battery life impact after battery calibration

ok so I opened up batterybar and showed theres 8% of battery wear and I did calibrate it and unplugged the AC adapter and played a game until %50 of the battery! decided to drain it quick as possible and opened prime95+furmark to and the battery was draining FAST until the hibernate mode! recharging it now and shocked by the resault that battery wear lever was increased to %9.6

so, something wrong I did?

 

Don't drain the battery too quickly. You can damage it. No need to calibrate the battery unless you laptop suddenly turns off.

 

GREAT now the wear level is 10% guess I'm going to throw the battery to the box and make it only for emergecy use!

the battery was HOT last time I drained it! guess I've done something to it! I should've known better!

 

The battery is not meant to be used for gaming. The higher the power draw, the more stress is placed on the battery cells.

 

I've read something about "memory effect"! thats why I tried to calibrate! if anyone have the information about the proper way to calibrate please let me know! glad that two extra batteries are on the way now!

I guess so, except for casual gaming!

 

Memory effect is for nickel-cadium batteries. Most recent ones should be lithium ion or lithium polymer which do not have the memory effect.

 

I see now! well what done is done! life was a bit shortened, will make sure not to calibrate again unless I make sure it's a NiCa (which is unlikely to happe in near future)

btw is it wrong to keep the battery fully charged in the box? I plan not to use it anymore until further notice!

 

From what I have read in the past, if you are not going to use the battery at all, leave it at 40-50% charge and leave it in a cool dry place - I suppose a cupboard will do - and check it's charge every few months.

Personally, I would just use the battery in whatever way. The battery will eventually wear so you might as well just use it.

 

Captain , from what I have read most seem to recommend 40%, not sure why though.
I leave mine in all the time to serve as a psuedo backup power supply.

 

you both are right, but I need the battery until next september when I return to florida! then I would't care about the battery at all! but fo now I need it!

 

Yep, 40-50% drain, then store it in a cool place, preferably < 60F. But in any case it will still lose charge and capacity whether used or not.

And it is a good idea to calibrate it occasionally, just don't max out your system when doing so, just use the machine for basic tasks (web surfing, etc) until 5-10%, shut down, and recharge. I've had batterybar tell me my battery lost 8-10% before, until I did a normal discharge and recharge then it showed only about 0.3% capacity loss. Battery is there for use, as well as backup UPS. Use it, just don't use your machine at max performance on battery.

 

just followed HT's advice using MSI's calibration tool and regained some of the lost battery juice! should I do it more often?

 

In the ASUS forum a very smart moderator recommends discharge to zero by letting it drain as HT suggests above, then entering the BIOS until it powers off. NOTE this was recommended for an ASUS model!!!!

 

Yeah I was going to note to go to BIOS and let battery just drain until the system quits, but that's not always the best thing to do for all laptops. But if it's been done and recommended on the MSI, by all means can't hurt to try!

No need to do it frequently. It only calibrates it, and was probably off because you played games with it on battery, which drained it rather more quickly than normal.

To be honest gaming on battery won't hurt it too much, but one thing to consider is limiting your FPS by using DXtory. It's a shareware program, you will just have to wait 10 seconds after running it for it to work if you don't want to register it. Also see if you can run your CPU at a lower speed and voltage with Throttlestop (or other app?), and underclock / undervolt your GPU as well and you should be able to drop your power consumption drastically while still maintaining reasonable framerates.

I did this on my HP (albeit using my IGP) and went from ~ 70W to < 35W power draw! Your i7-2630QM may underclock on its own on battery, not sure. But your GTX 570m doesn't need to run full tilt for certain.

 

You guy's are seriously over reacting. I have calibrated my battery many times and play games on it....I have also tried stress testing it for fun and got the PCM\PCB to kick in to turn off the battery because i was draining it too fast. I was draining more than 80 Whs wilh stress testing and there is no damage because the PCM/PCB stopped it from causing damage. I have had this battery for over 2 1/2 years and i still got like ~70% life in it. Also battery bar is inherently in accurate with wear. I see mine jump from 70%-30% all the time. I get like 45-50mins life on my laptop when brand new it was like 70mins. You should calibrate once everyother month if you do alot of battery use and hibernating and frequent charges. Your battery automaticly looses 20% in a year no matter what you do. Li-ions are rated to do 300 charges/discharges (all the way to 0%) before they hit 80% so even if you charged and discharged to 0 everyday you will still have 80% after one year. It baffles me how so much misinformation is on here about batteries and pulling them out if your on AC. Only time you should pull it out is if your laptop makes your battery super hot on AC, which is rare. Only a few crappy laptops keep the cells too warm for AC. Een my gaming laptop overclocked and playing games doesn't even keep my battery cells warm. Plus the minor gain with pulling the battery out is such a huge convenience that your wasting more time than it is worth....seriously.

