How to get the best out of my battery?

I already have on thread opened, asking about a 2nd battery in my laptops, but I believe my next question deserves a new thread (hopefully to attrack more people with some ideas).

I have an Asus M6V model. Pretty old one, but still does its job very well. I see no reason in replacing it, since I mainly use it for office work, and I really do like the 1680x1020 resolution. It have a 8 cell 4400mAh 14.7V batterry - pretty strong one.

Back to my question...Since I use it mainly in office I like to use it only on battery.

What I have done to try get the best battery lifetime:

- fresh install of XP SP2 with all updates
- disabled serial and parrallel port in BIOS
- disabled FireWire port in BIOS
- disabled LAN (I only use WiFi)
- turned off speakers
- turned off IR
- set GFX for max battery life all the time

Installed ALL latest drivers and utillites off asus support page. I have selected E-Mail/Office from Power GEAR menu and I am getting about 3 hours of usage, reading from Everest. I think this is rather bad, dont you think?

Can you look at this screenshot I have taken:



On this screenshot you can see reading from Everest. It says the lappy is using 20W of power, but doing "nothing". There is also SpeedStep reading, showing no CPU activity, but there are both of the fans running.

I also tried the most drastical way:

- selected max battery from Power Gear - only 400mhz cpu
- turned monitor light all the way down
- disabled WiFi
- with speedstep disabled all fans

And with this, I get 14W of power usage, which would give me about 4 hours of battery life.

Now..its been a while since I was using my lappy on battery, because it died about a year ago, and since then I was using it only on AC power, but AFAIK I had a better battery life at start - thou Im not sure, thats why I opened this thread.

So please, let me know, is there anything I can do, or are my results normal? For my work I only need Wifi and max monitor light - I work in a very light ambient and for me to see on the screen I have to have its light turned to max. I dont care about anything else - the gfx, the sound, the lan, the BT, etc etc..so I can turn everything off. I have tried thou..and it is not giving me any results

 

It's likely that your battery has simply aged and does not work as well as it once did. Batteries begin to deteriorate as soon as they are made wet and both usage and time degrade them.

 

If you undervolt the CPU with a program such as Notebook Hardware Control (NHC) or RMClock Utility, you should be able to squeeze out.. maybe another half hour or so, depending on the results.
It takes a while to get the optimal results, though. Do a search on the forum for how to undervolt and you should find the answers you're looking for.

 

With all the tweaks including undervolting I got 12-13W at a very minimum out of my Pentium M ASUS M6BNe laptop, at night when the room was dark and actually any brightness above minimum would've hurt my eyes.

That's pretty much the bottom line, and in order to actually make the laptop usable you'll have to allow for some 15-16W I think (mainly sinking into the LCD brightness). Please, don't kill your eyes for the sakes of a silly battery.

 

15W would be just fine, that would be arround 3h30mins of usage. and If I can get the 2nd battery I will have a total of 6 hours, which is what I am looking for.

Will try the undervolting method...

Just one idea...what about undervolting the gfx?

PS, I do have a brand new battery...

 

I'm not sure there is software to explicitly undervolt GPU. There are different power management settings for the GPU usually, make sure you select power saving on battery.

15W was an example, depending on your actual screen it might be larger (but not smaller, I think).

 

Keep in mind that wireless is one of the first things most OEMs will ask you to disable to improve battery life, too. How does your power consumption change if you are running off of ethernet, rather than wifi?

 

Wireless is maybe 2-3W. LCD is much of the rest. I know a different type of M6BNe than mine with a much brighter LCD for which the battery lasts maybe 2 thirds the time that it lasts on mine. Minimum consumption around 23-25W if I remember correctly.

 

I have been testing NHC a couple of days, and managed to undervolt my CPU down to 0.7 @ 800mhz. The power usage went down to 18W, but I cannot go below this, while LCD brightenes all the way to the max. With tzrning it down, I can get to 13W. I hope the 2nd battery will be ok and I will get 5 hours with max LCD bighteness.

I noticed one thing thou...the ACPI tab is not working under NHC, I cannot access ACPI controls. Is this normal, or is something wrong with my ACPI driver?

 

Remember to do some stability testing on your voltage settings(at least 10-20 mins per setting). The NHC stability test is not all that reliable, and if your cpu is unstable it may cause other problems.

Use SP 2004 Orthos

 

Just a note, I got a bluescreen related to the ODD driver while the Orthos tests never failed one bit

So I increased my voltage with .05 volts from -.2 volts to -.15 volts (Relative to the original). No problems yet.

Again, the Orthos stability tests ran for 3:40 hours on Stress CPU and another 3:40 hours on Blend CPU+RAM, with zero errors.

 

I am just using my lappy normally and if I get some bsod or system lock up, I raise the voltage. It happened 2 times now, but with highest cpu frequencty 1860 mhz, at 800mhz and 0.700V everything runs smooth.

Noticed another thing. The system fan is taking 1-2W of power. So I also get a few minutes of usage if I disable it.

 

I wouldn't disable the system fan... you don't want a melted CPU for the sake of 2W of power drain...

 

Not CPU fan, system FAN. CPU fan is enabled and its rarely turned on.

Actually in my office I dont even need to disable system fan, because the laptops dont get so hot that it would need it.

ATM the temps are:

Motherboard: 42C/108F
CPU: 35C/95F
Aux: 55C/133F
HDD: 35C/95F

The laptop have been running for 2h30mins now...

Yes..i have a cold office

 

AFAIK the M6 models only have 1 cooling fan? At least my M6BNe does. I know, because I took it apart.

Where is the option for the system fan? Is it in the BIOS?

 

I got this readings from Everest and Speedfan. And I can actually "hear" both of them. And when I disable them, I do that from SpeedFan, I can hear them turn off too. So I dont know how come yours dont have two also.

There are no options for fans in BIOS

 

Do you hear 2 separate fans? For instance, do you hear one of them turning off while the other one is still running?

Or is it that SpeedFan labels the CPU fan "System Fan" or "FAN0" or whatever?

 

Yes...I hear them both, each on each side of the laptop. The cpu fan is on the right, and the system fan is on the left. I can turn them on/off seperately.

Are you sure that you only have one?

I do now I was not able to reach system fan from any of the "doors" on the bottom of the laptop, I was only able to reach cpu fan.

 

I'm pretty sure I have just one fan. My model (M6BNe) is one without quick access panels to the back, so I had to take almost the entire notebook apart to get at the fan. Both the CPU and GPU heatsink go to the same fan vent. The only thing I did not remove was the mainboard, but there's no way they were able to fit another fan in there. No other fan appears in the disassembly manual either, and the manual goes as far as removing every little bit of circuit from the chassis.

So I'm pretty sure I have just 1 fan. But if you have two, I still suggest don't turn either off. You risk overheating without serious benefit.