Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff

The Barracks
#502

Right, I think I’ve decided on a plan for the battery tests, it’s as follows.

  • Test 5 power plans

    • Absolute Power: Everything possible is set to maximise performance
    • Potato: Everything is set to make the make the battery last as long as possible, to the point where the maximum CPU performance has been limited to 1% of what it’s capable of.
    • High performance: This is a defualt plan optimised for performance
    • Balanced / Dell: There was a Balanced plan and a Dell plan in the settings, they’re actually identical, it’s supposed to be a balance of performance and economoy.
    • Power saving: The third default plan designed to maximise battery life.

  • 3 cycles per plan

  • Mixed use through each cycle

    • A run on UserBenchmark
    • 1h of watching videos (an episode of Top Gear)
    • 30 mins of CAD and / or simulation software
    • The remaining time will be general use

  • Battery level will be taken at the after each stage mentioned above

  • Run the laptop until critical battery action is taken

Below is a table of all of the power plan settings. The first 5 settings are controlled by me to the point of stupidity for the sake of the Potato plan. The rest of the settings are the ones found in the power plans and the advanced power plan settings in Windows 10.

Absolute Power: Potato: High Performance: Balanced / Dell: Power Saver:
Selected GPU (user defined): GTX 1050 HD 630 GTX 1050 Auto select HD 630
Battery saver (user defined): Off On Off Activate at 50% On
Mouse (user defined): Bluetooth external Trackpad Bluetooth external Bluetooth external Trackpad
Keyboard backlight (user defined): Bright Off Bright Dim Off
Sound volume (user defined): 100% 10% 100% 50% 30%
Turn off the display: Never 1 minute 10 minutes 5 minutes 2 minutes
Put the computer to sleep: Never 2 minutes Never 15 minutes 10 minutes
Adjust plan brightness: 100% 0% 100% 40% 40%
Turn off hard disk after: 30 mins 1 minutes 20 minutes 10 minutes 5 minutes
Java script timer frequency: Maximum performance Maximum power savings Maximum performance Maximum power savings Maximum power savings
Desktop background slideshow: Available Paused Available Paused Paused
Wireless adapter power saving mode: Maximum performance Maximum power saving Maximum performance Maximum power saving Maximum power saving
Sleep after: Never 2 minutes Never 15 minutes 10 minutes
Allow hybrid sleep: Off On Off Off Off
Hibernate after: Never 3 minutes Never 180 minutes 180 minutes
Allow wake timers Disable Disable Disable Disable Disable
USB selective suspend setting: Disabled Enabled Enabled Enabled Enabled
Intel graphics power plan: Maximum performance Maximum battery life Maximum performance Balanced Maximum battery life
PCIe link state power management: Off Maximum power savings Off Maximum power savings Maximum power savings
Minimum processor state: 100% 1% 5% 5% 5%
System cooling policy: Active Passive Active Passive Passive
Maximum processor state: 100% 1% 100% 100% 100%
Turn off display after: Never 1 minutes 10 minutes 5 minutes 2 minutes
Display brightness: 100% 0% 100% 40% 40%
Dimmed display brightness: 50% 0% 50% 50% 50%
Enable adaptive brightness: Off On Off Off Off
When sharing media: Prevent idling to sleep Allow computer to sleep Prevent idling to sleep Allow computer to sleep Allow computer to sleep
Video playback quality bias: Video playback performance bias Video playback power saving bias Video playback power saving bias Video playback power saving bias Video playback power saving bias
When playing video: Optimise video quality Optimise power savings Optimise video quality Balanced Optimise power savings
Critical battery action: Shutdown Shutdown Hibernate Hibernate Hibernate
Low battery level: 10% 10% 10% 10% 10%
Critical battery level: 3% 5% 5% 5% 5%
Low battery action: Do nothing Do nothing Do nothing Do nothing Do nothing
Reserve battery level: 5% 7% 7% 7% 7%

Laptop specifications:

  • Brand: Dell
  • Model: XPS 15 9560
  • Battery: 3 cell Li-Ion 56 WH
  • CPU: Intel core i5 7300HQ
  • Integrated graphics: Intel HD 630
  • Dedicated GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 4 GB (mobile)
  • Storage: 1920 GB (2 TB raw) - 1x Corsair MP510 960 GB NVMe SSD / 1x Corsair LE200 960 GB SATA SSD
  • RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2x16 GB) 2400 MHz DDR4
  • WiFi card: Intel AC 9260 with VPro
  • External mouse: Corsair Harpoon wireless

NOTES:

  • The settings in the table above are ones relevant to battey consumption, therefore, some have not been included from the actual menu.

