Right now, Bluetooth works fine, albeit only from a cold boot. So, you have to turn the machine completely off and back on, rather than a reboot. I leave my laptop on perpetually (until a kernel update or something), so it’s not a big deal for me personally. It’s worth it to have working PSR, the power savings are considerable.
Yeah, I’ve never made that work.
So, I did something a lot more drastic: I took the wifi module out of my old Lenovo X1C5 and swapped it into my Framework. 
Working wifi, bluetooth, and PSR. And all I had to do was downgrade to a four year old wifi module. I’ll take it!
So I’m idling at about 2.4W with screen brightness at 8%. My current config is this:
OS: Arch Linux
Kernel: 5.14.7
Panel Self Refresh: on (I got stuttering on 5.13, but on 5.14 it runs great)
WM: Sway (Wayland)
Display Scaling: 1.5
Expansion cards: 2 USB-C and 1 USB-A
Wifi/Bluetooth: on
RAM: 2x16GB
That’s with no powertop or TLP or auto-cpufreq or power-profiles-daemon or anything. If I plug in the SD card attachment it goes straight up to almost 4W, so I currently have an empty slot until there’s a firmware update or they open the marketplace so I can buy another USB-C
So for me the key things have been to be on a recent kernel, have PSR on, and unplug anything that isn’t a passive USB attachment from the laptop. And so far I haven’t heard anyone report numbers better than mid-2s for idle power draw, so I’m skeptical that all the userpsace power saving programs are really doing much.
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Powertop/TLP can enable devices to suspend that otherwise would drain extra power, so maybe most of them are working well already.
However, limiting the CPU frequency via e.g. auto-cpufreq or power-profiles-daemon (which operates similarly to Windows’ power plans) could result in better battery life. The powersaver governor could be doing other at load battery optimizations as well, but unsure.
Anecdotally, I see when setting the powersaver governor with power-profiles-daemon, my i7-1165G7 CPU frequency caps at ~1.6GHz, resulting in much lower power use at max CPU load. This reduction in CPU speed could result in a task taking longer to complete, thus using the more battery in the long run.
But from my experience, overall battery life seems better (especially if some rogue tab is eating up the CPU before I notice). In that case, there’s a battery savings between the CPU loaded at 1.6GHz vs 2.8GHz.
There’s also a balanced and performance mode, which should be familiar to those coming from Windows.
Anecdotally, I know when I used to disable the boost mode on the CPU (or turbo, if you prefer) in my old 15" Intel Macbook Pro it added a fair amount to the battery life, depending on what I was doing. I also see similar improvement on a newer (6th gen core i5) Thinkpad when I do the same. I am not usually doing compiles or anything similarly on battery, though.
They’re both using older generations of CPU, to be sure, but I expect the big speed boost comes at a significant voltage uptick with the 11th gen parts.
I know in older versions of Windows 10 it was possible to set the maximum CPU speed to some percentage below 100% in the advanced Power Plan settings, though I don’t know if this is still possible with 21H1.
The Framework is out of state with my wife so I can’t mess around with it too much to see if the same applies here.
Still is. If you can’t see it check out my response in a related thread here:
Fair points. I guess by saying that the power management tools weren’t helping I’m really just thinking abut idle power draw. There have been a lot of different ideas thrown around in this thread (fractional scaling being a problem, RAM configuration, TLP settings, and so on), and I tried nearly all of them. And the only ones that made any detectable difference for idle power draw have been PSR, the kernel version, and unplugging the SD card attachment. And until someone reports an idle power draw lower than 2.4W I’m standing by that
I might try experimenting with auto-cpufreq and more taxing workloads, although for what I’ve been doing (light browsing, a lot of text editing in a terminal, occasional code compilation) I really can’t see a difference. Fixing the above issues was by far the most important factor. TLP and all that didn’t make any difference in terms of getting to lower C states, and as you said I don’t think there’s anything on this laptop that isn’t powering down (besides the obvious problem with some of the usb attachments).
