Alienware M11x R2 Battery Life

At the moment I've searched a couple of threads on how to increase battery life for my m11x-r2. I disable turbo boost, alien fx, searching indexes, etc. and still can only manage around 4:15 hours. Does anyone else have any more suggestions to increase battery life?

 

i7-640UM. You can't expect much from this CPU. if you want longer battery life, go for the R1. I personally bought a R1 when I could get a R2 i5 core at similar price because of the longer battery life and lower TDP of the SU7300 CPU. I am getting about about 8hrs on internet surfing with Alien FX switched off.

 

Does an SSD make much difference do you know? Also have you dimmed your screen?

 

The new sandforce controller SSD's make a difference as they don't have power draining DDR3 memory in them so use less than half the electricity that the previous generation did. Very pricey tho.......

 

I'm going to get one from America. Still a lot cheaper than the crazy price of the SSD dell can provide.

I use a Vertex 1 in my Desktop and really rate it. They Vertex 2’s are not that much faster but I’m guessing the power efficiency will be the main benefit. I'll probably get a 120 or 200 GB. Also been looking into the 6GB windows 7 install to save even more room

 

To be fair, the i5/i7 TDP includes the Northbridge figure, since it's now integrated into the CPU package. The C2D mantains the NB as a seperate package.

If you add the CPU, NB, and SB all together, the i5/i7 setup is within 2-3W of the C2D setup.

 

I get 5.5-6 hours with wifi on and the keyboard lights on and also search indexing on (IIRC it disables automatically on battery, so turning it off doesn't help battery life), so, yes, you can do better.

I use the Windows classic theme, uninstalled all Alienware programs, changed around the balanced power plan some, and turned off as many unnecessary Windows features as possible (this page helps with that http://www.blackviper.com/Windows_7/servicecfg.htm). Oh, I also turn off the paging file, since 4gb of ram is more than enough memory for me.

Also, using Chrome instead of Firefox helps greatly in my experience because Firefox uses more CPU.

 

Some one in another thread said than he can go to 6hours with the new drivers for m11xr2 .... i dont know if that its true

Im also going to pick m11x R2 and selling my m11x ... should i stay with my m11x?

 

really? I am interested, now... I chose the SU7300 specifically for the better battery life, since I have used the M1210, it really matters to me. Other laptops I have had since then really dropped the ball on this (not the Acer Timeline 4810, but that is a 14" laptop).

For some strange reason, IE9 beta is constantly crashing (just on tab at a time, whew) on every one of my dual core setups... my 9100e X4 and i7 930 are both fine, however. And those two have the most crap on them, compared to relatively new installs for all of my family's laptops...

 

I get on average around 2.5-3 hours on my R2 i7.

I pretty much run it like it is plugged in so i get what i expected. While I do move around a lot with this little wonder I'm never lacking for power outlets sine i keep one at the office and one at home.

 

And how many hours when you run it like you are not plugged lol ?

 

Currently running at about 3 hrs on my r2 i7 and it says I have about 3 hrs left.

I have disabled AlienFX and turned down the screen brightness. I watched a movie and am now surfing using Chrome. I give this first test an A.

 

3-4 hours is about right for average use, the max you can get is probably 5 hours but with an almost un-usable laptop (ie super dim screen, peripherals disabled, no fancy lighting on keyboard, very light processor usage, not too excessive browsing, etc.)

When I turned on my M11x for the first time with a full charge, it reported less than 3 hours. Imagine my surprise, I had to optimize it to get a lame 3.5 hours reliably.

 

Like I said before, with my R2 I get 5-6 hours of constant browsing with no concern for what I browse (and 20-30 tabs open in Chrome at a minimum) with the keyboard lit up on wifi. I do have it so that flash doesn't start the 335m.

I know I'm not the only one getting such battery life with an R2 because it was better battery life figures given in other threads that motivated me to really work on maximizing it. My discharge rates idle and in use still aren't as good as some, so mine is not the best or a unique case.

I forgot to mention before that that figure is with the screen all the way down. It seems perfectly clear to me at the lowest brightness, so I haven't tried it at a higher setting (I will try if someone wants to know).

 

I second that! I get about 6 hours with my i5 R2 with settings and usage similar to how corwinicre described above.

 

@Corwinicre & Stain WOW!

Those are really good numbers. I feel like I've tried everything in all of these threads to lengthen my battery life, but with: wifi and bluetooth off, AlienFX lights off, screen at the lowest brightness, no overclock; I get just a bit over 5 hours on idle with a discharge around 12K. As soon as I start doing some light browsing, I jump up to about 15K. I'm very jealous.

I can't complain though, I think I got the pick of the litter in external build quality. My screen touches the keyboard but that fabric it was shipped with protects the screen from scratches just fine.

The hinges: solid as a rock. No bending, cracking or unwanted movement. I think I may have been blessed where many have been cursed!

 

I have an i7 r2, and I get 6:50 using mine in classroom settings (1-2 windows of Word, Wifi on with 1-4 tabs active on Firefox, Keyboard Lighting off, Screen fully dimmed). It's around 8.5 - 10k discharge.

Before I started dimming the keyboard and screen back-light I still would get around 5hrs on 10-12k discharge.

 

On High Performance I get 3 hours, with everything on and set high.

Update drivers + Alienware Command Center and got SSD.

86 processes running.
i7, 4GB, 256GB Samsung Dell SSD, custom reload.

 

With screen at half brightness and on the stock power saver setting while using two tabs of Chrome I get roughly 4 hours.