  • The potato plan verges on making the laptop almost completely useless, all in the pursuit of maximum battery life. It is not realistically feasible (unless you’re a masochist), it’s here solely for the purpose of seeing just how long the battery will last.

  • All of the power plans have the wake timers disabled, this is to protect my laptop from W10. Wake timers let the computer wake up whenever it pleases, just so that W10 can download and install updates.

I’ll start testing later today. I’m just hoping the potato and power saver plans don’t actually last 8h like Dell claims otherwise this will take forever.

2 Likes
#503

Testing is underway, just finished the first run on Absolute Power. I got a whopping 110 mins of battery life :joy:. Now I’m waiting for the battery to recharge before I go for run 2. These will take a while.

1 Like
#504

OVERKILLLLLL :joy::joy:

By the way I did end up jumping up to the Alienware 17 r5 and super happy about it :grin: runs cool and smooth :smiley:
Only “real” spec difference” was the 1070 card is on this one, noticeably higher quality though overall and I got it for cheaper than the other :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

1 Like
#505

I know, right? It sounds so glorious though. I’m strongly considering getting one at the end of my masters.

What happened to the other one you got?

1 Like
#506

Even then once you get the new one, yours probably would still fetch decent money on resale considering the upgrades :sweat_smile:

And the rog one I returned, like I said when I said I got that one, I had been wanting the Alienware but they were out of stock at sale price,
I ended up getting an open box one for 100 bucks less than the rog when it was initially 350 more :smiley:

1 Like
#507

I don’t know what’s going to happen for sure (if I’ll be getting one at all, I just really want one lol), but I might give this one to my dad to use as a family computer as right now it’s an ancient HP Pavilion G7 2152sa from 2012 with a surprisingly good i5 in it. It’s a 3210M and it is still respectable.

Nice. If I’m going for an Alienware, I’d go for a bottom spec Area 51M and max it out myself. That thing comes with a socketed desktop i9 9900K, socketed RTX 2080 (to near desktop standard, but higher than a mobile standard), 4 RAM slots, two M.2 SSD slots, a 2.5" SATA bay, socketed WiFi card and a 144Hz display.

And you know what? I’d still have the XPS over it, because if I want something that hardcore, I’d build a desktop. The A51M is more than twice as heavy as the XPS, is a lot bigger (it can’t even fit in my big Wenger bag), needs 2 huge power bricks and costs 3 or 4 times as much as the XPS.

Your R5 is no slouch though. You’ve got three M.2 slots (one of them is a 2242 size) and a SATA bay. Though as an Alienware, it has the same issue as all of them, it’s too damn big to realistically carry around all day.

1 Like
#508

It’s big but I love the fact its literally bigger and better than the crap desktops we have at college :joy:
I got a bag to keep it safe but besides that it’s not bad to carry, I’m a big boy so don’t really notice it haha
I’d break that thin little toy of yours :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: jk jk
The a51 was too expensive for me, I spent half that on the r5 and I told myself that’d be about my budget considering 5years and all this crap becomes obsolete lol

1 Like
#509

That’s a whole different kind of satisfaction. There’s something about annihilating a desktop with a laptop. Both of ours can hold their own against pretty decent rigs, yours a lot more so than mine.

Sorry, but mine’s better built. Carbon fibre and aluminium. :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s too expensive, full stop. I’d never have one. It’s like a Hyper car, you dream of one, but you’d never have one, because you’d buy something cheaper, tune and tune it to stupidity.

I reckon ours would both be respectable in 5 years.

1 Like
#510

Ummm… I think I might have just set the UserBenchmark world record for Intel HD Graphics 630 (mobile) :joy:. This has also got to be my worst ever run on UB as I’m currently doing the first battery cycle of Potato mode. :stuck_out_tongue:

I just clocked 14.1% and the record is apparently 12.4%. I just don’t know why my score isn’t coming up on the leaderboard.

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2 Likes
#511

I was just screwing around with my mum’s ancient laptop when I found a remote inside its expresscard slot. It’s been there since the laptop was bought and I never knew lol. Better still, I then found out that a company made external bluetooth mice that plugged into and charged off of the slot. This is porbably the coolest thing I’ve seen on a laptop. I’m actually going to pick one of those mice up to see what it’s like. Screw my Corsair mouse, I want one of these on my XPS!

Unfortunately, the remote I found doesn’t work, because apparently it doesn’t work with regular Vista and needs premium or something.

