Gigabyte P34G

Hey Peter,

Sorry, but could you perhaps summarise how we should charge this beast? What I got so far is:

- Don't take it to 0 (i.e let it die?), only once every few weeks to calibrate it
- If you're using it plug it out when it's at 99? Then let it drain to...50?

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

Since we got to this topic, I'll ask my question again:
On some notebooks there is an option like Battery Saver (or something like that) which prevents full charge and stops it at 80% (prolongs battery life if you mainly use your laptop plugged to AC). Unfortunately, Gigabyte doesn't provide similar option. Does anyone know a third-party battery software that has this kind of option?

 

Incorrect. The life is by charge cycles. Do not let it drain to 0 or any low number ever, if possible. Your software will not lose calibration. Your best bet is to keep it charged to 70-80% always if you have a battery saver option in the bios, as "storing it" (which is essentially what happens when it stops charging while plugged into AC) at full charge us also bad for it.

The worst thing you can do is let it constantly discharge. If you are a road warrior there's not much you can do about that. Just plug it in whenever you can. More charge cycles (yes even only to 20-40%) == less life.

 

Don't have a source as I just googled around and read a bunch of responses.

And I did read about the 80% thing as well.

 

Car electrical systems don't use Li-Ion batteries though.

As hfm says Li-Ion batteries are rated for a certain number of charge cycles 0-100% being one cycle. 50-100% though is only half a cycle so it is better for your battery if you charge as often as possible rather than running it flat.

Running it flat isn't a problem per-se but storing it flat is. Li-Ion batteries really don't like being discharged past a certain point and the circuitry inside them will stop them being used before this point but if they are then left they can naturally discharge to below this level damaging them.

Since the P34G battery is fixed you take it out if you are using it predominantly on charger but if you are leaving it off apparently the best charge level to leave it at is I think between 50-80%.

 

Thanks for all the replies and comments guys.

Yep, true, most do not - but those that do are specially designed and there are some notebooks with BIOS settings (native or mods) to not let the battery charge past a certain point (such as 80%) but I am not aware of that for this laptop - though of course the auto sleep/hibernate/shut down trigger you can set to whatever you like.

Definitely do not use the battery down to absolute 0%, or even very close to that (especially over time as that lower level because fuzzier) - even if you recharge right away, there is no reason to risk hitting that trip point and damaging any of the cells.

I'm saying the same thing as hfm about cycles (don't use them if you don't have to), however in terms of calibration, I have a question: Is there a certainty that this laptop (P34G in particular) does not require it? As per Why (and How) You Should Regularly Calibrate Your Laptop's Battery that is what I've known for the past 10 years, that it is important to do it at some interval (every 6 months for example, as per the article). It mentions that recent Macbooks do not need this, but do we know for sure that this Gigabyte system also use a battery or controller that does not require such periodic calibration?

If you are using the laptop every day I would not worry about trying to leave it off at a certain charging % - it will probably cause more stress in the long run on the battery (and you ) if you try to do that every day anyway. If you are leaving your P34G in storage for more than a few days I'd recommend leaving it at 60% or so and if more than 6 months you'd want to plug it in for some time to make sure it doesn't discharge too low. But why you would want to leave such a great system in storage like that I can't fathom - really enjoying it . (I do however follow this pretty strictly with my 48V 10Ah LiPo electric bike battery, over the winter I top it up for a few minutes each idle month and keep it at as near 60% and in cool, dry but not freezing place).

One thing I've noticed though is I often have lines on my screen that appear to be from the space bar. Do other people have this issue? It appears it is touching the screen on the edges and leaving an imprint when I put it in the case and put it in my bag - it may be because it has some pressure on it though when it happens, but curious if others notice this too. (I do not place the microfibre cloth over the keyboard every day when I pack the notebook, which I do daily).

Thanks,
Peter

 

This is only to do with calibration of the time remaining indicator for the battery not the health of the battery. Personally I suspect that Macs don't do anything special in this regard. If you are only discharging to 50% and recharging to full all the time (the situation where calibration might be required) then the battery meter is probably going to be pretty inaccurate anyway as your power use will change over the remaining half of your battery. If you are running the battery flat and recharging you won't see the problem and calibration won't be needed.

Batteries 10 years ago would most likely not have been Li-Ion and would be Ni-Cad or Ni-Mh. NiCads had a memory affected and Ni-Mh did sometimes need a full charge/discharge to reset them sometimes (not just for charge remaining purposes) so I suspect that is where this constant confusion comes from regarding batteries - it doesn't help that manufacturers rarely give plain english advice or their reasoning behind it..

