Battery Life?

[GhostLegion]

@David_Tan

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.

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

[David_Tan]

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.

[GhostLegion]

@David_Tan

I heard Framework plans to create laptop with discrete GPU support

There has been plenty of desire for a model with a dGPU but no confirmed news one way or another has been announced

@David_Tan

no USB C cables and chargers in the market that support more than 200 watt

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

@David_Tan

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

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

[Thibaultmol]

Battery Life?

It seems that the retimer on the mainboard is not re-entering the low power state that it should be when nothing is plugged in. We’re digging into why that is.

@nrp any updates on this yet? Curious to hear about the outcomes

[Peter_Conrad]

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?

[FellowComrade]

@Peter_Conrad No I think you are right, I am also getting better battery life

[Peter_Conrad]

I am getting occasional random reboots, but I wonder if it’s a hot corner or a keyboard shortcut I’m hitting accidentally (Ubuntu 21.10). Never happens when I’m on my desk, connected to external monitors and USB keyboard/mouse. Only when I’m working directly on the Framework keyboard, it’ll go to sleep while I’m working and then when I wake it up it’s clearly rebooting.

But yeah, the battery life seems better. And overall what a great lappy!

[D.H]

@Kieran_Levin

Eg you can set your PL1 (long term) and PL2 (short term) power limits in uW:
echo 1 > /sys/class/powercap/intel-rapl:0/enabled
#PL1
echo 28000000 > /sys/class/powercap/intel-rapl:0/constraint_0_power_limit_uw
#PL2
echo 64000000 > /sys/class/powercap/intel-rapl:0/constraint_1_power_limit_uw

I just found this post and wanted to investigate the idea of manually turning down RAPL limits from userland to extend battery life a bit more. I am able to read the values you listed in your post, but writing to them, even as root, does not actually change the values when I cat them again a moment later.

kernel modules appear to be loaded and functional otherwise

# lsmod | grep -i rapl
intel_rapl_msr         20480  0
processor_thermal_rapl    20480  1 processor_thermal_device
intel_rapl_common      32768  2 intel_rapl_msr,processor_thermal_rapl

Using EndeavourOS (arch), 5.16.2 kernel and otherwise up to date.

@DHowett or @Kieran_Levin , any ideas?

[DHowett]

@D.H

any ideas

I think the EC retains full control over the power limits:

• Power limits are set by update_soc_power_limit
• It mentions manual_ctl, however…
• manual_ctl is only toggled by cmd_cpupower, and…
• cmd_cpupower is a CONSOLE_COMMAND, which is only available via serial/the cros_ec console device (which is not exposed to the AP, I believe)

I believe update_soc_power_limit is called on every battery charge tick or AC state change. Perhaps if the machine is fully charged, it won’t override those values? Hmm.

EDIT: That having been said… the code doesn’t update PL2/4 unless it thinks it has to (it is unaware of the value set by the kernel), and it only updates PL1 when it updates PL2/4. I just set a different value for PL1 and it stuck across a few charge state transitions.

[D.H]

@DHowett

I just set a different value for PL1 and it stuck across a few charge state transitions.

Using direct write to sysfs, or via ectool?

[DHowett]

@D.H

Using direct write to sysfs, or via ectool?

A direct write to sysfs! I’m on 5.15.[something] (Debian kernel versioning plus self-building their kernel packages has made this harder than it should be. :P)

[D.H]

All of a sudden it started working for me as well. Computers… where the definition of insanity does not apply.

Looks like the lowest value that /sys/class/powercap/intel-rapl:0/constraint_0_power_limit_uw will accept without going down to 0 is 125000. Noticeable but tiny input lag at that low of a PL, but it does result in a functional system. Honestly its not much worse than my 6Y30 processor tablet pc had when it was allowed to go full speed lol. Looks like 11-12 hours of battery endurance available even with wifi on, browser open, but min brightness.

Using this and the rest of my super long endurance tweaks I detailed in my other thread, I set a new current_now record low as well, 102000!

Does not look like PL1 is hard clamped at that low of a value, though. Playing a video in mpv seems to be using more power than that according to powertop and current_now. But still a low enough draw for 9+/- hours video playback from a samba source. Not too bad.

[Kieran_Levin]

The SOC should take the minimum of the SYSFS interface and the EC.
The EC hardware interface is to make sure that the SOC power is not exceeding the charger/battery limit which would cause unexpected power off. So I would not suggest changing the EC PECI limits.

[Raghav_Subbaraman]

Hi @nrp I’m also trying to investigate the HDMI expansion card.

Do you have any suggestions?

[Jameson_Smallwood]

Is there a replacement battery that I could purchase that lasts longer? Right now I am getting about five hours of battery life.

[amoun]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

The answer is no it has been asked before, maybe your post will be moved for further and future understanding. as you will note from above

All the best

See also

Will there be a long battery life version?

In my view, Framework’s laptops provides light & thin, with moderate performance user experience. What I want most for these kind of laptops is long battery life cause I don’t need them to be powerful, to handle heavy tasks, but I need them to be available for most of the time. But again, longer battery life means larger battery size, larger battery size leads to compact motherboard, and compact motherboard have to sacrifice some expansion capability. For example, on DELL XPS, if you choose a l…

[Daniel_Agorander]

@Jameson_Smallwood

Right now I am getting about five hours of battery life.

I have found that there’s a lot of variability based on configuration. For example, I get about 5h with moderate-intensity workloads* in OpenBSD, but 7 to 10 in Linux. A difference most likely being that the Linux system has power profiles configured that suit the unit better (and I have yet to figure out how to set up the same in OpenBSD).

Unfortunately I have no idea how to tweak those things in W10/11 effectively (if that is what you are using), but I’ve been led to the conclusion that configuration is a bigger “problem” than the battery.

*ie having a couple GPU-accelerated terminal sessions, compiling light applications from C source, browsing modern internet shites and so on.

[amoun]

@Daniel_Agorander

how to tweak those things in W10/11 effectively

Maybe via the command powercfg

Powercfg command-line options

[Taylor_Broussard]

Regarding the HDMI expansion card power draw, Windows 11 has an option to “eject” the HDMI and USB A cards without physically removing them. Would this cause future issues or can I just physically remove them and plug them back in when I need them? I prefer the looks with all 4 cards plugged and would like to avoid buying cards I don’t need just to have 4 cards that don’t draw idle power.

[Michael_Wu]

@Kieran_Levin

@Michael_Wu thanks for the HDMI card information.

@nrp

This is possibly the same issue Michael Wu is reporting earlier in this thread where the HDMI Expansion Card was keeping the retimer active, which we are investigating.

I finally took my HDMI expansion card to none other than Louis Rossman’s repair shop (which happened to be near me) to perform the rework. Awesome place, a shoutout and thanks to the folks there.

So I guess this is the original card that the issue was discovered on, now fixed with the jumper wire and firmware upgrade (yes, I haven’t taken off the plastic film from the CNC top cover yet :S):

I confirmed that it works without excess power drain on my AMD mainboard, the new guts of my old laptop. Phoenix!

I’m looking forward to the continuing improvement of the title of this thread, and a deep, deep gratitude to y’all, the team, and all the effort involved.