question about higher and standard watt A/C adapters and gaming graphics cards

now internally a laptop has a psu/voltage regulators and say the laptop has 120 watt psu, now what i'm trying to understand is why do people get 160watt aftermarket adapters or whatever, i see people mention that it helps overclocking but how if the psu internally doesn't change its input capacity

the other question is when you remove the power cord and have the laptop run on the battery why do you get lower fps then you would even if it was plugged in and you dont have battery saving features enabled? i'm presuming because it's a bios feature of the video card to conserve battery and it can't be override unless you modify the bios itself to stay at standard clocks

hope somethings get cleared up with this thread.

 

I get exactly the same avg fps plugged/unplugged I think it maybe related to the PCI express power saving features but you can easily manually disable that on windows

EDIT: Also I noticed that no matter how you make power profiles identical ... I still benchmark less on balanced & power saver profiles plugged/unplugged Vs high performance profile because as you know there are power options that aren't visible by default in the profile management tab ... that maybe another reason choosing the wrong power profile

 

the power management options i got for high all the time, i'm thinking it's a bios issue, but anyways i'll take a look for myself now into that pci express power saving feature, also the difference of hardware can cause a serious effect, i'm not sure if a 5650 is really that hardcore on the battery. personally sounds like a bios issue to me(will conduct a test).

 

My laptop came with a 120W PSU; which was fine until I installed the QX9300 and the GTX 280M. Then it would lose power whenever I heavily used both of them (like with playing Crysis). So, I starting using a 160W PSU; which was fine unless I overclocked and heavily used my CPU and GPU, or if I stress-tested/benchmarked.

Now I'm using a 180W PSU, and I have no issues.

 

i don't understand that exact thing as i depicted the scenario above, how does a higher watt adapter help, if the internal psu hasn't changed,

the only conclusion i can come up with is that the 120w adapter loses efficiency to supplement the internal psu and the 160w has a little more efficiency apart from that you cant run a 50000 watt adapter on a system that was only able to sustain 120watts tdp.

anybody else care to elaborate on this, but i presume what i mentioned above is probably why higher adapters show some signs of results, also wondering about the lower performance on battery mode with gaming end video cards example 280m on battery and off huge fps hit maybe 40% and i have everything set to NON power saving.

 

Input wattage capacity is largely indicative of the quality of the internal components, which in turn is largely indicative of the quality of the +12v rail variance.

Voltage variance, as we know it, is the amount of increase or decrease in voltage on a per second basis. Generally speaking, it is not uncommon for the included, OEM PSU's to have a variance of +-1V. For the most part, this is not an issue in day-to-day tasks.

When it comes to overclocking, though, it is a completely different story. As soon as your components (motherboard SB/NB, RAM, CPU and GPU) are utilizing more power than the OEM PSU was designed to handle, the variance I mentioned plays a larger and larger role in your ability to overclock, especially when it comes to the stability of that OC. Generally speaking, when you get your BSOD on an overclock, it is because the voltage spiked or declined on the 12v rail past the point of the capacitor's ability to compensate.

So, aftermarket PSU's often alleviate this issue.

 

i know all of that, that you just mentioned, and my point was what aftermarket psu's? your talking about higher rated power adapters, thats not a PSU thats just a source that converts the energy from the outlet and into the laptop, as i mentioned above all power adapters/power supplys loss efficiency it's a fact. so i can see where a 160watt can cover the lost efficiency from a lower end adapter HOWEVER the psu internally does not change, overclocking has nothing to do with this( i understand they cause a increase of power consumption ) but this can also be a new video card or some component.

what i'm also wondering is how does the BATTERY come into play, say you bought a 160watt adapter great you got a stable overclock, pull the plug and you reboot, which what i stated above i believe it's a bios throttle completely because the system cant run on battery like it can on power(well atleast not high end laptops) or is there something more, you see what i'm getting at? i know the fundamentals of overclocking really well, just trying to confirm the math of how these units help, what i stated above seems to be logical unless somebody care to clarify another theory

 

I did not actually mistype anything. I was just under the impression you were talking about PSU's, given that you were talking about increasing wattage. So, I misinterpreted what you wrote (which could be more easily interpreted with some effort in your punctuation. As a for instance, your last post was a total of 3 sentences. It should be more like 12). PSU's are upgradeable on some models.

