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Does anyone know if I can use any USB C cable (ie cell phone) until my new one arrives?
A USB-C to C cable which wasn’t sold / advertised as a high wattage cable would likely be non-“e-Marked”. I believe the best you can get out of those is 60W. If it damaged in any way, don’t use it. If the cable gets unusually warm / hot while charging the laptop then it’s junk with thin wires inside & it’s best not to use it.
If it’s a USB-A to C cable it shouldn’t work at all.
Thank you
That is wrong.
60W is already a power delivery standard rated cable. An older phone cable which isn’t PD rated may not even get 15W, which will not charge a laptop. A USBC laptop charger will be using the PD standard and without the proper implementation in the cable, the charger will not put anything near the necessary output to charge a laptop.
https://www.monoprice.com/p/resources/usb-c-types-and-standards-explained-the-complete-guide
To use your charger, you need to find an actual PD rated cable. Those should be sold specifically with the callout of PD up to certain ratings (commonly 100W), so if you’re using a FM16 with a 180W or 240W charger, you’ll need a more recent cable also rated for up to 240W, otherwise you will be restricted to a lower charge rate.
Thank you!
I only skimmed the page, since it’s long, and tried find “15W”. But I did not find any confirmation of what you say on the page you linked.
For USB-C to C cables this is true for higher wattages, but not below a certain point, 60W or less if I recall.
For normal / standard USB-C to C cables, there is no “PD rating” or anything. Any normal cable should handle 3A of current. And that gets you 60W using max standard voltage, 20v × 3A = 60W. For higher wattage, either through higher current, up to 5A, or higher voltage, up to 48v, you need an “e-Marked” cable. They usually start at 100W or 5A (sometimes advertised as either). 180W and 240W seem to be other common e-Marked levels.
The e-Marking is just a tiny cheap chip in the cable that says over the CC line “I swear I can handle 100W. Trust me bro!”. Or whatever level it is. You do unfortunately still rely on the cable maker to use adequate conductors which can handle it without overheating. They can make a cable out of anything, and it will be approved by your devices as long as an e-Marker chip is in it. There’s no active testing of conductor resistance, afaik. There should be though.
wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware#Allowable_current_draw
Admittedly, that wikipedia page is not the clearest source. It’s in the table notes talking about “electronically marked” for 5A or >20v power levels.
An un-chipped USB-C cable if following the USB standard should be capable of 60W, but the problem is that a FM or any other PD laptop probably won’t pull 60W from the charger on it.
Without the e-marking, the end device (the FM in this case) may not properly negotiate the charge. This won’t feed the FM properly especially if using the 180W or 240W charger, I’ve tried. You get a plugged in notice on the battery icon, but the laptop is actively discharging. You may get a trickle charge if the machine is off, but you won’t be able to use the laptop until you get a proper cable, as the OP was asking.
15W is just a common power draw from old smartphone chargers, which is likely what those old cables were designed to I’d hedge, hence I would recommend against using an old smartphone cable to try and charge a laptop that could pull 60W over it…
All USB-C to USB-C cables can do 60W. Without e-marker, high-power devices will default to 60W, low-powered ones will stay the same
This is intended, not a failure to negotiate or any kind of error. An E-marker chip is always required for anything over 60W. When no chip responds, the device just will not request anything above 60W from the charger. It’s an active choice made by the device, as a safety function, to prevent overloading wires or connector contacts.
That’s my point?
The FM and it’s 180W or 240W charger will not charge with a non PD rated cable. I tested multiple cables earlier to confirm this again.
I’ve run into similar issues with Lenovos, LGs, ASUS machines. Depending on how they’re programmed to negotiate, you often end up with no charging or trickle charging if you use a non-chipped PD cable.
So mine is a Ai9 and came with the 240W charger and cable. Its just 6 months old, so fairly current.
Using Linux/Bash I had a look at its charge rate. It is 60W with their OEM cable, which does not surprise me. I have purchased a quality Thunderbolt 5 240W USB C cable which are NOT cheap.
The maximum lengths I could find for that wattage rating was 2 metre and no 90 degree elbow. It is at least twice the thickness of the OEM cable.
Charging voltage was just over 18Vdc and current at around 3.2A
You can’t get around ohms law.
You are confusing battery charging power to computer input power.
The battery is charging at 57.6W which is slightly below 0.7C. The 55Wh, 61Wh and 85Wh battery’s sustained charge rate is 0.7C. The actual wattage is slightly lower because the charge controller uses proportional instead of PID controller so steady state error isn’t eliminated.
Try playing a game or benchmarking GPU and CPU at the same time, the actual power draw should be around 190-210W after energy loss
I see what you mean and agree. At the time I wasn’t loading the Laptop with heavy usage and use the internal GPU only anyway. Mine uses an average of 14.5W. So it must be ramping up the voltage at the charger/P.Supply as the OEM cable wouldn’t be able to take more then 5A without getting really warm.