Clevo P870DM-G Battery life @ 96.3% wear already

Doesn't this laptop have some kind of feature to prevent overcharging when it's full? I juts got it a couple of weeks ago and I noticed last week the battery wear was @ 97%, today I checked using BatteryInfoView and it's already down to 96.3%. I never use the battery even, the phone is connected to the Dual 330W power adapters all the time.

 

sometimes brand new batteries show some battery wear, but only because they havent yet been properly calibrated to the OS ure using. try the following:

discharge your battery until your machine switches off on its own, then recharge without interruption to 100%. if nothing´s changed, repeat this one more time to make sure that u got the calibration right. make sure to perform both discharge and charge cycles without interruption!

otherwise, 97% wear basically means ur battery is dead *lol* sure were talking about battery wear and not battery charge here? just making sure...

 

Yes, wear is the percentage of the battery that is no longer usable, so 96.3% is dead where as battery health at 96.3% would mean it is new.

 

this is what I mean:

 

well, looking at your current capacity value of 85927 mWh, then designed capacity of 89208 mWh and the battery wear level, ill have to make the following conclusion:

that shown battery wear level is not the actual battery wear, but basically its reciprocal value, so the battery health!

check for yourself: 85927 / 89208 mWh = 96.32%

that means u can currently reach 96% of the originally designed maximum capacity of your battery, so theres nothing to worry about u can try and take care of the missing 3.7% by the discharge / recharge cycle method i already mentioned, usually works with new batteries good luck!

 

My last notebook had 7% wear, that went down to 3% wear over time. Lol.

 

Basically battery chemistry is hard to estimate, it's not a discrete value you can easily measure.

 

Different system here but I just checked mine out of curiosity using the same program and it shows wear level at 100.9%, lol. Doesn't seem to be too accurate. There is also an option in the bios to prevent the laptop from charging until it hits a certain threshold. I have mine set at 60%. I'm thinking if the 770dm has it then the 870 should have it as well.

 

Please post a picture of that BIOS setting I didn't see it

 

It should be called FlexiCharger, or something along those lines.
If your battery is within the 2 values you set , it will not charge, therefor it will not "use up" a charge cycle, leading to battery wear. Every-time it hits 100%, even if from 99%, it will count as a charge cycle.

 

Where is it located? I don't see it

 

well its not THAT bad though, one charge cycle is going from 0-100% so going from 99 to 100% can be rather considered a houndredth of a charging cycle

 

Ohh I found it, it was in the advanced chipset options, it was disabled by default so now I set it to charge to a max of 90% only

 

At the moment with those settings it will charge up to 90% and only engage charging once the level drops below 80%.

 

Looking at your other visible BIOS settings, I thought "GPU Performance Scaling" is supposed to be Disabled for best GPU performance, per Mr Fox's discoveries.

 

He said it cripples overclocking potential but I run GPUs at stock speeds

 

Cool, I wonder if it is like Nvidia's setting, Adaptive vs High Performance? Or like the Power Plan, Balanced vs High Performance.

If so you might notice the difference in normal use.

 

That option enables or disables the build in control center overclock program AFAIK.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Yes

Here is Prema's answer with an image, post #3:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/gpu-performance-scaling.780051/#post-10068330

 

Are you guys sure this is really beneficial? I realize there's varying aspects to it, but it seems like in general you might be delaying the time until your battery can only hold 60% charge, but through all of that time you will be keeping your battery at 60% charge anyway just to increase the lifespan. Seems like a big contradiction. The only other option is to reboot and change that bios option and then wait for it to charge anytime you think you want a whole charge for on the go use, and I don't know about you but I don't always have time to wait for my laptop to charge like that. I can't imagine this is worth the extra year of lifespan, I would probably find it more feasible to just buy another battery down the line, well worth the convenience of being able to unplug and actually have a full charge, but I guess it depends entirely on how you plan to use the laptop.

My argument is basically: keeping it at 60% capacity is going to increase the lifespan, and that's fine if you're only going to need 60% every time you unplug it, but if that's the case, then why are you worried about the battery degrading in that time anyway, since it will probably degrade to 60%? You're just giving yourself the problem now voluntarily instead of later involuntarily aren't you?

Either way, I'd like to point out that keeping the battery in the laptop, even at half charge, it's life is going to degrade from the laptop heat as an equally impacting factor. I don't know if clevos require the battery to be in the laptop while it's plugged in, but if not, you should just keep it outside the laptop and buy an external APC battery backup for any power failures

 

Sure, but it'd degrade below 60%, so in the end it'd be a 1-min battery thingy, even though you'd have never used it as intended. Keeping it at 70% would keep them 'fresh', which is the nominal voltage of the 3.7V 18650 (or pouch) cells inside the plastic casing. The 100% charge is really a top-up charge to ~4.2V (in case of 3x series; a ~12.6V report in HWiNFO or the like), which isn't kind to the battery, but makes the laptop's charge capacity look better (on paper).