 

Actually my laptop battery from 2003 is Li-Ion (14.8V 5880 mAh from my ECS G732 [my avatar] to be exact, I just took it and the laptop out of storage to check) - I work a lot with Ni-Cads and Ni-MH batteries in my AA/AAAs though, but I know the difference and that memory effect proper affects them and not Lithium type rechargeable batteries.

One of the reasons the battery can be damaged if the calibration is off is because if the battery is not calibrated then you can end up with situations of it seeming to have a lot of runtime left and then just dying on you, which can damage the cells if they go below the minimum safe charge level (especially if you think it has time left and you attempt to turn the system back on w/o recharging, thereby using any residual juice left).

If you don't have accurate data on amount of charge remaining it makes it very difficult to follow these suggestions to prolong battery life.

I definitely disagree though with running the battery flat (to 0% or off) - or using more cycles than you need except for very occasional calibration - I'd keep it at 5% minimum to avoid risk of damage imho.

Thanks,
Peter

 

Has anyone figured out the throttling issues that occurs while the laptop is unplugged? This is a huge deal. Especially for those of us who are running several VM's.

Please let me know if there is a way to fix this or how to get around it.

Thank you guys.

 

I like this source for info on batteries. A lot of it corroborates what's been said in this thread.

The TL; DR:
Leave your laptop plugged in whenever you can and let the hardware/software manage the charge level.
Don't drain your battery too often.
Store your battery at about half-charge.

 

Lots of misinformation on Lithium ion batteries in these last couple pages. These are not NiCADs or NiMH batteries folks. The only serious danger to Li batteries is letting their charge voltage get too low. Once a Li cell drops below a certain voltage is cannot ever be charged up again. Leaving a laptop plugged in to AC will not shorten battery life.

Sent from my GT-N5110 using Tapatalk

 

So basically, keep it at 99%, S'all good? And when you're about to shut it down, let it drain to about 60?

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

Yes and try not to let them get too hot if at all possible.

No. Only if you are not going to be using the laptop for a while - a week or longer - should you do this. Don't drain it unless you have to. If you are using the laptop on battery power and have the choice then charging back up when you get to 60% is better for it than getting it to 0% and charging.

 

Hi there,

I have a P34G and i just bought a powergorilla, none of the supplied tips seem to work, you mentioned that you found the right tip for charging the P34G, could you tell me which one it is and where you got it from?

Thanks!

 

So, i have just been on the phone to powergorilla, it turns out that the tip was correct, however the power gorilla only generates 57 Watts (19V x 3A), whereas the P34G requires 117 Watts (19.5V x 6A). I am curious to know how (and if) this actually works! Could you confirm you actually managed to power a P34G with a powergorilla?

powergorilla say you can get 2 powergorillas an connect them with a y-cable, but this seems a bit ridiculous for an ultra-light ultra-portable laptop.

Thanks.

 

This.



Sent from my LG-D800 using Tapatalk

 

Note also from the exact same article:

Agree completely, that's a good resource. Everything there agrees with what I've been trying to say from the start. I feel that what I've been doing and saying is correct based on that and the discussions we've had here. I hope that this discussion helps people understand their batteries better and how to make them last longer.

Thanks all,
Peter

 

Thanks so much guys for all the battery help. I hope I can keep this thing running for 4 years

Does anyone else have a laptop that gets really hot on the bottom? Not burn your fingers hot but definitely 'don't keep it on your lap if you want kids' hot.

I'm especially worried because this thing was ice cool when I used it for the few hours that I did before it went into repair. The day it came out I tested it at the service centre and just updating BIOS it warmed considerably. Now, a week later, it gets hot on the bottom and by the vents on either side of the power button JUST with light browsing.

 

I think that is expected now post 305 BIOS update - it does feel warmer, but that is because the fan is not running so much to dissipate that heat. It stays silent when before they were spinning away. Therefore the average temp of the system is higher and the fan only triggers when it gets too hot.

You can use HWMonitor to track the temperatures if you like and compare. Also note that every few weeks you should use a can of compressed air to clean the fans out of any dust that may have accumulated to keep things cool and the fans working efficiently and quietly when they are needed (with the system off at the time preferably).

