Low Wattage Power Source and/or General Performance Issues

Community Support
1

Hello.

My Framework

I have a Framework 16 AMD Ryzen 7840HS, 32gb (2x16) DDR5 at 5600MHz running 2 SSDs.
1 SSD runs Kali Linux Kali GNU/Linux Rolling x86_64 with GNOME.

GRUB is installed for a Windows 10 dual boot on a secondary SSD. I have the preinstalled heatsink with Framework fans installed.

Context

My FW16 has no battery attached to it because i will exclusively use this laptop plugged in and not going anywhere. I have a 65W power supply.

I have the 3.03 EFI Shell BIOS Update installed and fully updated the system with fwupdmgr refresh and fwupdmgr update, as well as daily apt upgrade && apt updates. My Linux Kernel versions is: 6.8.11-amd64`.

This laptop has no thermal issues. I have never seen the temperature go above 39C (in the middle of Winter in Australia right now) and is very easy to touch.

Also, i have noticed that the CPU loves staying around 400 MHz and 1.1 GHz, sometimes going higher to ~2-3 when watching youtube videos or compiling code.

My Problem

When the laptop is running and booted, both Kali and Windows are rather slow.

For Kali; things such as launching the gnome-terminal takes some time to load - about 1 - 3 seconds, but only on the first instance. I.e., if there is not an already-running instance of the gnome-terminal, it will take 1 - 3 seconds to launch; if there is an instance of the gnome-terminal running and i want to launch another, it will take .5 seconds. Still quite slow. I have a Linux Mint on a Dell laptop which launches the terminal almost instantly - the time can be considered negligible.

  • This example was just for the gnome-terminal, but same applies to any application, including but not limited to: Firefox, Chrome, Settings, pressing the Windows/Super key to see all windows/apps, and sometimes Chrome hangs and becomes unresponsive for a few seconds.

For Windows: much of the same things from Kali apply to Windows 10 as well. Only difference is my Windows 10 is really simple. It is just for using Edge, Chrome, Word, and Excel.

Question/s

  1. Is a 65W power source too little for a FW16, i assume it is? If so, how many Watts should my power source be considering i have no attached battery, such that it can be considered ‘efficiently powered’? - whatever this may mean, i simply dont know.

1.2 If I e.g., buy the 180W power adaptor, could i expect to see a performance increase? I will not attach a GPU onto this laptop.

  1. Is there an update or a driver I am missing for either Linux or Windows 10? I know that Debian and Windows 10 are not officially supported, but this level/lack of performance seems a little odd to me, even if unsupported.

  2. Despite being Australian, the heat is of no concern to me; i can mitigate a lot of heat. Is there a way to overclock the CPU to scrape more performance? I know that overclocking is unsupported, dangerous, and not recommended. I also know that 65W is definitely not enough if i do decide to OC. But would it be worth a try to increase the clock speed?

Thank you.

If there is more information you need or if you find anything confusing, please let me know and i will try my utmost to clarify :slight_smile:

Thank you for reading!

2

With what you have you can try to change to performance mode in PPD and hopefully that should bias EPP more towards what you want.

But there are limits imposed by the EC for PPT (very similar to TDP) based on power adapter. I do expect you’ll get better results with bigger adapters too.

3

I can’t answer all of your questions, but I use a 65W power supply on my FW16 part of the time too (as well as a 100W one sometimes). It’s certainly sufficient if you’re doing lower-powered stuff and don’t have (or aren’t using) the add-on GPU.

The slow initial starting of programs could be related to your storage system. I haven’t noticed it myself, though I reboot my laptop seldom enough that I might not.

4

The 65w psu you are using is definitely too small and with the fact you took out the battery as well, it has nothing else to pull power from. I’m surprised it doesn’t just crash. You really should have the laptop battery installed. Even with the official 180w psu, it will pull from the battery when maxing out performance.

5

On my 13 the TDP is the same on battery or on 100W PD in performance mode. The only difference is the battery discharging on low power PD. What’s the difference in the 16?

6

13 and 16 don’t have the same EC code, and the tunings will be different for different CPU coefficients. “TDP” isn’t an accurate term for AMD platforms, there are multiple coefficients that are changed, and none of them are actually “TDP”.

Here is EC code for the 16 that you can see will change values based on the power adapter size:

Here is the EC code for the 13:

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