Also this better to do many small charges is ridiculous. I don't know where it was about another member posted the site that showed that Li-ions get 80% wear after 300 full discharges and that 10% discharge and than recharge is the most changing and that i think 50 and 75% give the best capacity over the long haul for maximum use but it was a relative difference because your WASTING YOUR TIME with such paranoia sillyness.

Simply use the battery and enjoy it. As long as your laptop doesn't make the battery hot/burning to touch your fine. And remember you get 300 full duscharge and recharges....basically 1 per day anymore than your doing more wear than it would receive just sitting doing nothing. Batteries are only good for a max of 3 years unless you put it at 40% and store it away but than what is that good for?


if you disagree you are foolish and plan and simply. Only battery i got that I cna drain more than once a day us my cell phone because its an evo 3D and i use it like mad...I burn through about 3 batteries a day so I carry spares. If I used a sngle battery the whole time I would need to replace that every year or sooner because it would have a good 600 discharges in a single year and be worthless by then...hence for the spare batteries. Again would it be better to just leave ti plug in all day and never go anywhere with my cellphone because I wanted to save battery life????no.....

 

for a calibration to work you have to drain it to 0% because the battery/ windows can no longer read the actual power levels correctly. To do this you have to be in BIOS because windows will force you to restart at 7% i believe.


For an example, your battery is mis reading and says you get 30mins of life when normally it is 60 mins. Windows will force you to hibernate at 2.1 mins left when your battery actually has ~52% juice left because windows is only reading 50% capacity when there is really 100%. Trying to calibrate like this wont work. In BIOS most laptops (some will force shut down and not allow you to calibrate because their BIOS won't let you run til 0 not sure why) In BIOS most laptops will run to 0% and cause the PCM/PCB to kick in to keep it from discharging below minimum voltage. Also once you have done this try to restart ONCE to make sure it worked if nothing happens the PCM/PCB is kicking in to keep it from loosing anymore voltage so it can recharge. If you keep doing this you will cause significant damage because each time it takes the PCM/PCB i think 200ms to kick in. I maybe off on those numbers I am not sure its been a long time. Draining past the minimum voltage cause major damage if done multiply times. Now after this is done recharge and it'll show the proper readings (give or take because batterybar is not the most accurate program).

 

Not necessarily. It is a bad idea to drain to 0%. Sure if it says you have 20% battery capacity depletion when you know it's not true, then it might need it. But if you drop a few % just regular use down to 5-7% should be sufficient to recalibrate reasonably. BatteryBar creates its own use profile, so more you use it it estimates based on your use.

 

I have used batterybar for over a year and a half and it is horrible. I find the windows battery thing is more accurate. Battery bar tells me I have 30mins left even though I am discharging at 40Wh and my capacity is 40Wh...guess what windows says...I got 60 mins of life. Batterybar is only useful to see what ur current drain is. Otherwise it is terrible in accuracy. And again li-ion batteries are rated for 300!!!! discharges to 0%! before they hit 80% capacity. Draining to 0% does not hurt them. Some member posted the site with tests showing the difference in 10% discharge 25% 50% and 75% discharge. You gain hardly anything with trying to not discharge more than 50% battery...you are HONESTLY WASTING UR TIME. I thought it was done by battery university but I am not going to bother to look it up. You can find it yourself. You waste so much time and patience with being paranoid about your battery to gain what 10-30% life out of it? so you get 700 50% charges, which equals 350 full discharges? compared to 300? Why? I would rather use the battery and get my work done than to waste time with trying to save the battery and get 10-30% more capcity...that is all you will get.....POINTLESS!

 

Try BatteryCare.

Actually I find BatteryBar less useful lately. Not sure what has happened, it used to be quite accurate. I have been using HWInfo64 lately. While not very convenient, it seems accurate.

What I like most about BatteryBar is the big icon on the taskbar, but if it isn't very accurate, I guess it isn't worthwhile.

edit: Check out this information on battery care / discharge at the BatteryCare website. I think I will use them more now and see how accurate and if I like it.

http://batterycare.net/en/guide.html

 

both seem identical reading to me..

and wow! battery wear level decreased to %8.5 when I discharge it to 55% and fully recharge it again! I guess this is how the lithium ion battery calibrating should be! now I'm doing it again and will report back soon as the battery is fully charged!

 

again battery readings are not 100% accurate. Calibrations only work to 0% and it is ideally for situations where my laptop just went from 30% wear (70% capacity) to 50% wear (50% capacity) Obviously my battery has 70% capacity and not 50% capacity. So this is when you must drain to 0% to get the full capacity back and accurate readings. Draining it to 7% at 50% capacity where windows hibernates will not work......refer to my attached illustration for a better understanding.


Also again draining to 0% does not hurt the battery all li-ion cells are rated for at least 300 full discharges and recharges before they hit 80% capacity period. And you will loose 20% capacity in 1 year if left at 100% charge (like leaving it in a laptop/cell phone) so AGAIN no matter what you do besides leaving it out at 40% capacity you will have 80% left at the end of the year unless you use it more than 300 times in that period. Also I forget what the numbers are but if you leave it in storage at 40% for 1 full year with no cycling it will have I think about 95%??? capacity? Don't quote me on that one because I forget but its in that ballpark


Honestly, don't listen to anyone else if they tell you otherwise because they don't know what they are talking about. This is all fact you can read it for yourself on any credible website done by a professional.