Personally I'll take a bit more heat over the noise any day - it is not hot enough to damage the components (long or short term) and the battery and HDD (if you still have one rather than a second SSD) are far away from the heat source and shouldn't be affected much. If you want to keep it cooler you can use Notebook Fan Control to do that or downgrade the BIOS, though I personally would do neither - I'm quite happy with it as it is

Peter

 

No issues with temperatures. I also don't notice the fans are on until they are off...lol

I want to try Ubuntu and also do a split partition but afraid 8.1 needs more than 60 gigs. Maybe I will transfer my user folder to the HDD as well or upgrade the mSATA

 

I agree with the fans, they are definitely not an issue.

I installed Ubuntu on my SSD, deleted the Recovery partition (first backed it up on a USB stick using the Windows 8.1 Recovery to USB tool), leaving 55GB for Windows and the rest for Ubuntu. I don't play many games but if I ever need to install a large game/software in Windows I'll install it to the HDD.

 

That's why I posted it - because it speaks to all different battery types, and seems to be backed by somewhat scholarly evidence (university studies, whitepapers, etc.).

Your point about no memory on lithium batteries is a good one. I'm the family tech-guru, and I haven't heard the folks mention memory effect for about 5 years so I didn't include it. If my wife's grandma knows there's no memory effect with lithium batteries, I figured everyone knew.

 

Just picked up the Intel 7260-AC and immediately noticed that the missing wifi on resume from sleep or hibernate seems to be fixed - knock on wood. Haven't seen speed differences as I'm only on an N network, but the Nighthawk should be here in a couple of days and hopefully give a local area speed increase. Should be great with the 8TB PogoPlug media/cloud server i"m setting up.

Also, I've been trying to undervolt the proc, but can't find the link to the utility in the thread, and Google is not being friendly at the moment. Anyone have it handy?
If not, I'll try to make better friends with Google...

 

Hmm with my 7260 it still does not turn on automatically after I boot up from shutdown. I never had issues with sleep I don't think.

 

I have to go to either smartmanager or Intel proset and turn off and then on the wifi to get it to turn on.

 

This only happened to me after I updated various drivers (WiFi included) using SmartManager. I then reinstalled Windows using the Recovery partition (for different reasons) and the problem disappeared, so I definitely believe it is related to driver versions.

 

I find your lack of quotes disturbing.

The purpose of that was the mention of Periodic Battery Calibration of the Fuel Gauge which was being dismissed by various people earlier in the thread.

If you had gone back to quote me so your post made more sense you might have seen this in my sig

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gigabyte/741764-gigabyte-p34g-undervolting-guide-intel-haswell.html

Peter

 

For my Kensington travel charger, N3 to charge the P34G, N2 to charge the PowerGorilla. I'll see if I can take and upload pictures later.

As long as I'm up here, very poor showing for the PowerGorilla with this past few days' travel. First leg out, a three hour flight, ran at High Performance scheme for 1:45 hours and the PowerGorilla dropped two out of six bars. Went to fully charge Monday nite before return legs back yesterday and as soon as I disconnect it from A/C power and attached it to my laptop it dies. Tried it twice again yesterday moving through airports, same result. Calling PowerTraveller support today to see if I have a defective unit, but in all likelihood it's going to go back.

 

Also using an N3 here on my Kensington right now to charge my P34G.

Sounds like the same experience the other user was reporting about it not providing enough amperage. Perhaps if you turn down the screen and set to battery saving it may work for awhile but it seems like it doesn't have the juice to support it in your second usage case. Were you doing the same thing w/all same settings in both instances? I've had some chargers/batteries that work great if I keep the demands low but as soon as I push it up a little or it's not completed charged it just shuts down.

Peter

 

Yes, same usage in both instances. Will fully charge the unit, then attach while running Power Saver and dropped LCD brightness, see what happens. Another scenario I want to try is if I can get it to run High Performance after a full charge and if it can run like that and, if so, for how long.

 

I just got my P34 yesterday. Every time I power on my laptop I have to hit Fn F2 to turn the wifi on. Is there a way so that it would turn on automatically?

 

We need to make a FAQ - and that would be #1. I think I personally have answered it at least 6 times in this thread and others have also repeated the same thing.

Here goes #7: Instead of using Windows or shortcut key, turn Wifi on in Smart Manager, reboot and see if that sticks .

Peter

 

Thanks for the instructions on the wifi, however, I don't have anything called Smart Manager and could not find it anywhere on Gigabyte's website.

Edit: Found the download on the Gigabyte site. It wasn't loaded with my laptop.

 

Hey guys.

Did some HWMonitor checks and while running idle for a couple of hours, my PC racked up a 85 degree max temp across all four cores. This is bad for a 2 week old machine, right? Does anyone else have numbers I can compare with?

