Laptop shutdown on battery when running intensive application

On my 4 yr old AW15 R1, I had recently replaced the dead battery with a new oem one. I bought it from ebay from a US seller. He claims it is a genuine oem dell battery. I inspected the battery and all the markings look identical to my original battery. It looked new and there seems to be no indication it was cracked open and the cells were replaced. I have seen other 3rd party replacement batteries and the markings are not the same.

Honestly I dont recall ever running intensive applications on my previous battery. So I can't say if its normal. If I run a benchmark that uses 4 cores or a gpu benchmark, my laptop will quickly shutoff on battery. The gpu is 970m. I have set windows power setting to balanced and battery saver.

Anyways is this normal? Or did I get a dud battery.

I have checked the cables and its secure. There is no carbon burn marks on the connector or previous batterys connector either. I was using throttlestop, but stopped using that so I can rule that out too.

 

That is definitely a battery cell issue... it might either be an old used / exhausted battery or a very good 1:1 look a like fake.

I'd try getting another one (OEM) and testing it to see if the problem still occurs... I've seen this issue before and it was the battery cells that was the culprit.

Good luck.

 

Thanks for the info. I'll have to press the issue with the seller. Sucks that I didn't even notice this issue and its been more than a month since I bought it.

 

Yes that's a known issue on AWs jokebook. 65C is the limit and after that it shuts down w/o warning and you'll feel the palm rest is too hot!
Its their battery saving tech used by Dell. Optionally check if the battery is made by Simplo?
Have you checked laptopbatteryexpress.com ? They claim to use Samsung/LG batteries along with 2 yr warranty.

 

I dont think thats the issue. It shuts down almost immediately in most cases when running a benchmark.

It even shut down when switching AGA gpu to dgpu and the nvidia driver is initializing for the dgpu at windows startup...

 

What do you mean? I had 2 AW15 echo models and both never have shown this behaviour. This indicates that one of the cells is dead and cannot provide the necessary current.

 

What is your battery wear? Might be that one or 2 cells are gone which prevents the battery from providing the current the laptop needs.

 

You always have connected to AC power while I am always on battery power 60% of the time so I did extensive testing and that was the result I obtained. The battery will shutoff system when GPU is using above 75W, either CPU and GPU temps are above 65C.
Most issues I've seen are Simplo battery which are misconfigured in FW to pull more current for increased battery wear level. Dell replaced mine with Sanyo battery and its very good but 65C thermal limit and CPU/GPU temp limit is also present.

 

Try ePSA battery test and see if anything comes up!

 

How do you know i always connected my AC adapter? I bought it specifically for the 8 hours of battery life while doing productivity..

It never shut down on my on battery while doing some 3D rendering stuff on location quickly, not when doing some music production in the airplane (which puts a 100% load on the CPU often) and not when I did some gaming until I landed while draining the battery. The framerates are capped etc on battery ofcourse but apart from that no shut down and especially not when the temps are surpassing 65c.

In fact I never had any laptop in my life shut down on abttery fo rno reason except if a battery was actually faulty.

 

I was able to surpass the FPS cap on battery thanks to nvidia inspector, it was invalid Battery boost reg value set by nvidia CPL.
65C is hard coded limit in battery firmware once its surpassed you will see sudden drop in CPU clocks and GPU clocks.
Maybe you were lucky!

 

The PSA diagnostic shows battery health is 96% and with ~ 17V when not discharging, and ~16.3V when discharging. It pasts psa tests, although Im not sure its much of a test. But still exhibiting behavior of it shutting down.

On another note, I just ran a cpu benchmark with the AGA gpu plugged in and it didnt shutdown. But when I have it on the dgpu, any cpu or gpu bench will induce a shutdown while on battery.

 

I think express charge is enabled in BIOS.

 

Naw I definitely have express charge off.

 

That's odd. Check DC-IN cable for any burn in or brownouts after disassembling the laptop?

 

Got a replacement battery from the vendor and its the same results. Battery diagnostics look fine. Voltage is between 14 to 17V depending on charge level and battery health is 100%. I have tried about everything I can think of but nothing has resolved this.
- different bios A06 and A09
- clearing cmos battery
- bios options like express/standard charge
- different nvidia drivers/ battery boost on/off
- dc in and battery connectors look fine
- clean windows 10 install

I have noticed that the shutdowns happen when the cpu and gpu combined power is ~55 watts and higher. The shutdowns only occur when on the dgpu, never on the aga gpu. I am not sure what the cpu power limit on battery is, but seems to me the cpu doesnt go past 35 watts when using the aga + cpu on battery. The battery is rated 92Wh, so maybe these batteries cant deliver anywhere close to 90watts.

Under HWinfo sensors, when running dgpu, the section for "Compal EC Alienware 15" shows "CPU" and "GPU1" and shows an red X next to them. But when running on the aga gpu, this section doesn't show anything. Could this be telling of something?

 

If your battery deliver 90W its poof along with AGA and your laptop. You should never stress anything on batteries, have you checked the cells used in the label? ShenZheng aka Simplo is not very good, Sanyo/Panasonic or samsung is good.
55W to 70Watts is possible provided the PCH,CPU temps and GPU temps w/o AGA are below 60C otherwise protection mechanism will be triggered to protect battery from exploding.
Its your good luck that the laptop didn't explode. If you used the current AW laptop just like your older AW you simply can't bypass the FW limited throttling, its by design. Keep it connected to AC power and on battery use Power saver along with Battery saver turned ON to limit temps to 60-65C.

 

Unfortunately I dont ever recall using anything intensive on battery ever in 4 years on this laptop. So I can't recall what is the normal behavior on battery. I always thought it would throttle if the cpu+gpu loads ever got close to the power limit on battery. The temps are good, recently repasted everything and did pch heat transfer mod and all temps look better than ever. Seems like throttling just isnt working when the dgpu is running.

Ive noticed that the cpu doesnt go above 35W on battery during maximum cpu benchmark. But Ive seen the dgpu go up to 40W on battery on a mild gpu benchmark.

 

Latest BIOS version?

 

I have tried A06 and A09. A10 is the latest, but it has the huge spectre fix slowdowns.

 

Use inspectre to disable OS fixes and rely on uCodes patches only as measure of test.