USB-C PD >> power non-PD Laptop....Yes!

So, I had a mission to see if I could power my laptop via USB-C PD even though it doesn't support it.

Of course being a laptop and all you need a good solid power source.....100W should work right?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DHWMZTQ $30 car charger 87W / 65W PD + 18W
Tested at rated W's for battery bank and 2nd port @ speed for phone

PD100U-1TGA https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089FC1TRF (secondary testing charger 1C / $32.99) Ordered for testing to see if a single port USB-IF certified charger makes a difference with output due to seeing some oddities with the above charger like 20V/3A which isn't a supported profile listed for the specs of the charger. Additionally USB-IF doesn't have a way to certify multi port chargers and looking through multiple chargers explains the power splits being all over the place on high W chargers.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015VXJL2S $89 100W power bank
Can't find any faults with the power bank itself. Seems the issues are cables not pulling high enough current for the laptop. Swapping cables might remedy any issue but, from the 100W charger to the PB it's 100%. Cables seem to either not support 100w and don't sync or only pull 60W for some reason which isn't the fault of the PB but more of a proof of concept since it has 100W / 60W ports on it. This allowed narrowing the issue with one of the cables being the issue and not the laptop.

I found some adapters that fit in my case 5.5x2.5 for the laptop power socket.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FRC39F4 $15 cable attached socket - has a braided sleeve to it which is going to help durability
Works direct with 100W adapter ((with usb meter it's pulling 50-60W consistently from the charger 20v/3a which isn't a profile listed for the charger / testing with new adapter cable below to see if it will pull 100W as designed as it does with the Nekteck cable >> 100w power bank))


(( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08GLGDD3S)) $14.99
(allows for multiple tips to be used instead of being stuck with a single use cable)
This one is working with the charger directly and consistently hitting 50-60W to laptop. However when monitoring the output with a game load on the line it was able to hit 90+W but, it wouldn't sync and stay consistent leading me to think that it's something with the charger itself causing the bouncing output leading to testing the 1TGA.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BS3G7K2 $8 laptop adapter tips
The issue is the e-marker. ((new cable doesn't have any issue with the adapter directly))

Using HWINFO I typically saw a draw of 45W or so... well, this seems a bit misleading since the power brick is 120W and I upgraded that to 180W as a secondary charger in hopes it might actually supply enough juice while playing a game and expedite battery charging at the same time. Well, the laptop battery only takes on 14.5W of charge while recharging for whatever reason. So, 14.5 + 45 W . The max TDP W is set to 75W looking through the HW screen... So, that's at least a potential ~60W of juice combined in use / charging.

So, I got my cables / tips / charge sources together and put a power meter on the end of the cable inline to measure things.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0861W6LM5 $20 and well worth it so far testing different cables / adapters for other devices.

So, when hooked up to any power source the laptop is pulling 40-60W of power w/o any games open which meshes with the above calculation In theory this means I should have 40W to spare for a game.

The laptop also charges using the 60W port on the power bank giving run current + 14.5W to the battery.

Testing w/o a battery to see if it will sustain power over USB alone doesn't get past the boot of Windows.

Either way it's a promising way to travel and not carry a big brick for anything other than games or even with games at a reduced charge rate.

12/13 -
Small quirk to report.

Windows started rebooting itself for no apparent reason when connected to the USB PD solution. It got absurd enough to prove it was a windows problem and not a hardware problem. I switched to linux for a couple of days to rule things out and not a single random reboot while connected. There was some chiming going on periodically if the power fluctuated but it was rock solid. DL'd a new ISO for 20H2 and reformatted things since the event logs didn't show anything other than fluttering power source messages and then critical's when it rebooted and came back up. There had been funky things with that prior install anyway like switching from AC > Battery to drain it > back to AC would lock up the screen and I narrowed that down to when there was a chrome window running Flash. Found some workarounds like ctrl+tab and close the lid / reopen to get things back a % of the time but otherwise it was a hard boot.



Stuff that doesn't work or meet expectations:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07XD7J1HB $8 cable w/ 2.1mm adapter end to it - doesn't have a sleeve but it's a decent thickness and fairly flexible
Doesn't like the 100W adapter but does work well with the power bank 60W port (chip issue?) -- returning

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B088666T68 $32 100W 2C charger (original testing charger) Works well w/ power bank @ 100W. Split output causes bouncing output to laptop when dropping the output from 100W to 45+45 . Seems like the laptop / cable likes to see around 50-60W to be consistent with running / charging.-- returning

 

The opposite is possible too, by the way. I ordered a couple of these, hopefully they'll arrive soon and work fine.

 

I just sold my Lenovo + 2 chargers... good way to reuse the charger though and turn it into a C connection. There's the reverse available as well going from C >> Yellow Rectangle.

It's much sleeker not having a BRICK sitting on the floor and just a nice little wire that can be tucked out of the way.

Since the laptop's not designed to run on PD there are some minor drawbacks like excessive power hungry apps/games not allowing full charging to be done while using them. The other drawback is the battery in the laptop max charges at 14-15W and takes a couple of hours even with the brick to charge. Normal use though works fine so far with this setup.

I looked for a faster or larger capacity battery for the laptop but couldn't come up with anything other than the OEM 4-cell which is alright for some tasks but otherwise a bit small for the performance desired.

