Battery drain while plugged in playing The Witcher 3

Hello everyone,

I've recently bought The Witcher 3 and been having some fun with it the very first few hours of game, once I got into the first DLC map I started noticing something really strange and which is making me mad: my RB 14 just starts going from AC to Battery mode all the time, altho it's plugged in (through the original AC).

This is ridicolously crazy, since my FPS go form around 55 to 30 and then back to 55 every fraction of a second (even disabling the Nvidia Battery boost feature should make this happen since, obviously, the battery hasn't got enough power output.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't happen on other titlese since I sometimes play diff games and nothing alike shows up.

I've read this is a common problem with MSI notebook ( http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20744324270) due to some Hybrid powering system, but I've never heard of it about Razer devices.

Does anyone have any clue? Can anyone tell me how to solve this, if it even is solveable?

Thank you!

 

u mentioned that the indicator looks like the ac is deattached, msi hybrid use psu + battery at the same time. Sounds like power supply issue, try wiggling the power cable while playing (to the notebook, not mains)

 

Also newer Alienware laptops use hybrid powering system now. A more and more wide spread cancer. Check maximum power draw from the wall with a Kill-a-watt when this happens. Boycott all systems with this nasty feature!! Only lower sales can stop this crap.

 

thats terrible, yeah a wall e-meter can indicate if there is a contact issue too.

 

Hey, I tried that a few days ago and eureka, it looked like a mobo issue indeed.
I have no clue how it happened, my Gf is jealous of the laptop, the care I take of it; must have been a heat damage for sure.

Razer Europe accepted the RMA, I even had pressure marks caused by heat, so they'll probably just send me a whole new unit.

Thanks for your tips tho

 

I figured I would add my two cents in as well. I noticed after long gaming sessions on my razer when I would close my game out and I would be at around 95% battery. It would say charging but it would seem that it can't charge fast enough to keep up with the power draw while gaming. I posted in another thread about power limit throttling issues I've been having while playing certain games. I don't know if there is a correlation between the battery drain and the power throttling that I'm seeing.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

That might be the reason, although 5% looks quite small in so much time. Looks like a small drain caused by an expense higher than 150W by a few mW.

Iirc I saw a video of a a disassembly and the actual AC plug soldered on the mobo is a plastic one, not completely soldered but somehow mechanically attached for a certain part of itself; what I'm afraid of is that heat might dame the plastic and make it detach from time to time, which would explain my longterm issue and ur small term one.

 

Update on the issue, just in case someone ends up here looking for a fix:

Before sending it in I had found a temporary fix by forcing the plug in under heavy load (high temperatures) for a few seconds; that forced the contacts to reattach and eventually it would start working well again, for one day, before showing the issue again.

I RMAed it and they have installed a whole brand new motherboard.

Side note, RMA experiencs: they said they didn't see the pressure marks on the display (cause they didn't...) which I also wanted them to fix and they now have to wait once again for the supply to arrive, which they did for the MB too, so the process has lasted 17 days already (+ 5 days for the emailing process) and it's expected to take 10+ days more...
More than a month is the expected process time, which looks unacceptable to me, on such an expensive device.