 

thanks, I'll be trying this on my old HP DV1000! although I've read from several resources that draining li-ion to true zero could damage it even more unlike NiCa batteries.

 

some other member a long time ago posted this site for buying cells to rebuild batteries but it also has some good information

Lithium Ion / Polymer Single Cells

here is a pdf of the specs of a lg battery..you can find some interesting information. I am curious on why it says the cell will have XX% at various months in this doc...they give random temps and months for these values and don't specify the % of capacity when doing this tests or whatever. Granted i skimmed this but this doc is from the manufacture and you can find some good info on batteries in it. Granted it is hard to read and understand because you have to dump all over to follow it.

http://www.batteryspace.com/prod-specs/5457_1.pdf


Again battery university i think its called has good info too.

EDIT: found the page. This shows that at 25C (~room temp) that a battery will get 96% capacity after one year at 40% storage. With it 100% it is 80% after 1 year. This again shows if you use the battery like it is menth to be used it will have 80% at the end of the year no matter what. Unless you use more than 300 cycles in that year. So just use the battery like you should and if you don't plan on using it for more than 1-3 months than take it out and store it. For an example my li-ion drill i left at 100%....i figured i was going to use it but....i haven't touched it for like 2 years lol so those batteries are probably useless by now and I should rebuild it. If i left it at 40% i could have kept those cells....oh well. Only batteries you should worry about are li-ion batteries that are for drills or devices you rarely use...aka backup batteries. Otherwise it is pointless and your wasting your time to save a few bucks.


http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_store_batteries

 

my old HP DV1000 with battery wear of 52.5%, now it's 51.5% after draining to true zero! but the test itself was flawed.

I'll try it again tommorow. will implement the calibration on my new laptop if things goes well!

I just wanna smack the person in the face who did this "educating" picture

 

What are you talking about? Do you know how many laptops I've owned, used, or managed that have had less than 5% wear after a year and usually keeping them at full charge load? 80% after a year is complete and total bunk. Only machines I use on battery often are netbooks. And worse case a Dell Mini I had was 10% wear after a year. Ask any other user that's owned laptops and that 80% doesn't hold true at all.

What's wrong with it? It's just saying that normal use it should stay above 25% capacity. Draining it to 3-5% is really only required/needed for a proper calibration.

Also, below is a more realistic representation of how batteries fare over time, although this is most likely worse case, because as I've stated I've seen much better results. Part of it depends on the quality of the batteries, and the charging technology:

 

you don't have to believe me I pulled those figures directly from battery university....go argue with them and their testings of cells. Even LGs documentation on their cells say the same. I am going to listen to battery university, battery space, and LG before I listen to people on this forum making up stuff....who are you going to trust LG, battery university, and battery space or some random guy on the forums? Just saying.

 

LOL. I'll trust my own experience.

And you're going to trust battery university that is basically a marketing site for their battery products? Not to mention that they are discussing STORAGE life, as in untouched, not batteries in use. A laptop battery in use is constantly conditioned for best life. I would believe at 25C stored at full charge it could lose 20%. But in actual use, no.

LG's document shows it is a SPECIFICATION, which means MINIMUM REQUIREMENT, and again notice the words *STORAGE*.

 

you also forget to equate that your battery is also running hotter than storage while in use plus its being used......its going to loose 20% in a year period.

 

You don't understand what they're trying to say (and me too apparently). It's an untouched, stored battery. All that stuff is saying a STORED battery without receiving any electrical charge will degrade X amount. NOTHING about it discusses a battery in use with proper charging.

 

you misunderstood what I said.....I said you forgot to equate (while using a battery in a laptop) It runs at a higher temperate and your causing wear...even if per chance a battery looses less wear sitting in a laptop you are causing all of the above which is going to make it loose 20% anyways....Again, I would put money on it if you leave a battery at 100% charge in a laptop it will still loose 20% because it is sitting at a full charge and its hotter than 25C. Even with those few cycles in the process to exercise it.

EDIT: i am done arguing with you because I got better things to do. Fact is your going to loose 20% a year on average for a regular battery.

 

I am sad that this turned into a near argument...
@HopelesslyFaithful how about some citations...
And is it imossible to get a factory replacement battery for a mainstream laptop after 3 year that has not been sitting on a shelf for that time?
i must be very lucky I have a 5 year old Dell D610 (Li-ION) that I use for 2 hours regularly on battery (100% to 10 %) and it is still going.
Agreed battery care is flakey when the charge level is low, I just assumed it was another inferior component in my ASUS

Why do most of the regulars here fail to provide an email address in their profile??

 

Because of spam, and there's PM.

 

i gave all the sources in links...you can also rebuild the cells in a laptop. It is not that hard and it's pretty cheap