The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Anyone else LOSE battery life after installing SSD?

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by Wes04ram1500, May 10, 2012.

  1. Wes04ram1500

    Wes04ram1500 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    12
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I have a 702X which came setup with two 500GB Sata II HDD. I just recently swapped out the primary with an intel 520 series 120GB SSD. I was getting around 5 1/2 hrs batter life out of the old setup on the 9 cell battery. I am now struggling to get 4 hrs out of the new setup.

    I have done some research and have seen that this is not so uncommon, the Dell name came up in this research a lot. Anyone have any thoughts comments or suggestions on this?
     
    Wes04ram1500, May 10, 2012
    #1
  2. Wes04ram1500

    Wes04ram1500 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    12
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Extremely sorry about the multiple posts. Firefox acted up on me.
     
    Wes04ram1500, May 10, 2012
    #2
  3. madmattd

    madmattd Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    367
    Messages:
    1,138
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Has little to do with Dell. A SSD removes the drive bottleneck from your system and the CPU accordingly has to work harder to compensate. The CPU draws a lot more power than a HDD...

    That said, my battery life was virtually unchanged going from one 500GB drive to 500GB plus Crucial M4 drive. The Intel 520 and all Sandforce drives for that matter are a little more power-greedy than other SSDs. That big a reduction sounds a little excessive though.
     
    madmattd, May 10, 2012
    #3
  4. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

    Reputations:
    5,413
    Messages:
    10,711
    Likes Received:
    1,204
    Trophy Points:
    581
    SandForce controller SSD is why your battery life has gone down. SATA 3 SSDs stress performance, and sacrifice battery life in doing so. If you say got a PM810/470 series or 320 series SSD and you went down in battery life, I would be more concerned. And by the way, 5400 rpm drives these days have MUCH better battery life, VERY close to SSDs on idle, less so on full load.
     
    Tsunade_Hime, May 11, 2012
    #4