[Solved] High battery drain (80+ W on PowerTOP) on Lenovo Legion Pro 7

gerlesh · 2024-10-28 20:55:25

I installed arch linux for the first time on this laptop about a month ago (still a noob) and was having battery life issues from the get go. On my previous laptop, an MSI, I was using Pop!_OS and got decent battery life, usually at least 3h. Initially installed with GNOME and got roughly 1-2 hours with just firefox open with both TLP and power-profiles-daemon, with PowerTOP indicating a discharge rate of 70-80W.

Recently I reinstalled with the knowledge that I gained from the first time to try and do some things better, and installed Hyprland with the pre-configured hyprdots installation, and rechecked power settings and whatnot. Power usage is still completely outside the realm of what I can find online, having tried TLP and Tuned this time. It's staying solidly above 80W and only lasts up to 1:10 with just firefox open. I'm still not super sure how to interpret PowerTOP output so if there's anything more to do with that I would appreciate some guidance.

Nvidia GPU stays generally at 2-6W when not putting heavy load on it according to nvidia-smi (I can't seem to get it to go into S3 or turn off), so I don't think its that. I'm also having trouble getting hibernation and suspend to work, but I doubt that's related either.

Last edited by gerlesh (2024-10-29 21:36:43)

ewaller · 2024-10-28 23:04:53

What does Powertop say about what is using all that power? 80W in a laptop would keep your lap warm and toasty.

As I write this, my Vivobook is drawing 10W.
My WiFi is the heavy hitter at 4 to 5W.
Backlight is 3W,
Bluetooth is 226 mW.
Everything else is in the noise.

gerlesh · 2024-10-28 23:32:09

ewaller wrote:

What does Powertop say about what is using all that power? 80W in a laptop would keep your lap warm and toasty.

I'm not seeing the Power Est. column in PowerTOP currently. I think it I have to let it run for the 1.5h or whatever that it takes to get its 270 measurements, which hopefully doesn't have to be consecutive since my battery doesn't last long enough but I'll update again with that info if it shows up.

seth · 2024-10-29 08:05:56

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Le … 444.0.html

As is the case with high-end gaming laptops, the Legion Pro 7 has a high power requirement despite graphics switching even in idle mode. With 18 to 32 W (including short load peaks) consumption in idle, the Legion Pro 7 is nearly 20% above the class average.
We record a consumption of 130 W from the wall under average load (3DMark06) and 320 W under maximum stress

It's not a notebook but a mobile desktop.

installed Hyprland

What happens when you run openbox or just the multi-user.target (2nd link below)

gerlesh · 2024-10-29 13:30:11

ewaller wrote:

What does Powertop say about what is using all that power? 80W in a laptop would keep your lap warm and toasty.

Alright stuff is loading now, it looks like the highest power estimates are the Network interface: enp4s0 (I think this is the VPN interface but I don't have VPN enabled currently) at 48.8W and the Display backlight (minimum brightness) at 12.9W. I found a source that suggests PowerTOP is overestimating it for some reason but not sure why that would be the case.

seth wrote:

With 18 to 32 W (including short load peaks) consumption in idle

Yeah I mean if it was just that I'd be fine but we're in the double to triple range. It seems to have dropped to the 65-70S range after applying PowerTOP tunable settings and switching tuned to ppd, but it still seems unreasonably high.

seth wrote:

What happens when you run openbox or just the multi-user.target (2nd link below)

According to PowerTOP the only significant contributors to power draw are the Network interface and the display backlight, so I doubt this would really do much. If you still think it might help I can try it, just let me know.

seth · 2024-10-29 13:37:27

enp4s0 at 48.8W

Is beyond implausible, likely misreading.

Display backlight (minimum brightness) at 12.9W

13W LEDs are super-bright, you could barely look at that.

According to PowerTOP the only significant contributors to power draw are the Network interface and the display backlight

I don't believe those numbers at all.
Either the battery is dying or the draw is misattributed.

Did you actually discharge the battery or is "only lasts up to 1:10" just the system prediction?

tail /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/*

gerlesh · 2024-10-29 19:52:36

seth wrote:

Is beyond implausible, likely misreading.

Yeah that's what I thought, not sure how or why though. It did seem like booting without GUI cut the power draw down to like 30-35W which is kind of tough since I generally want to keep a GUI up ?

seth wrote:

Did you actually discharge the battery or is "only lasts up to 1:10" just the system prediction?

That's a good point. I discharged it down to ~10% and the prediction stayed more or less consistent, but I didn't let it fully discharge.

seth · 2024-10-29 20:47:36

It did seem like booting without GUI cut the power draw down to like 30-35W

Which is below the "suggested" power draw of the rj45 NIC…
Have you tried openbox to contrast Hyprland?

I discharged it down to ~10%

How fast? In ~1h?

gerlesh · 2024-10-29 21:35:56

seth wrote:

Have you tried openbox to contrast Hyprland?

No, but I did turn on the hyprdots power saving mode which suddenly dropped the power usage to 30-40W again... I stumbled on the setting purely by chance as I didn't realize that was a thing, but I guess that fixes the biggest issue I was having.
Thanks a lot for your help regardless, I'll mark the thread as solved.

Arch Linux

#1 2024-10-28 20:55:25

[Solved] High battery drain (80+ W on PowerTOP) on Lenovo Legion Pro 7

#2 2024-10-28 23:04:53

Re: [Solved] High battery drain (80+ W on PowerTOP) on Lenovo Legion Pro 7

#3 2024-10-28 23:32:09

Re: [Solved] High battery drain (80+ W on PowerTOP) on Lenovo Legion Pro 7

#4 2024-10-29 08:05:56

Re: [Solved] High battery drain (80+ W on PowerTOP) on Lenovo Legion Pro 7

#5 2024-10-29 13:30:11

Re: [Solved] High battery drain (80+ W on PowerTOP) on Lenovo Legion Pro 7

#6 2024-10-29 13:37:27

Re: [Solved] High battery drain (80+ W on PowerTOP) on Lenovo Legion Pro 7

#7 2024-10-29 19:52:36

Re: [Solved] High battery drain (80+ W on PowerTOP) on Lenovo Legion Pro 7

#8 2024-10-29 20:47:36

Re: [Solved] High battery drain (80+ W on PowerTOP) on Lenovo Legion Pro 7

#9 2024-10-29 21:35:56

Re: [Solved] High battery drain (80+ W on PowerTOP) on Lenovo Legion Pro 7

Board footer