I’ve noticed some very concerning battery behaviors with my new laptop, and wanted to get
CPU usage at idle (on battery) is 5.84%, as monitored by powercfg command line utility. This seems high, considering all applications except the command line where the command is executed were closed, and the computer was in “Energy Save” mode.
“hibernate” mode doesn’t work, and in “sleep” mode, it rapidly discharges the battery. I’ve taken the computer off of the charger at 100% charge, put it in sleep mode, and 8 hours later, the battery was depleted to 0% and could not be powered on without reconnecting the charger.
Powercfg report states that BIOS only supports L4 sleep mode, but not L3, L2, or L1. I’m assuming L3 is Hibernate.
In “Energy Save” mode, Windows claims 6h15m of remaining battery life at 100% charged. In reality, it’s far lower. I have never been able to use this machine unplugged for more than 3 or 4 hours.
In “Balanced” power mode, the battery only lasts around 2-2.5 hours.
I had Fedora 42 installed previously, which had similar issues with power consumption. Is this expected/normal behavior? Is there anything I can do to improve battery life, aside from simply waiting and hoping that an upcoming BIOS update may improve things?
Thank you in advance for any advice or insight you can offer, please let me know if I can provide any additional information!
EDIT: These are the troubleshooting steps I’ve already completed:
De-bloat Windows 11 (First thing I do after any Windows installation)
Re-installed all drivers using the Framework Driver Pack
Re-install BIOS using Framework BIOS/Firmware installer
Configured Windows to “Hibernate” instead of “Sleep” on power button press, lid close, and as default behavior after period of inactivity. I’ve completely disabled “Sleep” entirely in these settings, opting for “Hibernate”.
Windows 11 does not enable Hibernation by default. If you Google around for how to enable hibernation in Windows 11 lots of articles will come up. With Framework laptops I have had the most success with “Hibernating” instead of sleeping. Make sure you change your preferences (i.e. choose what to do when the power button and lid is closed) to use Hibernate instead of sleep. It literally wakes up a few seconds slower than on sleep and there is no battery drain.
You can thank Microsoft’s “Modern Standby” for the reason the battery kills itself, because what you and I remember being “sleep” is not really sleep at all anymore. Almost everything else is still awake except the display and backlit keyboard.
Windows 11 is notorious for running a bunch of bloat in the background too. You can debloat your Windows 11 installation if you search for a few tools. The one I like is the one from Chris Titus. It is a powershell script with a great little interface and always up to date.
Remember too, that peak battery life is not always obtained until a number of cycles are on the pack just like in a phone. You can probably safely use the machine in “Energy Save” most and it still will be a rocket ship. I leave my Framework 16 and Framework 13 (11th Gen) in that mode for the longest battery life and do not forget to turn down the insanely high brightness that seems to be the goto for fresh installations.
Hopefully some of these will ink some more life into your powerhouse of a laptop. Congrats on the Ryzen AI 9 HX370.
First of all, I’d like to thank you for this detailed response! Unfortunately, I’ve already completed all of these steps during my previous troubleshooting steps (I’ll update my original post to reflect this), and didn’t find any improvement afterward.
I enabled hibernation in the OS, and confirmed that it is set as the default behavior on power button press and lid close in the Windows settings. Powercfg says that this version of the BIOS is only compatible with L4 Sleep mode, which is the standard “sleep” mode enabled in Windows by default - it’s alerting because the BIOS is not compatible with L3, L2 or L1 sleep modes. I’ve been unable to get it to properly hibernate as well, so it seems that hibernate simply isn’t compatible. I’ve also checked the BIOS to see if it needs to be enabled there, finding nothing. Just in case it was a corrupted BIOS or something along those lines, I ran the BIOS installer again, and the results of powercfg were exactly the same.
I “de-bloated” the Windows 11 instance immediately after installing, using the exact guide and PS script you mentioned, so I know that’s not an issue at present. It just seems to be using a lot of CPU at idle still, at least according to the powercfg reports.
I’m willing to go back to a Fedora install if there are better power optimization options available there, but I had other significant issues, and frankly, I wasn’t looking forward to having to write all of the setup scripts to automate things that “just work” in Windows (“remembering” my monitor layout settings, for example)
Based on what you’ve tried already - it would be worth creating a ticket to our Support team. Please also include a link to this forum post so they can see everything you have tried thus far. Thanks! frame.work/support
I will submit a support ticket shortly, thanks! EDIT: Support ticket submitted, included a link to this post.
Just wanted to share some additional insights - I ran a “Sleep Study” to see what was actually happening when the computer was in “Hibernate” mode, and found the following:
I closed the lid at 10:59am, and the computer went into “Hibernate” mode. Less than 60 seconds later, it was in “Screen Off” mode - logs still show that the lid was closed - and stayed in that state for about 15 minutes, draining 4% of battery. “Top Offenders” explaining the battery drain showed the following:
Name: No CS Phase
Type: PDC Phase
% Active Time: 99%
Active Time: 0:14:51
The cycle progresses as follows:
Hibernate for around 30s - Entry “System Idle”, Exit “Unknown”
Screen Off for 0s - Entry “Hibernate, or Shutdown”, Exit “Power Button”
Active for 31s - Entry ----, Exit ----
Screen Off for 0:14:49 (draining 4% of battery) - Entry “Video Idle Timeout”, Exit “Hibernate, or Shutdown”
Repeat.
It did this song and dance from the time I closed the lid at 10:59 until the battery was fully depleted, finally ending when the battery drained completed at 15:26. Of note: This sequence was IDENTICAL in every iteration - Same Entry/Exit reasons, same system state, same duration.
There was an “Abnormal Shutdown” event after this, but it was a few hours later, when I tried to power the computer back on, so I think that’s more related to trying to power on with 0% battery, rather than the behavior causing the battery to rapidly deplete in the first place.
Given that “Power Button” is cited as the reason it exits “Screen Off” mode, I’m wondering if this may be relevant - I’m experiencing issues with the fingerprint scanner not working correctly on startup, and only intermittently registering fingerprint scans thereafter, perhaps there’s an issue with the power button/fingerprint scanner module on my machine?
Tracked the “Power Button” event to a fault with the AX210 Wireless card and/or it’s drivers. Attempted to update to the latest drivers, issue persists. Rolled back to earlier drivers, same story. I’m about to re-install the factory MT7925 wireless card to see if that resolves it. I’ll post my findings shortly.
EDIT: After replacing the AX210NGW with the factory-installed wireless card, the hibernate issue appears to be resolved. I’ll reply to the support ticket to ask them to close it, and provide resolution information in case this happens to anyone else in the future.