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4 Likes
Personal Projects
#512

That looks pretty cool! Never seen those either. I wonder if they’re more practical than a regular mouse

#513

I doubt it. This is old-school tech, the mouse has an 800 DPI lol. The ExpressCard is a now dead ‘standard’ (I don’t know if it was ever considered a standard), it was just an expansion slot. Kind of like a PCIe slot in a desktop motherboard with a variety of things to plug into it. You can get a bunch of different Expresscard adapters, like the mouse, the remote, extra USB slots, an actual PCIe port, etc… As far as I know, Thunderbolt is the modern equivalent of EC.

1 Like
#514

Sit-rep:

I’m still doing the battery tests, I haven’t forgotten about them, I’ve just been busy with uni and they take longer than you’d think. I’ve got one more run on Power Saver mode to do and I’ll be posting results, hopefully in the next couple of days or by week’s end.

#515

Right, here are the battery test results at last. I have to say, I didn’t expect the numbers to be so terrible, even in the energy saver modes. Neither did I expect Power Saver to do better than Potato in terms of average time. I tried to stick as closely as possible to the pre-determined test plan, but I did stray occasionally, though I still got relatively consistent results.

If you haven’t read the post where I outline my test spec and laptop specs, you can see it here.

Main results

This is the main results table which shows the duration of each run in minutes as well as an estimate of the life time of the life time if I had the bigger 97WH battery in the laptop.

Plan: Start: Finish: Duration: Estimated duration with 97WH battery:
Absolute Power 1 12:35 14:25 110 mins 190 mins
Absolute Power 2 17:25 19:30 125 mins 217 mins
Absolute Power 3 22:15 00:15 120 mins 208 mins
Potato 1 14:00 17:20 200 mins 346 mins
Potato 2 20:20 23:00 160 mins 277 mins
Potato 3 17:00 19:30 150 mins 260 mins
High Performance 1 12:00 14:35 155 mins 268 mins
High Performance 2 18:00 19:50 110 mins 190 mins
High Performance 3 23:25 01:25 120 mins 208 mins
Balanced / Dell 1 18:10 21:00 170 mins 295 mins
Balanced / Dell 2 23:15 01:50 155 mins 268 mins
Balanced / Dell 3 17:25 20:20 175 mins 303 mins
Power Saver 1 14:40 17:40 180 mins 312 mins
Power Saver 2 23:00 02:00 180 mins 312 mins
Power Saver 3 21:00 00:05 185 mins 320 mins

This next table is the average time for each power plan and how many minutes (on average) I got per Watt-Hour of battery capacity.

Plan: Average duration: Minutes / Watt-Hour:
Absolute Power 118 mins 2:06.6
Potato 170 mins 3:02.4
High Performance 128 mins 2:17.4
Balanced / Dell 167 mins 2:58.8
Power Saver 182 mins 3:15.0
Average of averages: 153 mins 2:43.8

This final table is a more in-depth breakdown of the results as well as notes and comments. The minutes are how long was spent during each stage, the percentages are how much battery was used during those minutes.

Plan: UserBenchmark: Video: CAD: General Use:
Absolute Power 1: 2 mins / 5% 80 mins / 57% 28 mins / 35% 0 mins / 0%
Absolute Power 2: 6 mins / 6% 50 mins / 32% 39 mins / 37% 30 mins / 22%
Absolute Power 3: 12 mins / 10% 68 mins / 47% 30 mins / 27% 10 mins / 13%
Potato 1: 10 mins / 3% 77 mins / 37% 22 mins / 7% 91 mins / 48%
Potato 2: 3 mins / 2% 72 mins / 38% 20 mins / 11% 65 mins / 44%
Potato 3: 3 mins / 2% 30 mins / 17% 0 mins / 0% 117 mins / 76%
High Performance 1: 6 mins / 5% 114 mins / 45% 35 mins / 45% 0 mins / 0%
High Performance 2: 5 mins / 6% 60 mins / 39% 30 mins / 35% 15 mins / 15%
High Performance 3: 5 mins / 6% 60 mins / 39% 25 mins / 25% 30 mins / 25%
Balanced / Dell 1: 7 mins / 5% 60 mins / 32% 13 mins / 5% 90 mins / 53%
Balanced / Dell 2: 5 mins / 5% 60 mins / 32% 30 mins / 23% 60 mins / 35%
Balanced / Dell 3: 5 mins / 4% 60 mins / 35% 0 mins / 0% 110 mins / 56%
Power Saver 1: 10 mins / 6% 150 mins / 79% 0 mins / 0% 20 mins / 10%
Power Saver 2: 7 mins / 4% 80 mins / 43% 0 mins / 0% 73 mins / 48%
Power Saver 3: 3 mins / 1% 117 mins / 60% 0 mins / 0% 65 mins / 34%