Thanks

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

I would do a clean install of 8.1 and update drivers from Intel or website. Seems like it helped some people.

 

Under load, my HWMonitor says my CPU hits 98 C at max. Not sure what it stabilizes at, though.

Right now, idle CPU is 40~50 C with a max of ~60.

 

Note that in terms of temps, your ambient temperature also matters.

Mine never gets that high anymore now that I undervolted (even under max load). If you want to see my temps before and after you can check the Undervolt thread in my signature - however that was not when at idle (at least not for the CPU, the GPU was not in use) and with an ambient of about 20*C. About 85*C is the highest I hit now playing Skyrim on max settings after a couple of hours of play at that ambient temp.

Apologies to krforrester, Smart Manager is preloaded on all default P34G systems as far as I know, when you said you just got the system yesterday I assumed it was stock and the problem you described matches what it does exactly so I'm surprised you didn't have it installed (was your system customized before you got it, or did you do a fresh install?) - you should not have to have it though.

Peter

 

Thanks Peter. I think my problem is that I immediately upgraded to 8.1 without thinking things through. I have no idea if it was installed before the update but I bet it was (I bought through XoticPC). If it weren't for your instructions I would not have realized that I didn't have Smart Update installed either and, consequently, missing quite a number of other updates.

 

Is there a proper solution for the caps lock notification while gaming yet?
Have they upgraded the smart manager to allow us to turn off notifications?

So far it seems like closing the Gigabyte OSDV3 in task manager is the only way.
Bit of a pain doing this each time.

Thanks

 

I usually post from Tapatalk, which has issues with quotes and sigs, i'm afraid. Thanks for the link!

 

Can anyone give me a hand with this? Since updating to 8.1, every time I start up I get an "unhandled excepton" error. I thought it might have something to do with smart update but it's disabled (I think) on startup.


See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at urgent.Form1.step_4()
at urgent.Form1.Form1_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoad(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl()
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.34003 built by: FX45W81RTMGDR
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework64/v4.0.30319/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
urgent
Assembly Version: 0.1.7.5
Win32 Version: 0.1.7.5
CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files/GIGABYTE/Smart%20Update/urgent.exe
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.33440 built by: FX45W81RTMREL
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.33440 built by: FX45W81RTMREL
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
System
Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.34003 built by: FX45W81RTMGDR
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Management
Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.33440 built by: FX45W81RTMREL
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Management/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Management.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Configuration
Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.33440 built by: FX45W81RTMREL
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Configuration/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Configuration.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Xml
Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.33440 built by: FX45W81RTMREL
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll
----------------------------------------

************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.

For example:

<configuration>
<system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />
</configuration>

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.

 

The newest smart manager update did fix this.

To the temp discussion, yeah I forgot to mention that the room I'm in is usually fairly hot

 

Fairly hot for me too! And yet your max temp is 60 and mine is 85

Right from the start, after I got my laptop back from repairs, I had a feeling something was up. It never even heated up slightly before I gave it in. Really unsure of what to do now.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, 85 on idle seems like its way too much. A youtube vid brought my max to around 70.

You could try and see if the thermal compound was applied properly by unscrewing the heatsinks. Or maybe you can try and call the guys you bought the laptop from and see if they can help you.

 

Just checked my smart update and it says i have the latest smart manager: 3.4.5 but im still having the caps lock issue.
What version do you have?

Maybe i missed the option to turn it off in the start manager? where is it ?

Thanks again

 

Ditto on the FAQ.

Sadly, my WiFi issue reappeared. Nothing works, not Smart Manager, not Fn+F2, nothing. I have to go into the adapter settings and manually disable and re-enable the card. I have noticed that if I leave it alone it sometimes comes back on its own.

Also, TY for the undervolt link. I'm stting at a -130mV stable undervolt, and might try lower later.

 

On idle, if I put my ear near the back removable panel (allowing access to the hard drive) I notice a faint repetitive noise that sounds as if something is grinding against something else. The noise is quiet, and I can only really hear it if my ear is within a few inches of the back panel. I am afraid that something is wrong with the 5400 rpm drive and am thinking about contacting GenTechPC. What do you think? Do you hear a similarly faint noise, or do you think my harddrive may be dying?

 

Does anyone have the i5 version of this laptop? I wonder if the dual core processor affects the battery life and the temperature of the laptop in any way

 

It's a beta update available on Gigabyte's website. It should be 3.6.1.

 

Has anyone tried to open the laptop and completely remove the casing? I've been wanting to do some more paint mods and prefer the case remove than paint over the keyboard with tape on it.