 

Wow, I don't know how everyone is getting such great battery life. I don't even get four hours with almost everything turned off (lights, Alienware programs, bluetooth, etc.), my screen set to the lowest brightness (which to me makes the machine almost unusable), battery set to power saver and wifi on. At idle I'm getting a discharge of around 13k, and battery bar says my fill lifetime is only 3:54. From most of the numbers I'm seeing here, this doesn't seem to be normal.

 

I would like to see what settings you have on your setup dude thats awesome. I get 3.5 hours on mine.

 

Just a note, you may dim the led lights by right clicking the AlienFX head, and telling it to dim.

I wonder if disabling Turbo and HT will improve battery life? (I know turbo may be disabled, I dunno about HT).

 

Yea i don't understand on how 6 hours is even reachable. Please share

 

Note that I have the keyboard LED and the power button alien head LED on. The rest of the LEDs are off for me to reach 6 hours.

 

What else did you do stain cuz i dont think im gonna get another 2.5 hours by turning on a couple LEDs.

 

While looking at stain's signature, I noticed that he is using momentus xt..I once read that it can reduce power usage by 1-2mW..so that might be the reason for his longer battery life..

 

I'm pretty close to stock and it is embarrassing as to what I have NOT done with this R2.

-Screen is set to the most dim setting
-sound is 14% and I use headphones. I typically stream Sirius radio via their website
(therefore I am not running the hard drive to play audio content)
-I use Wifi and Chrome to surf, but do not goto Flash enabled content very much
-I do not have bluetooth
-I use the touchpad (no external mouse except when I am gaming)
-I have a USB powered laptop cooler to keep the temp down and give proper airflow. It has 2 fans in it.
-LEDs only on for alien head power button and keyboard

Never changed:
-BIOS (still at A01)
-never overclocked CPU or GPU
-I never messed with powermizer or any utilities like that

I upgraded to:
-Nvidia 260.63 beta driver
-Intel video driver to ver 8.15.10.22.02
-Command Center to newest version (supposed to be easier on battery life)
-Momentus XT HD


In my Windows power settings I have (not that it really matters):
-Dim display in 2 min
-power off display in 5 min
-computer sleeps in 15 min

I do not know what else to add here. The reason I jumped into this discussion is because, unlike some others, I have done very little to chase extra battery life or extra power for games so I thought I could provide a benchmark for a pretty clean system. I have had it for 3-4 months.

Right now I am on battery and it says 5:17 min remaining (96%) with the cooler plugged into USB. When I unplug the cooler and leave it for a bit, it goes to 6:25 remaining (95%), of course that is with it sitting for a few minutes on a website, but there are ads looping on the screen.

The more I use it, the more the time goes down (of course), but light surfing is 5+ hours.

Cheers,
Stain

 

Battery bar (or whatever it is called) says 5+ hrs when I'm on battery and use the power saver mode (with wireless on). I could see getting even more life with some tweaks, but I just do not need that much battery life. If I wanted 10+ hrs I'd use my netbook

One thing I noticed is my charging capacity is higher than the max capacity. So say 100% is 64,000 mwh, mine says something like 69,000 mwh. Could that be why some are getting much worse battery life even after tweaking a bunch? In effect some of our batteries are holding more than the designed (almost 110% in my case), while new, and eventually will go down as wear happens?

 

For my own R2, I upgraded the HDD from the stock 7200 RPM to 500GB Momentus XT.

While upgrading I noticed the current draw figure on the hard drive that I took out and the momentus that I put in. Sad to say, that momentus had a slightly larger figure (Don't remember the exact numbers, but I believe it was .75A for the stock HDD and 1.09A for momentus XT).

Not to mention that momentus XT does optimization and moves files around to flash memory when we're not looking.

As far as my battery life goes, I get 12.2 - 13.2 kW idle usage when I surf on chrome and take notes on OneNote. I dont have anti virus installed, WiFi is on, BT is OFF, Screen is one 1 Bar of brightness. Battery bar says that I get about 4:40, Windows estimates put me a little over 5 hours.

I've done everything I can to improve battery life but unfortunately it seems really hard to get it down to even the 10 kW range with the momentus XT installed. (I also upgraded RAM from stock 4GB to G.Skill 8GB and wondering whether that has any effect on power consumption)

 

I have my R2 with stock components, i5, 4gb,... never changed anything and i am able to reach about 10-12kW when surfing and such using firefox and some tabs on it.
Also, at idle with the dimmest screen i get about 8-9kW, battery bar shows over 7:20 at 96% of battery.
I only tweaked some windows stuff such as services, power scheme, removing Alienware stuff, etc

Ah, and do not use ReadyBoost if you are looking for battery life, i think it takes about 2kW if on.

 

Ok, update:

My discharge rate is now around 10.5kW on idle. The surprising thing is that I've been turning things on, instead of disabling them. Turning wireless on has made the biggest difference.

It's just trial and error to find how each feature affects the discharge rate.

Oh well, time to keep trying. It's kind of addictive really...

 

I can give you some more specifics if you have questions, but this is the quick summary of what I remember doing

-Disabled Blue Tooth
-Disabled Firewire
-Disabled OC (Speed Step On)
-On battery, I have max CPU capped at 50%
-Lowest screen, no AlienFX
-Microsoft Security Essentials, Windows Firewall, and Threatfire
-Adblock & Flashblock on Firefox
-260 Beta Drivers
-Newest Bios

 

Right now BatteryBar says 5:48 with power saver on, alien fx disabled, wifi on, with 85.7% battery left.