W530 battery life

I was wondering if anyone knew how much battery a W530 with i7 3720 and k2000 will get with a six/nine cell battery?

 

Supposed to get anywhere from 7.7 hours on the 6-cell, 12 hours on the 9. I'd say probably 5 wifi browsing on a 6--cell, maybe 8 or 9 on a 9-cell. I don't have my machine yet, so I can't tell you definitively.

 

As an owner, I can confirm that's what I'm getting (approximately). I get around 9 hours off WiFi and 6-7 on Wifi.

 

With the 9 cell?

 

FWIW, I imaged my new W530's drive to an external drive while on battery power and it died after about 3hrs w/ the 6 cell. For some reason, when you boot it w/ a flash drive, it'll power the screen nearly at full power.
And the front left bottom of the W530 is *hot* while plugged in and running Win7. I thought this would be a less of a lap burner than my old T61p :-O

 

How bad is it? Got any temps for us? Could it be due to it being on your lap, covering an exhaust perhaps? Does anyone else have this problem? Are there any other heat related issues that you, or anybody else have found? Will I ever stop asking questions?

 

Yes, with a 9-cell.

@Kenyee
Wow, really? I ran Memtest for over 4 hours yesterday and the laptop was hardly warm. Even the air blowing out of the vents was moderately cool.

 

Memtest barely does anything.
This was during initial Windows7 setup...it beats up the hard drive, graphics, etc.
And it's before you fiddle w/ the settings...the settings default to best video performance instead of "balanced". It was very hot...not burning, but pretty bad when on best performance.
It's ok after I switched it to balanced...

 

If I remember correctly, the w510 and w520 both had known issues with the heatsinks not being seated properly on the CPU and GPU at the factory. The issue was that the heatsink did not sit flat on the CPU and GPU, but instead had a slight tilt, resulting on only half of the GPU and CPU receiving proper heat transfer to the heatsink. The fix-action was to take the laptop apart and remove the heatsink and bend it at the heatpipes slightly so that it sat flat, instead of with a slight tilt, on both the CPU and GPU. Adding high performance thermal paste in the process wouldn't hurt either.

It wouldn't surprise me if this issue continued in the W530. If I notice any heat issues with the W530 I ordered, I plan on tampering with the heatsink.

 

So should i be worried with my W530 when I get it? I won't be odering it for a few weeks, but still.

 

If the HSF is not seated properly, the laptop physically shouldn't feel hot since it's not transferring much heat.

 

The W530 is too new to have known issues (outside of Lenovo, that is). Time will tell. I ordered a W530 knowing that there could be heatsink issues. I'm willing to tamper with it though. It will be my first Lenovo computer(when it finally arrives), but I have heard that their tech support is better than most of it's competitors. Also, the overall opinion of the older W-series models was excellent, even though there were some reports of heatsink issues.

The safe route would be to wait a few weeks for more people in the forums to get one and report their experiences, and wait for a comprehensive review from a major tech website.

 

I read about this a year ago, but for some reason I can't find the thread now. I think you're right. Based on a quick google search, the issue is with CPU and GPU throttling.

 

Regarding heat, I ran Prime 95 & Furmark on my W530. The Nvidia Quadro K2000M got up to 83C and the CPU got all the way up to 99C, although still within T junction limit. On the outside of the notebook, the keyboard got mildly warm and the touchpad was room temperature. The only 2 spots that got hot were the bottom in the middle of the back edge and the top above the top part of the left speaker (which is also above the exhaust fan). In Furmark, the GPU core throttled down to 610 Mhz from 745 Mhz (if I'm remembering correctly), but my i7-3720QM (rated at 2.6 Ghz with Turbo up to 3.6 Ghz) never went below 3 Ghz during the 20 minutes or so I tested it.

 

How did you measure the temp of the GPU and CPU?
Weird that the hot spot on the bottom of mine is towards the front edge instead of the back edge...it's hot enough that putting it your lap would be pretty uncomfortable...similar to the T61p which was hotter over most of the bottom.

 

As an owner of the W520, I would definitely not recommend using a W series laptop on your lap due to ergonomic issues. Past that, I would not recommend using one on your lap on full load unless you want to kill your future kids and your laptop at the same time. It doesn't get hotter than my HP Mini 110 at full load on the bottom, but it is as hot as shower water, roughly speaking. If hot spot is close to the front, then it is likely the CPU and GPU since they are located towards the front of the laptop, and that's the actual heat source.

 

When going mobile, if disable dicrete graphics, is there any reason the W530 would have worse battery life than a T530 (with same i7)? I realize it has 4 memory slots, but I can't imagine that would make a big difference if two slots are empty. Is the quad i7 a lot worse for battery life than the dual core?

By the way, for those who are owners or have ordered, how much did you obsess about not getting the Thunderbolt port on the W530? Maybe it's bugging me more than it should.

 

I think you are obsessing too much over Thunderbolt. I personally see no point in having something proprietary that's only twice the speed of USB 3.0. If it was much faster, though, like 100 Gbps, then I'd understand why someone would want it.

In Sandy Bridge, the quad core isn't that much worse than the dual core (30 mins ~ 1hr worse battery life at most usually). I can't imagine Ivy Bridge becoming worse in this aspect.

 

Thank you !! Regarding Thunderbolt, is it just about speed, or are there other functions it can support that USB 3.0 can't? Maybe the reason the T430s got it was because it gets fewer ports overall. My guess is that T430, T530, W530 will probably have it too by year end? Had been planning on T430s, but too worried about the screen. Have a T60 WS with really great screen, don't want to take a step backwards.

 

That's what I guessed as well. Was surprised someone mentioned the hot spot was towards the rear which would have been less painful
I put it on top of a 1" ring binder too...learned to do that w/ the T61p which is uncomfortably hot pretty quickly

Switching to balanced mode for graphics seems to mostly use the ivy bridge graphics. What's weird is if you boot off a USB drive, it seems to be using discrete graphics or doesn't slow down the CPU because it does get really hot.

p.s., I don't care too much about Thunderbolt unless you have a wad of cash on hand...most accessories are really expensive. Only really nice thing about it for now is you can daisy chain a few monitors...