I think in the BIOS it has a setting for the number of active P cores and a separate one for the E cores. I tried 2 P cores and 4 E cores but my power usage didn’t decrease unfortunately which is a little annoying
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Has anyone tested the power consumption of the DisplayPort expansion card?
Thing is, the HDMI expansion card is almost certainly an active adapter which, by its nature, means that it needs to draw power. DisplayPort however can be directly transmitted over USB-C without any conversion (hence the existence of bi-directional USB-C / DisplayPort cables), so it’s extremely possible that, like the type-C expansion cards, the DisplayPort expansion card could just be a “dumb passthrough” as well.
Not all power leakage is through power consumption by the card. The USB-A is dumb, but it also causes a noticeable increase in power usage by the laptop (even in idle). Apparently this is due to some connection that a USB-C-to-USB-A adaptor makes between certain pins of the USB-C that triggers the USB-C interface to do some discovery about possible PD requirements, and this then uses a noticeable amount of power. Since laptops with native USB-A ports don’t tend to have this problem with those, I guess it means that USB-A by itself can be wired in a way that doesn’t cause this draw.
I guess the USB-A card should really be a little less dumb and detect somehow if there is anything plugged in (through a mechanical switch maybe?) and then switch the connection on the USB-C side depending on that.
The expansion cards should really be marketed as well-fitting dongles.
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