Low Battery performance

Framework Laptop 13
1

Poor battery performance.

I have two more or less identical setups, one with hp ryzen ai 365 and my brand new framework ryzen ai 370. Whereas the HP easy lasts a day, the framework is empty in around six hours, which is a very poor value.

Powertop also shows a significant bigger power drain during a more or less idle desktop.

Anyone has seen similar problems?

1 Like
2

There are a lot of variables that will go into influencing the power consumption. You’ll need to narrow down all the differences between the systems software wise and hardware that is not the APU.

For example:

  • If self built kernel are you using same config? Same kernel version?
  • Same distro?
  • Same Linux firmware version?
  • Same agesa version (sudo dmidecode | grep AGESA)
  • Panel size
  • Panel vendor
  • Panel brightness
  • NVME ASPM settings (you can use nvme cli tools)
  • Compare PCI devices between machines. What is in the topology?
  • HP supports dynamic power coefficients through amd pmf, framework only supports static ones. If you blacklist pmf on HP and and leave framework in balanced at startup how do things do?
  • What is the battery size in each machine?
  • How much RAM in each?

That’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s what I could think off the top of my head. Sorry it’s not a direct answer, but it should hopefully help you directionally to narrow it down!

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Obviously there are many factors. It’s the same software installation. (Restore from backup) No special Settings on the HP, no tweaking. Also, no special work done on the framework yet. I always use dimmed displays, when on battery.

I’m just interested in other people’s experiences. Is it worth it trying to get a usable battery work time, or are these six hours quite normal? If so, this would be terrible and unusable.

4

Oh is this Windows? I don’t have experience there.

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No Linux.

6

6 hours is quite adequate for Framework 13. It’s a modular, repairable design. Everything is connected over connectors instead of soldered to the motherboard. That takes up space (less space for battery) and is more efficient.

A hack for this is a power bank. You can charge your laptop with any powerbank that has PD protocol support. Meaning that with 20-30€ you can buy 20000mah powerbank that will charge your laptop to ~85%, almost doubling your battery life. It’s going to charge slow (usually 18-20w is used on the cheaper powerbanks) and your laptop may actually be discharging while you’re charging, but it will discharge slower. You don’t need to buy 100€+ costing powerbanks to charge your laptop now.

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Thank you for the answer. Bad to hear, but six hours is far too little for my use cases, would have never expected that in 2025.

I’ll have to check, if it can be returned, otherwise, there will be a ryzen ai370 framework 13 for sale soon. :smiley:

Thanks for the help and have a nice day.