Does anyone else get power drain while using the Framework 240W charger?

Framework Laptop 16
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Yes, the FW 16 can still pull more power than the 240W PSU will deliver stock. This ended up being one of the issues I encountered in another thread of mine: [SOLVED] An Adventure In Mitigating Throttling - Framework Laptop 16 - Framework Community

Here on the forums, the performance of changing power targets based on battery state is known as the “battery flipping” problem.

There are a few things you can do:

  1. Use balanced mode instead of high-performance. This seems to only pull approximately what the PSU is capable of (unmodified). The battery can still drain under a high enough load down to 95% and charge back up to 100%, but the performance drop IME has not been noticeable, unlike the very drastic drop when in high-performance mode.

  2. Frame limit your games to something lower than the max you get. This can help draw less power.

  3. Due to measurement error and safety concerns, the 240W power supply is coded to only provide 205W (90%). I’ve found that using ectool to force it to 240W via setting the input current value higher has allowed me to use high-performance without draining the battery (any more than balanced does), and this only pulls about 215W from the PSU instead of the 205W. This method requires running a command every time you plug the device in though. Do note that by doing this, you’re essentially ignoring Framework’s safety preferences. You can read more about battery flipping here (read up from there): [TRACKING] Battery flipping between charging and discharging / Draws from battery even on AC - #625 by TechPriestNhyk

  4. Use ectool to set a larger battery drain threshold, which would effectively allow it to drain down to 20% (or whatever you choose) before charging again, but this will only delay your performance drop, not prevent it.

I see a total system draw of about 205-215W depending on whether I’m using ectool or not. Idk where the extra ~65W goes compared to a simple 100W + 45W TDP calculation, but I’ve measured with a power meter that it’s definitely going somewhere. RAM, SSD, display and gpu memory are certainly some of the contributors.

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