MSI Titan GT80S SLI battery low runtime

MSI dropped the ball by making the battery (1) low capacity - 8x18650 cells are nowhere near enough for that beast, needs at least 10, maybe 12 cell.
Since this machine does not even pretend to be compact. Why not go all the way.

and (2), non-removable, which is especially dumb given the low capacity. I could deal with low capacity if I could quickly swap in spare cells. A la Dell laptops.

I have never in my life got stated battery runtime on any computer and this one is not an exception, I am getting about an hour of runtime. It goes down quickly. Maybe my battery is bad but I don't think so. They do degrade with age.

Also, I wonder if they used the latest greatest 3500 mAh 18650 Panasonic cells,.. probably not.

 

Batteries have a maximum legal limit from what I know...

 

What do you expect? The thing's a beast with 2 power hungry cards and a large cooling system. It takes a lot to power that sucker. Gaming laptops have never been known for long batteries.

Reviews abound show that it's a battery hog. About 1 hour of battery time is consistent with every review shown for the GT80S. Even in low power mode you're only looking at about 2.5 hours. Gaming on battery for most gaming laptops is really a nonstarter. You're just warming up after an hour and then it's time to shut down? I'll pass.

If you need additional battery life, the best solution I've found is having a thin and light for lightweight tasks, and keeping my GT for heavy lifting (gaming, VMs, CAD, etc). When you get can laptops under 3 lbs with 7-8 hours of battery life, carrying those around - even with a bigger laptop - is cake. Now when I'm traveling, I get out my thin and light to do email, web surfing and stuff that doesn't require me getting the beast and it's big power brick out. Much easier to work with and it can easily last a coast-to-coast flight. My GT was useless outside of the airport due size (hard to fit on a plane table) and the lack of power - or even wattage limits on the outlets.

Things may change if laptops can charge thru the USB-C ports and pull power from an external power brick. You'll probably need a few in that case to keep things going.

Sad thing is, you're pretty much getting what you're supposed to get - and it's not much on a beast like that.

Good luck!

 

Unless you are running iGPU (which only the first gen GT80s could before they removed it) then you will have a low runtime due to the powerful nature of the laptop. Make sure you are not running in high performance too, and you can manually limit CPU speeds, and try to keep the GPUs in low power state.

But don't expect more than 2 hours I suppose, and that's on a full charge, 50% brightness and doing nothing heavy.

The GT80 was not designed for battery life. the fact that it lasts an hour alone is telling. But it also was not really advertised for that. I always considered the battery like an emergency UPS. The only battery I want to last is from my work machine, which thankfully it does now. My previous lenovo that had no GPU had a terrible 2-3 hour battery life (because of their need to put a 4 cell battery). My new P51 lasts anywhere between 6 to 10 hours.

 

The Skylake incarnation of GT80 has dropped the performance or boost mode. There is no way to boost the fans either. It's just one mode basically. The original GT80 had that option as far as I understand.

I like the machine. The mechanical keyboard is golden. I could never use a 'normal' laptop again after this thing. MSI has a customer for a long time, unless others adapt the MX cherry keyboards. It's full size and it's really nice.

Since we abandon portability might as well stick a 10-cell battery in it and while at it, make it removable.
a la dell xps.

 

* A 10-cell battery
* A removable battery (Like Dell laptops where it takes a nanosecond to swap the Li-ion battery pack)

 

????