Notes and comments:

  • AP1: Video was paused for 20 mins as I went to get lunch
  • AP3 and P2: Video was on YouTube this time as opposed to a movie streaming site.
  • P3: I got carried away with general use here.
  • PS1 to PS3: I skipped the CAD stage because it is nearly impossible to work with a touchpad.
  • General: 3 tabs are always open during the CAD stage. The LPU forums, WhatsApp Web and Spotify.
UserBenchmark results

At the start of every run, I ran UserBenchmark just to see how the power plans affected the results. Below are a series of results tables as well as links to all of the full results pages of each run.

The first two tables are a typical result I’d expect to get from the laptop when it’s in Absolute Power mode and plugged into the charger (how I use it almost all the time).

Plan: Gaming: Desktop: Workstation: CPU: GPU: Drive 1: Drive 2: RAM: PC Score:
Absolute Power - plugged in 37 90 51 68.7 31.2 249 82.2 82.5 Nuclear Submarine

The second table is a table of general results for each run.

Plan: Gaming: Desktop: Workstation: CPU: GPU: Drive 1: Drive 2: RAM: PC Score:
Absolute Power 1: 28 87 50 70.4 20.8 225 68.9 81.7 Aircraft Carrier
Absolute Power 2: 29 88 50 69.9 21.7 232 88.4 82.3 Aircraft Carrier
Absolute Power 3: 29 87 49 68.4 21.6 230 86.2 82.6 Aircraft Carrier
Potato 1: 17 36 24 28.8 14.1 131 56.2 50.5 Jet Ski
Potato 2: 14 36 23 26.3 6.76 135 46.5 50.1 Jet Ski
Potato 3: 14 34 23 25.6 8.25 139 54.0 49.4 Sail Boat
High Performance 1: 30 86 48 70.0 22.4 224 84.2 82.7 Aircraft Carrier
High Performance 2: 30 86 48 70.1 22.1 222 86.9 82.9 Aircraft Carrier
High Performance 3: 29 85 49 66.6 22.3 225 86.7 82.6 Aircraft Carrier
Balanced / Dell 1: 18 71 45 66.3 8.06 191 71.1 81.6 Battleship
Balanced / Dell 2: 18 77 46 66.8 8.11 203 69.3 81.5 Battleship
Balanced / Dell 3: 18 75 46 67.4 8.10 202 74.0 80.9 Battleship
Power Saver 1: 16 45 34 48.8 8.27 156 57.1 70.7 Yacht
Power Saver 2: 16 44 33 45.7 8.25 155 64.4 58.8 Speed Boat
Power Saver 3: 16 41 32 42.2 8.27 133 54.9 71.0 Speed Boat

The third is a table of averages.

Plan: Gaming: Desktop: Workstation: CPU: GPU: Drive 1: Drive 2: RAM: PC Score:
Absolute Power 29 87 50 69.6 21.4 229 81.2 82.2 Aircraft Carrier
Potato: 15 35 23 26.9 9.70 135 52.2 50.0 Jet Ski
High Performance: 30 86 48 68.9 22.3 224 85.9 82.7 Aircraft Carrier
Balanced / Dell: 18 74 46 66.8 8.09 199 71.5 81.3 Battleship
Power Saver: 16 43 33 45.6 8.26 148 58.8 66.8 Speed Boat
Average of averages: 22 65 40 55.6 14.0 187 69.9 72.6 Battle Cruiser

The final table is a key for the PC score classification taken from the UserBenchmark site. The Desktop score is used as the PC score.

Designation: Percentage:
UFO 100
Nuclear Submarine 90
Aircraft Carrier 80
Battleship 70
Battle Cruiser 65
Destroyer 60
Gunboat 55
Yacht 45
Speed Boat 40
Jet ski 35
Sail Boat 30
Raft 25
Surfboard 15
Tree Trunk 0

Here are the links to all the results.

2 Likes
#516

Wow, a thread about Pennywise

#517

I don’t follow? On a separate note, the clown’s name sounds like some kind of insurance company or comparison website.

#518

Ha! So you do follow

#519

No, I know who Pennywise is, I just don’t see how this thread relates to him.

#520

Not sure if I get it. But I’m impressed with your work.
As far at it concerns me, can I summaries that between 2 and 3 hours is the variability and that’s not so big a difference to extra select aftere a battery criteria?

Lifespan would still be of interest :smiley:

1 Like
#521

Oh cuz it says ‘IT’ and that’s the name of Stephen King’s book