So you're right; this strategy needs a reboot/top-charge action before taking the laptop to the road. Though you're already at 70%, so only the remaining 30% is required to eke out the last mAs. I'd do exactly that, though, since soldering new cells isn't much fun, either. Not to mention buying new packs (at 200% surcharge) and the risk of receiving ' new-plastic' plus ' old-cells' (made that mistake once before; they 'recycle' used cells with fresh wrappers). So I'd set both 'Start Charge' and 'Stop Charge' to 70% (since power-cycling isn't good, either) and change 'Stop Charge' to 100% on the first boot of the road-trip day (or the day/week before, whenever you remember to do so). What matters is simply to minimise top-up charge, whenever possible or convenient; there's no proper reason to set 100% for anchored-to-desk usage scenarios.

Spoiler: Panasonic NCR18650B 3400mAh charge (mileage and percentage may vary)

At 70% it'll do fine, but you're right; storing at 70% would be even better (and Clevos don't need a battery, per se). Barring a power-out, that is (and convenience). Heat isn't good, surely, but a no-cycle scenario won't heat up the battery (there's no current, after all), so you may as well leave it in place. Check that this is so by touching the casing while it's plugged in; it should be pretty much ambient temperature. Unless it's charging atm, of course, or just completed a charge cycle.

 

Why would you buy an external battery backup when it has one built in? An external APC is likely to cost twice that of what the internal battery costs.

Everyone is so paranoid about their batteries and there's no conclusive evidence to show battery life is much worse if you leave it plugged in and charged at 100%, 90% or 80% or 60%. Not only that, it's usually $60-$100 for an extra battery, less than any APC that is needed for a laptop of this caliber anyhow.

 

haha so true wingnut! just slap it in and forget about it

 

@t456 Battery degradation occurs fairly linearly, and you will typically see 80% original capacity after 300 cycles. So it's going to take many years to drop to 70%, and in that time you'll just be keeping it at 70% which is why I think it's a contradiction. If you're thinking "no, I use my battery much more often than that, so it will drop a lot faster", then that's even more often you are inconveniencing yourself by having to reboot change bios and top charge. I guess it's entirely your own preference if that's worth it to you, but I would definitely just prefer to get the most time out of a battery that already is going to last only ~2 hours new, and just buy another for $60 down the line.

Also, my heat point wasn't referring to heat incurred on the battery as a result of charging, but rather heating of the battery by the laptop itself while it's in the laptop.

@HTWingNut the reason for an external APC battery rather than using the laptop battery is to maintain optimum laptop battery life by keeping it outside the laptop and away from the heat, but still maintain protection from power failures. You could then just plug the laptop battery in when you need to go mobile. Some people would pay for that premium (obviously not me). But I agree entirely with your second point, just use the battery to its full potential (no pun intended) and then buy another down the line!

 

Most batteries now are away from the heat and a little latent heat given off by internal components, does nothing to it compared to leaving it in a hot car for hours on end. The internal air temp even at load of something like the P870DM is less than 40C. 95% of the hot air is moved out through the heatpipe. The other downside of an APC battery backup is the risk of accidental power plug removal. It's hard to do with a desktop (although I've done that before) but easier with a laptop plug that is smaller and machine is more mobile.

From a financial perspective, the laptop battery is part of the cost of the laptop, if you bought an APC with the laptop you'd be paying for something you already have, when you *might* need a replacement battery later. And two to three years down the line a battery even kept at 40-50% charge and in a cool environment could lose 20% of its effective charge anyhow.

In any case, do what you want, but it seems people worry about this a lot for no real good reason. I don't think people think twice about their car battery and its best conditioning, or their phones either, yet in a laptop people get all worried.

I've stated this numerous times, but the biggest contributors to a battery's loss of charge capacity are:
(1) heat
(2) charge cycles - and that's what it's sole purpose is for
(3) time

 

Clevo/sager have had battery placement to keep it away from hot parts down for quite some time now.

 

I agree that battery placement is as good as It can be within the laptop. However, in recent models, flir shows surface temp in battery section to be about 85F during active gpu/cpu use while not charging the battery, and since that's surface temp, it's already slightly dispersed compared to battery temp. I'd expect in the newer models with desktop CPU, M.2 SSD's that get too hot for their own good during long writes, and nice new powerful GPU's, we'll see at least that as well if not more. But I'd much prefer to be wrong

 

I don't know. Looking at this image it looks like it's pretty isolated to me:



M.2 SSD's are under the keyboard. All heat from CPU and GPU is being forced out the back. I just think it's a non-issue.

 

I keep that setting 95 to 100 just for the cases where I move the laptop from one desk to another or whatever. That 1 percent that always drops when unplugging the mains.

I need the battery changed as I use it daily on battery but when using it so I usually deplete it to 20-30 percent. Then full recharge if possible.

But I don't want to waste a charge cycles by unplugging the laptop for couple of minutes.

I agree that keeping charged to only 60 percent will degrade it faster than just using it.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I think people get a little over protective with the battery, especially when unlike an apple it's not that hard to get to and replace down the line.

 

It's just one of those annoyances. I think a lot of people have had a bad battery before, and just want to avoid it.