My mistake. Yes, the BIOS on mobile motherboards more aggressively throttle on battery - given your knowledge, I would've thought that was a defacto understanding.

If you have questions about your specific laptop, I would suggest posting in the forum that caters to those questions (i.e. your manufacturer has its own subforum - go there).

 

i'm not going to start a war over pety nonsense(i was not trying to offend even though i have been) but anyways my theorys are then correct

i'm still new to high end laptop's, high end desktops are my fortay, so it got me thinking why do people get 160 watt adapters to help overclocks and wouldn't they bsod on battery, so just to confirm with you the reason higher watt power adapters help is because the efficiency lose, and video cards on battery mode go into some kind of half power, not affecting clocks? hmm....

 

On desktop systems enthusiasts usually have much more power available than their system can draw. The reason is because when you run at full power the voltage control becomes horrible and is in serious risk of overheating, not to mention the PSU's life becomes shorter. You want to feed your computer consistent, low ripple power, and make your components last longer.

 

lets just lock this, going to inquire what rated wattage my mobo was designed to handle and call it a day, so far nothing new has been achieved.

 

What I just said was the problem is in drawing too much power from the AC adapter -_- The motherboard has DC/DC conversion which is...more robust, to put it in simple terms.

 

Users with 36 posts (not that I have a ton, but I have been registered for quite some time) don't get to decide what gets locked.

If you don't like the answers, maybe put some effort in to your question so that we know what you are asking. You are the one that sounds condescending, I was just explaining my rationale - I still don't really get what you're trying to understand, or, to be more specific, what knowledge you are lacking that you hope to gain. Google's pretty good at stuff, too.

If you're asking about power adapters, and why some aftermarket adapters are rated at 160w vs 120w, it is the same thing as I described before. The only difference is the AC to DC conversion for the 12v rail gets done in the adapter, as opposed to in the laptop's PSU itself. On a desktop system, the PSU does the conversion. The same logic applies - it is for the stability of voltage when overclocking.

Wattage, amperage, and voltage are all related but not the same. Again, google's good for these things. A higher wattage will be more able to maintain a consistent voltage, regardless of the amperage being drained by the components. It will not affect the way the laptop runs on battery, and, as any small amount of research shows - folks running high end laptop's with high-draw GPU's have much more success with a high, stable OC when plugged in. Almost all users in this situation have two power profiles, one for plugged in and gaming, utilizing whatever OC's they want that will be stable on a plugged in adapter, and one for mobility purposes.

 

I think the OP was having an issue because he's under the impression that the notebooks wattage is regulated at whatever level from within the laptop itself.

OP - From what little I know, wattage is regulated within the adapter then the laptop pulls what it needs and distributes it to components. Having a higher wattage adapter allows the laptop to pull power from a larger pool.


Though, I could be completely wrong.

 

The notebook presents a load on the power adaptor and will draw as much as it needs and the adaptor allows.

O/C'ing and adding more powerful gpu's will only increase the requirements from the power adaptor.


Think of a it like this:

A 'standard' configuration will use/require, at most, the maximum amperage possible from the 'standard/shipped' adaptor - as long as we stay at a standard (non-overclocked) setup.

Once we start increasing voltages (thereby amperage) on our cpu/gpu's for overclocking and/or even trade them for bigger/more powerful models, this additional load on the power supply can only be addressed by getting an adaptor with a higher sustained amperage (since the notebook needs to run at a constant voltage... this can't change, too much) to provide the additional power the overvolted/upgraded parts require.

The manufacturer can provide a higher wattage adaptor by default - with no downside at all to performance of the notebook - even with 'stock' settings (it may even make the system more stable at stock settings, depending on the quality of adaptor they supply).

The downside is that not all systems will be overclocked/upgraded which means that each and every user has to put up/lug around a much bigger adaptor, a higher overall cost and the possibility that the manufacturer may even cheap out (with a lower quality unit/parts) on this higher wattage adaptor because it knows it will never be taxed on most configurations/systems.

Note that there is no downside with the bigger adaptor at all (performance-wise): it is like a big battery that can supply infinite amperage @ the voltage the notebook requires. The notebook will only use what it needs and if the adaptor can supply the required amps at ~70% or less than its rated capacity, it will be delivering the cleanest power the notebook will ever see (a good thing).

Hope this helps.