[SOLVED] My KDE Plasma installation uses TONS of power

OdinEidolon · 2017-06-19 14:36:32

I have been using Plasma since about 15 months ago on my XPS15 9550. It works beautifully.

I seems that the last update (5.10) broke something: the system is more unstable, I had several "could not sync environment to dbus" errors, but most importantly... it now uses TONS of power given the same exact configuration. I have stored past outputs from a few months ago from this command:

powerstat -d 0 -f -g -c

And they clearly show that power usage at idle is 4-6W with GPU power sitting at 0.1W on average.
Now, at idle power sits at 10-15W with GPU power 5-8W. Nothing other than the normal updates has changed.

Things I have tried:

- Running powerstat from a TTY while Plasma is still running in my session -> GPU power is normal (~0W) and overall power is normal too
- Removing all plasmoids and switching to a static background -> no difference, power is way too high
- Disable compositing -> GPU power halved but still way too high
- New user -> power seems to be normal (GPU power ~0.2W) but the UI is EXTREMELY choppy/laggy

So for sure Plasma is to blame here, but what component? And how to fix it?

Last edited by OdinEidolon (2017-06-22 08:59:34)

twelveeighty · 2017-06-19 23:12:47

Have you looked at the Compositor settings? One thing to try is to turn it off and see if the power consumption goes down. Not saying that is a long-term solution, but then again I have it off and don't really miss the eye candy too much.

OdinEidolon · 2017-06-20 07:15:50

twelveeighty wrote:

Have you looked at the Compositor settings? One thing to try is to turn it off and see if the power consumption goes down. Not saying that is a long-term solution, but then again I have it off and don't really miss the eye candy too much.

Thanks for popping by but yeah, I already tried that, as I wrote in my original post:

- Disable compositing -> GPU power halved but still way too high

OdinEidolon · 2017-06-22 08:59:19

All fixed. For some reason Intel PSR started giving problems (only on battery, which made debugging more confusing) and needed to be disabled, and completely resetting Plasma stopped the excessive CPU usage.

Arch Linux

#1 2017-06-19 14:36:32

[SOLVED] My KDE Plasma installation uses TONS of power

#2 2017-06-19 23:12:47

Re: [SOLVED] My KDE Plasma installation uses TONS of power

#3 2017-06-20 07:15:50

Re: [SOLVED] My KDE Plasma installation uses TONS of power

#4 2017-06-22 08:59:19

Re: [SOLVED] My KDE Plasma installation uses TONS of power

Board footer