 

Is there any reason not to run the laptop without the battery in when I'm at home?

Thanks

 

nope, not really...

 

The only reason you would still want the battery in the laptop when you're at home and plugged in is because a power failure (or just knocking the plug out) would cause your computer to instantly turn off, which, depending on what you're doing at the time, could be really bad.

 

Especially if you have an SSD set to write cache enabled which stores some in flight data in ram (which gets lost in a power failure).

 

If you have ever used that machine on battery while high performance was on, it's possible you damaged it. Keep in mind the power of the machine and the fact it takes but a few seconds to damage the cells. You can actually destroy the battery completely if the system doesn't detect or can not, for some reason, shift power states.

 

I've never heard of that happening. The system automatically adjusts its state to limit max current draw while on battery, and it's pretty much instantaneous.

Charge cycles don't work that way. One charge cycle = 100% drain and charge (more or less). That means whether you do 100 charges from 99% to 100% or five charges from 80% to 100% or single charge from 0% to 100%. It's all considered one charge cycle.

So even if you drop 1% a day and recharge, you would lose just 3-4 charge cycles a year, not 365.

There's really no reason to remove it except when you go to upgrade/repair the laptop.

 

If I wasn't on mobile I would remove the quotes but machines do not have any way of getting around instant power draw. Don't believe me? Ask someone smarter than me like @t456 or @Mr. Fox.

Also know if you ever mod your vbios, you run the risk of destroying the battery while the computer is frozen. It's an nVidia bug. Frozen P states that overload the battery.

 

At least on numerous laptops I've run in high performance mode on battery especially once Nvidia introduced their "BatteryBoost" test it out both with an without it with no issues on systems with 880m and 980m. I'd be curious to learn more becuase I've never experienced it or read about it.

When a system goes on battery, it limits the CPU and GPU performance, they simply aren't allowed to exceed certain clock speeds. Sure if you use a modded BIOS and/or vBIOS then the risk may be there, but hopefully if you're using a modded vBIOS you're a bit educated in what you're doing and knowingly bypassing stock safety parameters.

 

The battery should be rated for equal watts to the adapter, so there's no problem plugging/unplugging even while stressing the system. Problem may be a scenario where you oc beyond the max. rated specs. of the adapter. The adapter may have some leeway (or you'd upgrade it), but the battery doesn't have that option. If that were to happen then it should trigger the battery pack's current protection and it'd hard shutdown (no gentle bsod). If the protection were absent/defective then it'd go 'woosh'.

Spoiler: shorting unprotected cells (pcb at 0:18 is a fake/dud)

 

The battery is not going to be able to deliver the same as the brick, the notebook when operating properly should power off if the power demand cannot be met by the battery, mostly it will just throttle everything.

 

Custom vbioses can lock the P State and the system will freeze then power itself off but it can cause instant battery wear. It is yet another nVidia bug... My 880Ms did it on stock vbios with high performance set instead of adaptive - it would freeze for about 5 seconds and then shut off and refuse to turn back on until I plugged the power back in. It would turn on, act like it was going to boot, then shut off. I haven't messed with my 980Ms but I just tested it and the driver slowed down as soon as I unplugged it and popped back as soon as I plugged it back in. That's how it's /supposed/ to work but doesn't always. Clocks were actually higher than I expected too... They went from 1038 to one card at 800 and the other at 850.

 

Regarding the use of flexicharger -- if you have your laptop turned off and still plugged in, isn't the battery charging without regard for your flexicharger settings? In that case, anytime you shut down, any charge cycle you had saved by having flexicharger enabled is now going to be used anyway. Someone correct me here, because this is just speculation based on my observation that the charging indicator on my laptop is changing from green (charged) to orange (charging) when I shut down my laptop.

 

good point, I always disconnect the power from the charger just to be on the safe side. I don't know how is the BIOS supposed to tell the battery not to charge if the whole system is off so I play it safe and disconnect the power

 

Because the battery has a "smart chip" to help regulate charging. The BIOS basically programs the smart chip with whatever setting you put in the BIOS.

 

do you mean to say that it is safe to leave the power plugged in when I turn off the lappy and go to bed?

 

Yes, they would not be able to sell it in any other condition. A modder would have systems dying all over the place too.

 

Removed

 

ive had my dark knight for around 10 months now. ive used it every single day at work and during my freetime in the evening and on the weekends. i always have the battery plugged in and also leave the laptop connected to the psu when its switched off.

wanna know my battery wear thus far? 0.0%

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Regarding the above comments from @Meaker and @HTWingNut -- I can comfirm what they said was right. I was mistaken -- the light that changes to orange in the lower right corner of the laptop when I turn off the laptop is the one on the right side. The left side light is the battery, and it stays green. Also, the battery level when I boot up is the same (96%) after turning it off and leaving it plugged in. In short, I was looking at the wrong light... womp.

You're telling me it says 0.0% after 10 months if you look in HWInfo64? I've had mine for 5 days, haven't used any charge cycles aside from the initial charging out of box, and mine says 3.6% under Wear Level