Arch Linux

napion

Member

Registered: 2015-04-11

Posts: 6

Laptop is warm and drains battery when suspended.

I've recently purchased a Sager NP8651. Went through the standard installation procedure. No hiccups there. However, when I suspend the laptop, the back of the laptop stays a bit warm in a particular region. To my understanding, the GPU is located there. The laptop has an Nvidia 970M graphics card along with integrated intel graphics. I haven't bothered to install either the open source or the proprietery nvidia driver. The intel integrated graphics seems to handle the 4k screen just fine. On Windows 8.1, this problem does not exist.

I don't have any experience debugging these issues. Where should I start? What all information do you require?

Thanks !

TH3L0N3W0LF

Member

Registered: 2012-11-22

Posts: 3

Re: Laptop is warm and drains battery when suspended.

You probably have a NVIDIA Optimus setup.
In most cases, you can install bbswitch to power off the nvidia card while it's not being used.

See this for an explanation and this for a fix.

napion

Member

Registered: 2015-04-11

Posts: 6

Re: Laptop is warm and drains battery when suspended.

Yes, the laptop has an Nvidia Optimus setup. I've installed bbswitch and tested out the state of the card. It is listed as 'OFF'. The issue still persists. Morever, the laptop has an LED light to indicate if the discrete graphic card is in use. It stays off unless I manually turn it on using bbswitch. So, I'm not sure what exactly is causing the heating. Physically though, the GPU is located where the heat is localized after the suspend.

bernardogo

Member

Registered: 2015-10-26

Posts: 22

Re: Laptop is warm and drains battery when suspended.

Have you fixed it? I have the same issue