 

My father has been using my Apple and Anker 100 Watt charger for his old Latitude 7450 (2015) rather than the Dell barrel charger for a while now when moving around. Same with my sister, has no need to bring the barrel charger as her XPS 9350 (also from 2015) charges pretty quickly on USB-C. My Inspiron gaming 7577 was the only that didn’t support USB-C charging but that was already stated in the specs. Overall I’m glad USB-C is working out as a charging standard, so much convenience even if you want to borrow a charger when you forget your own lol.

Without official PD yeah you probably won’t get a very fast charge limited probably to minimal voltage if it can’t negotiate properly or may not even charge like my 7577. Haven’t tried my Precision 7520 though which is lying unused.


As for third part chargers I use an Anker 100 Watt and incidentally the MBP16 to does make use of the extra 4 watts vs 96 off the official charger giving some extra headroom in intensive use. Also be careful with no name or random companies just because they’re cheap because if the circuitry is done in a half hazard manner or with corners cut in the wrong places it’s gonna have a bad outcome.

Even USB-C cables, a few years ago a Google engineer tested a whole bunch of A to C cables sold on Amazon for example and among many of the bad cables even some branded ones were there, a few even taking out his test laptop, an expensive proposition... And with some of the no name brands spamming the reviews it at times hard to ascertain real reviews even when using sites that supposedly filter out fake reviews.

 

Grain of salt when it comes to reviews.

Always check multiple sources / forums for matching/conflicting info as the truth comes out eventually.

I found some nice 100W USB-C cables from Nektech that are 3FT and work well with everything I've tried them on and have a good snap to the port so they don't fall out.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07X4GQ1SS

If I had some TB3 devices I would consider those as an alternative but, the cost on them isn't justified unless you can take advantage of them for data/video applications.

USB-PD does make things easier to manage but, the adoption of it outside of the major market players as you listed is disappointing to say the least. Sure, PD 3.0 has a 100W limit right now and maybe with PD 4.0 there will be some more doors opened up for "gaming" laptops to adopt the technology easier or different cable adapters that support better negotiation / PPS for adaptive supply being fed into the barrel connector would be nice. The space is primed for innovation and work arounds.

 

Better try your luck on Aliexpress/Taobao. 100W 20V 5A PD to dc barrel adapter with e-mark chip is quite popular there. For laptops with charger wattage detection, there is adapter with specific resistor to get around that so you don't get throttled. IIRC I even saw someone said that there is adapter that convert 2x100W PD to barrel for high end gaming laptop.

 

I don't think it's the cable at this point as when I have the meter on it it will jump into the 90W range but it's not stable enough to keep charging when in a full load scenario. It will bounce around and the timers start kicking in where it has to try to renegotiate the max power when the draw is above 100W. Otherwise it will suffice when not under a full load and provide the same output to charging the battery at 14.5W or so plus the running of the system powered on.

When the 120W/180W bricks are attached the max charging I get is the same 14.5W to the battery but, somewhere along the line that extra 20W provided by the brick sustains both working load and charging simultaneously when under full load.

 

It could be some thermal/electrical overload protection mechanism of the charger kicking in to effect causing your problem. Most likely there is not enough safe margin in these cheap 100w pd chargers.

 

Or, it could be the fact that the laptop isn't designed for USB-C charging and this is simply a hack to do so through an adapter cable that plugs into the DC barrel connection of the normal brick charging.

The chargers work fine going into a 100W port on the power bank and sustain 97W of charging to the power bank w/o issue for ~2 hours to fully recharge the power bank from 0% > 100% using the Nekteck USB-C to C cable rated for 100W / 10gbps.

The chargers supply up to about the same amount under full load but, full load seems to want to draw more than 100W as the power bricks are designed for 120W+ and the input label on the laptop is 119.xW when multiplying the A x V. The issue with the cheaper adapter tip cable seems to be a design flaw as when it was replaced with the higher priced cable it works fine directly from the 100W charger vs the 60W port on the power bank.

The system in a typical non-game induced full load averages 40-60W draw to run / charge (14.5W typical to battery). There's a bottleneck in the power system of the laptop whether logic induced or hardware induced to both the system and battery. The physicality of the battery chemistry restricts the amount of charge that is able to be applied to the cells for safe charging. For instance it takes about 3 hours to charge the battery because of the trickle charge method employed in the chip that controls it. A MBP for instance knocks off ~30% of the time due to the higher charge rate. Similar to how my phone can charge at 30W (5v/6A) when using a USB 2 cable / charger designed for it but in the same phone using C<>C + USB PD is knocks it down to 15W (5v/3A) as per the manufacturer design.

There are simply things I can't hack to make things exceed their designed function. If I could find a different battery that accepts a higher charge rate then it would probably help offset the power draw over USB while under a full load. Maybe there could be some sore of pass through option that would allow the 97W from the charger to be passed through the DC circuit to the laptop and not involve charging at all while in use. The throttling of current though done by the MOBO doesn't get triggered until it's powered on. While charging with the meter inline and powered off the current being applied to the battery is significantly lower at ~5W (30% of the powered on current). Maybe there's a BIOS hack that would open things up a bit more to allow more power to be applied than what's currently available. Being that the laptop is a Sager/Clevo though makes things a bit more complicated when it comes to maintenance of these things because they only publish updates every so often and for the BIOS on the official page it hasn't been updated since released but there's another source that allowed it to be updated by several step revisions since the release. Using one of the one off BIOS files though probably wouldn't result in better power conversion performance since it's not typically something that coders would want to mess with for the off chance that it bricks someone's system due to error.