?



Anyway my point of this thread is just discuss how much battery you guys are getting ??

one last thing one the most compelling feature for going to an alienware instead for an asus was actually nvidia optimus ? but the ASUS G750 have more battery life then the R5 which was really disappointing for even since i was waiting to an alienware since 7 years ago

Please share with me your , laptop battery life and please specify which version you have ( R4 , R5 ....)

 

Not to sound like a jerk but why did you buy an Alienware if you wanted battery life?

In most reviews that I have read the R4 actually got more battery life then the R5 ( Is this what were calling it now ) for whatever reason. Either way, on battery your machine won't even run at full power so gaming is pretty much out unless it is a lower end game your trying to play. These things were really not meant to be packed to far from an outlet IMO. I mean yes they have a battery but being that I can't run my machine on full power without the outlet I just don't see the point.

The last review I read pegged the difference between the R4 and the R5 at about 25 minutes give or take so not a HUGE difference.

 

As stated above, why on earth would you buy an Alienware laptop if battery life was important? Even the M11x didn't get above like 6-7 hours and that's with ULV CPU's and old old low end Nvidia dGPU. You buy an Alienware to game, even if you turn on the integrated graphics, all the little things about the Alienware will wreck your battery life, my R2 only gets 1.5 hours on a 85 WHr 8 cell battery on IDLE.

 

I get what you mean , but even with my alienware i think of it as the ultimate device thats all man I didn't want to offend you

 

It is the ultimate device, in the terms of gaming. No offense meant, it's just silly that people wish good battery life out of the ultimate gaming laptop, as battery saving isn't on most people's minds when they buy an Alienware [at least not to me].

 

I agree with Tsunade_Hime, it's not usually the battery what concerns the most when buying an Alienware, it's the overall gaming performance. Anyway, we have here a couple of tips for you to take care of the battery wear :thumbsup:

 

With a few mods you can make the battery life really good.
I have not yet torn into my m17xr4 yet, but with my m11xr1 I was able to double the battery life from around 8 hours to a bit over 15 hours.

 

Wow wow wow, people have been rude. I use about 9 to 15 watts during normal use. Just browsing an such .. Battery life is about 4hours. And yes they are 88w/h not 86w/h.

 

The regular AW 17 (without the 3D bundle) gets about 4 hours of battery life. With the 120Hz 3D bundle, you'll see about half of that. (On average, I get about 2.5 hours.) The Haswell CPU's and GTX 780M are both consuming more power than the previous generation. With that being said, I'd say 4 hours of battery life, on a very powerful 17" laptop, is excellent. But yeah, don't buy Alienware if battery life is more important than performance.

To be honest, the current lineup sacrifices performance for this already. All of these throttling issues you hear of are a direct result to their 'green' approach to gaming, which I find to be quite ridiculous. Hopefully Maxwell and Broadwell are not.

 

Every three generations or so, processors are built using a new chip fabrication process that improves perforance per watt. That happened last year for the M17x R4 generation. For this year's generation, they instead had to increase power requirements (thus shortening battery life) to improve performance.

The supposed Haswell improvements in battery life are smoke and mirrors, and only take place if you turn on your computer and then don't do anything on it. Otherwise, Haswell reportedly runs hotter than Ivy Bridge, and more heat equates to drawing more power. Plus the 780M draws more power than the 680M (although I see you have the 765M, which is slower and draws less power than the 680M, although you're overclocking the 765M, which will increase its power usage).

At about the weight of an M17x power brick, you could instead carry around a 13.3" Retina MacBook Pro, having a 2560x1600 IPS display, and which runs all day on a single charge. Or, if you want both, attach it to the lid of your 17" machine's display using duct tape, producing a Retina FrankenMacAlien.

 

I have been playing around with my new Alienware 17 (Australia) which is the M17x R5 to try and get extra battery life out of it.
My base specs were:

Alienware 17
Intel Core i7 4800MQ
32GB Ram
Nvidia Geforce 780M GTX
120Hz 3D display
64GB Liteon mSata SSD
2x 750GB WD 2.5" in Raid 0

I fount that removing the 2x 750GB HDDs and replacing them with a Samsung 840 Pro Series 512GB SSD added significantly to the battery life. About an extra hour and also the laptop is now silent during normal use. Amazing how much noise the HDD's make. I thought it was fan noise. I have the HDD's in external USB3 case so I attached them when needed at home.

A couple other tweaks I am using to add further battery life is by creating a power plan that limits the "Maximum Processor State" to 20% which is 800 MHz & also under clocking the 780M GTX using "nVidia Inspector" for during normal use like watching a movie / browsing the net during my long train commutes.

I have 3 shortcuts on my desktop. 'Underclocked', 'Standard' & 'Overclocked'. Just double click on one of them and the setting is instantly applied.

I cant confirm how much additional savings I have gotten out of using them but I had about 1.5hrs battery left yesterday after being on the train for 2 hours watching Movies using a BT headset and Wifi Tethered to my mobile browsing the net (& remembering that I have the 120Hz 3D screen / no Optimus Intel HD Graphics which has less battery life to start with). I was a few notches up from the darkest screen setting also.

BTW running at 800 MHz and under clocking the GPU makes no impact on watching the movies.

Any other tricks people use to extend battery life? I have seen these on ebay which might do the trick:
Laptop Power Bank Portable Charger External Battery 30000mAh Universal 5V 19V | eBay