This seems like the biggest advantage to capping CPU frequency. But I’m more of the mind that I want to just try to make sure nothing gets to eat up CPU like that, and in general I want the CPU to “get it’s work done; get back to idle”. I’d prefer not to nerf performance unless there’s a clear benefit.
Anyway, good conversation, and I’ll keep experimenting.
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@Michael_Wu How did you get your windows idle so low? I idle around -6W. Also what do you use to check the discharge rate? It might be affecting my idle time.
Which expansion cards do you have @FellowComrade? I’ve noticed that pulling out my HDMI expansion card lowers the wattage used by quite a bit (at least on Linux), so I’m going to buy another USB-C expansion card at some point so I can lower my overall power usage most of the time (since I don’t usually need an HDMI port). The USB-A cards have a slight effect on power as well, but not as much as the HDMI card.
On Debian sid right now, if I pull out everything except for the USB-C passthrough card and close all of my applications, I’m getting a discharge rate of ~4W according to powertop, which is way less then I’ve ever seen on this laptop. Oh, and that’s with the display on, so presumably the power draw would go down even more if I turn off the backlight (but I’m too lazy to figure that out lol).
This is exactly what’s so cool about the Framework!
@Chiraag_Nataraj I have the microsd, but I don’t have it plugged in because of what people have been saying about it drawing power. I have two USB As and a USB C plugged in.
@FellowComrade Hmm, okay. Yeah, USB-A and USB-C tend to be okay in terms of power draw. I haven’t really used Windows in forever, so I’m not sure what I can suggest — hopefully other people can help
@FellowComrade on Windows I use BatteryBar since it’s viewable in the notification tray and BatteryInfoView from NirSoft for more data.
I found that nothing special really needed to be done get down to sub 4W idle. Here’s a checklist off the top of my head:
- ensuring there aren’t any rogue tasks/programs consuming CPU processes (check with Task Manager)
- on Battery Saver or Balanced profile
- setting a low screen brightness since that’s a major consumer
- turn keyboard lights off
- up to date/no conflicting drivers?
- checking USB devices and not using expansion cards that draw excess power
To dip into the lowest idle rates, your CPU should be hitting C9/C10 states which requires enabling Panel Self Refresh (PSR). Make sure this is on – essentially if nothing changes on your display, updates to your screen won’t need to be sent resulting in lower idle rates.
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I always have:
- 250gb for OS
- USB-A for lapdesk
- USB-C for android dev
- USB-C for power
I have HDMI, DP, microSD available to swap out - but haven’t used them.
that is why removable battery is a good thing because we can swap the battery on the go if we run out of juice and we don’t need to worry about battery life anymore. I hope there is an option for that.
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This problem is alleviated by the numerous USB-C power banks
Swappable batteries are a cleaner aesthetic I’ll grant you but unnecessary these days-Framework has stated they have no plans to create swappable batteries
I heard Framework plans to create laptop with discrete GPU support and it require higher wattage and no USB C cables and chargers in the market that support more than 200 watt and also I am sure people don’t like messy wire tangling around. Besides, it is really time consuming and annoying that for current Framework laptop if we want to replace battery, screwdriver is a necessary tool and the process is quite long. So, if they want to create laptop with higher specs like that. This removable battery is important feature.
I know removable battery concept is a rare feature in 2021. But, it is not extinct. XMG/Gigabyte answered that with A5 X1 laptop and Creator of Linux popOS have that laptop with that feature as well.
There has been plenty of desire for a model with a dGPU but no confirmed news one way or another has been announced
USB-C is supposed to reach 240W of power shortly, I’m certain new cables and chargers to deliver that kind of power will make their way to the market, even if they aren’t commonplace yet
That is the exact same laptop, XMG and System76 use Clevo designs, and those designs use a DC jack to deliver power, not USB-C
I can’t find the quote, but Framework has stated there is no intent to support swappable batteries
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Crazy question. Just installed BIOS 3.07, haven’t changed any settings, but my battery life seems better. Am I imagining it? Or is there something in the new BIOS that’s helping?
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