Phoronix cites 2w as the minimum draw for this cpu. Assuming all other laptop components draw a similar amoint of power as my thinkpad (efficient) and razer blade (not effecient) I estimate the maximum possible battery life under the lightest load to be about 14-21hrs (see chart above) on a power optimized load like my linux config. Many reviewers are citing 6-8hrs as the standard battery life. This is consistent with my experience in my workload vs others.
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This is likely cpu draw or package power, but not total system power consumption.
Currently I see a cpu draw of 1.5-4w, package power sits in the range of 2-10w depending on the instantaneous load however total system power consumption is closer to 4-6w in low idle → average usage (browsing).
Got my Batch 6 FW16 a few days ago. My config is 7840HS + 7700S. I’ve been experimenting a bit with power consumption, but I can’t get the idle power usage to go below 9-10W, even though CPU reports package power of 0.5-1W. Anyone got any tips to reducing it further, or is it expected when the dGPU is connected?
UPD: I’ve removed the Graphics Module, and the power consumption went down by around 1.5W, to 8.5W at idle, which still seems a bit too high for me.
Did you get down to 4 watts idle on a FW16 or FW13? What settings/distro are you using to get that low? I’m on Ubuntu 24.04, kernel 6.8 with PPD + Powertop and I can only get down to 6 watts idle on my FW16 with no dGPU.
This is a FW13, F40 Beta (Gnome, Wayland).
I do not use any special kernel arguments anymore. I set PPD to “Battery Saver” in the ui.
I disabled automatic updates in the app store, I dont really use PackageKit and just update with dnf.
7840u, rz616, 980 Pro
8.5W at idle is high. Are you running power-profiles-daemon or powertop --auto-tune?
I was able to hit 4.5W on my FW16 doing what I mentioned above, but on Gentoo instead of Arch Linux. I’m not sure where the difference is, I’m still tracking that down. Hopefully it’s not all savings from compiler optimization. On Arch the lowest I get is around 5.5W.
Relevant thread:
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Yep. Sometimes I can get 8.5W with dGPU installed and brightness set to lowest, but it’s inconsistent.
Additional thing is that on Arch Linux, currently, I have to replace 7700S’ driver with vfio-pci, otherwise its’ powerstate is always D0, which causes idle power consumption to hover around 15-17W instead.
This doesn’t happen on Fedora, where the GPU does into D3cold when not in use, and I have currently no idea why it doesn’t on Arch (this happens on both regular, Zen, and LTS kernels). Also on Fedora my idle power consumption is around 10W instead.
Hm, I need to learn how to test for this stuff. I’m also running arch and haven’t yet tried power tuning. Is there a good article on how to get started with this properly?
Quick PSA for those on linux running powertop, setting the tunables on Fedora 39 seems to sleep the keyboard. I assume because the modular design makes it look like a USB device rather than the built in keyboard. When the tuneables are on, the first couple key presses don’t register as the keyboard wakes up. Going to chase this down and see if I can’t disable the specific tunable that does this.
I have mine setup so that the keyboards aren’t included when the --auto-tune parameter is ran… however I have absolutely zero recollection of how this was done.
I just did it myself. I currently have the powertop service enabled so it applies the tuneables on startup.
sudo systemctl edit --full powertop
I edited this service file and added the commands that undoes the tuneables and sets my keyboard and macropad back to ‘on’ instead of ‘auto’ (for autosuspend.)
This is slightly off-topic from the thread but I am wondering how you achieved a 24-38 hour lifespan on an old Thinkpad. What model was the Thinkpad, and how did you evade the issue where most batteries for them have degraded? I’ve personally never been able to get above 3 or 4 hours on low settings with any model of Thinkpad.
Depends on how old you go, on the x260 and x270 with the big battery it was relatively easy to get >8h of light web browsing. With the 80 series you got even more efficient cpus and and still got the ability to deck them out with almost 100wh of battery that could easily give you 10-14h of light usage.
With my t480s the lowest I could go was a bit over 2.5W idle with the screen at min doing absolutely nothing. If we extrapolate that to a t480 with fully decked out batteries (72Wh+24Wh=96Wh) that would come out to just a lick over 38h. Not that that would be particularly useful but it could explain the numbers.
It was a T470 with the internal battery and external battery totaling 96Whr. I run a power optimized install of Arch linux and saw a minimum power draw of 2.8W. 96 / 2.8 = ~34 is how I calculated the estimated max-battery life. Degredation wasn’t an issue, because I replaced both the batteries with new.
that’s crazy. For me, on an empty-load system, with screen brightness ~40%,
watch upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1
shows energy-rate somewhere near 15W. Gonna try to copy your special sauce. I have TLP installed and enabled.
Edit: turns out I forgot to unplug a USB device… now it’s more like 10W which is reasonable given my screen is not dimmed all the way
Brightness draws a ton of power, I try to keep mine around 0-10% unless I’m plugged in.
I’ve also got scripts that automatically switch between 60hz and 165hz depending on whether I’m plugged in or not 
(which draws an extra watt)
oh yeah… definitely want to turn to 60 Hz
Man, mine is way worse.
During normal use with screen brightness and refresh rate maxed, it idles around 21 watts.
Turning both of those down, applying powertop autotune, setting power profile to power save mine still draws around 12 watts.
Quitting everything and just looking at battop from a tty it drops to 10-11, but that’s still twice of what you guys are getting.
I have a 7840 diy model without dgpu and I don’t have a usb-a expansion card in slot 1 or 4 (which reportedly has higher power usage).
I’m running fedora 40, but seeing similar results on live environments of arch and fedora 40.
Any ideas what I could be missing?
That does seam high. My typical draw during actual use (as opposed to any figures I may have cited above) including a web browser (brave) and a text editor is around 8-11W. You’ve got the stuff I’ve done applied, so I’m not sure. My CPU usage is usually between 0 and 1%, if it goes above that the battery starts to take a hit.
When I have a browser open with 10 tabs etc., system load is usually at 1.7 - even then, when on battery, I barely hit the 11W usage. Note that I have the 7700 GPU board.
Screen brightness is usually at 25% or lower. Inside, I don’t need more.