m18X R2 (I know R1 applies as well), Battery Replacement??

Hey Guys,

I've had my m18x R2 for a few years now, and the battery has gone to crap, only holding a charge for about 30 minutes at most, and even the O/S tells me its bad and needs replacement.

Are there ANY higher capacity, longer lasting options out there? I'd love to replace it with something better then the original, any options?

I realize this computer doesnt have modular bays, so there is no place to put a secondary battery, but man I sure could use more lap time with this thing off the charger.

thanks,

Jon

 

Mine lasts around 6 hours on battery if i switch to intel HD, what more do you expect from a 18,4" collosal DTR?

 

holy Sheet, how are you getting 6 mours, dang!! nah, I get like 2.5 max, since I got it, and I do run the intel hd. I wonder if I have too much other **** running.

In any case, no options on a higher capacity battery for the m18x ?

Whats the best place to get the new battery?

 

Dunno, i was watching movies and i was able to view 3 full movies before it went out
Screen brightness set to 10-15% (the 18,4 screen is one of the biggest consumers when it comes to battery life), i close the AlienFX and use balanced power plan, nothing more really. This was on a clean install, so it could have gotten worse now with all the programs running in the background, and my battery is also almost new (5% wear).

I doubt that, the 12 cell is pretty much huge already.

I think http://www.ebay.com/itm/12-Cell-Bat...711471?hash=item58b371f2ef:g:-XEAAOSwGvhT4Awj would be cheapest if you're in the US

 

There are no battery options, and 12 cell is already rather massive. I can get 7 hours if I use power saver, no alienFX, and no wifi, and iGPU

 

7 hours is very very long for that massive beast. Screen is very big and eats a lot of energy. There are two GPUs that you want to turn off (iGPU) before using battery. There's also extreme CPU that you will want to downlock. Battery score is still very good with 7 hours, it's impressive for me.

 

I picked up 2 brand new alienware oem batteries off ebay, and used HWINFO to confirm they were both new (and they were), so thanks everyone. I just didn't want to buy a new battery and find out I should have gotten something bigger.

Appreciate the help!

Jon

 

hey just a quick check, what about something like this as a backup?

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store...anion-18000-mAh---PW7015L/productID.327395300

 

I highly doubt it is anything more than 65W charger, meaning it wont be recognized by M18x as a valid charger and will not charge from it, hardly even run from it :/

 

http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&sku=451-bbmv
No Alienware laptops supported...

 

You're exactly right. It looks like the supported products are low-TDP turdbooks with BGA CPUs and most with nothing but Intel integrated graphics. The capacity of that "Power Companion" would be great for a smartphone or tablet, but nowhere even remotely enough for a powerful laptop.

 

Thanks guys! Just looking for something to make the alienware more 'portable' lol... I did buy 2 batteries for it, so I can swap those around, but it would require shutdown/sleep and wakeup/boot when I swap them.

Thanks everyone!

Jon

 

There is always hibernation

 

lol, true, I should have said that, but its a pain in the ass and even more wasted energy to have it hibernate and then come out of hibernation. But with a power source, I could change the batteries on the fly (which is probably a bad idea some will tell me lol)

 

Hibernation actually doesnt consume any energy at all xD.... it writes data from ram to HDD and does a full shutdown, then when you turn it on, if it see that the hibernation data exists it just feeds it back to RAM

 

lol, thanks I understand that But the 'energy' spent doing the 'sleep activity' of writing to the disks, and shutting it down, and then 30 seconds later, again wastes energy as you have to read the hard drive again, and load everything back up into memory, when 30 seconds ago it was all already there. Thats what im talking about, no the 'static' state its in once its at rest, but the power used to put it to sleep and wake it up again, especially when we are talking about doing this in a 5 minute period as your are simply trying to do a battery swap.

Again, been doing lappys myself for about 20 years, so pretty knowledgeable about the states, I also am aware my 'concern' on wasted consumption in that brief 5 minute period between switching states is minimal, but as a purest, I'd rather just have the ability to do a live swap (while away from an actual power outlet), which is why I was wondering if that portable charger would have worked. I've notice when I use other DELL chargers on my alienware, it wont CHARGE IT, but it will most certainly keep it up and running. So maybe buying one of those is worth trying it out?

 

Ok, yeah if you think about ti that way, i guess you can go ahead and try... i think the M18x shouldnt consume more than 50W when on battery (typically around 30W for me), so the charger might work for a quick switch.
imho, it's just not worth spending that much for a minimal power loss of about 2,3 minutes xD..

 

Thanks Max, no I agree, it really wouldn't be for a 2-3 min power save, its that I would use it as the battery for a while, but would NOT expect it to charge any battery, just instead just be a 'sustaining' power supply to keep the laptop up and running (no gaming), until I swap in a good charged stock battery.

Again, thanks for the feedback and understanding, in the end I still think you are right, its probably not worth it. If it also charged, then it would be worth more, but to use it as a temporary supply (if the cord popped out), then I'd immediately go down hard, is probably not a good model.

Appreciate the conversation!

Jon

 

The problem with external packs is that hardly any of them can deliver the minimum watts required to power DTRs. Same problem applies to the battery pack itself, btw, hence behemoth DTR -> behemoth battery. Did a search a while ago for something that could power a heavy cad station and ran into this thing; MP290. But even that can 'only' do 90W max., though you could splice two or three together.

An alternative is to pimp the current battery pack with better cells. There's 2,200 mAh cells inside this particular pack; (98Wh/12 cells)/3.7V each, which is about mediocre. Not bad, but certainly not the best either. The pinnacle would be 3,400 mAh, a 55% increase in capacity. Of course; about twice as expensive, so they wouldn't have been a likely choice for a DTR (raw watts are all that matters, not endurance). Swapped my 2,800 cells for 3,400 cells a few weeks ago and ordered another six for a 2,600 -> 3,400 project as well. That was $45, so for a 12-cell expect ~$90 and some effort/time.

Hoped to have made a quick guide by now, but stuff got in the way, so ... soonish™. Anyway, it requires a soldering iron and multimeter. If the plastic casing is glued together (instead of clipped) then a rotary tool is most useful, though a box cutter (+frustration/cursing/bandages) might do in a pinch.

 

COUNT ME IN! Thats what I was originally looking for in the market is an aftermarket manufacturer that boosted the stock packs with more juice!! Sign me up!! You tell me what I need to buy and what I need to do to get it to work, and I'm in! I have my ORIGINAL one that's shot, so its a good guinea pig, let me know! I'm definitely interested!

Thanks,

Jon

 

Heh, quite the enthusiast .

You want twelve of these cells; Panasonic NCR18650B 3400mAh. Well ... that is, check your pack uses 18650s first and not pouch type. Unlikely in a non-ultrabook/non-Apple, but it still happens. Anyway, you need to pry open the casing, so either clips (screwdriver) or a knife/dremel. Good practice is to drain the pack first in order to minimise any shorting hiccups due to inadvertently overshooting the screwdriver/box-cutter.

When verified; check ebay or something for sources. Better order with tabs; batteries are a pain to solder and the joint is prone to break later on. The tabs are tinned and quite easy to work with, even with a low-temperature iron. Also; check they're listed as 'unprotected'. Protected cells have a tiny, 2mm pcb stacked on top and this will get in the way (space is in short supply) and voltage protection is superfluous anyway since the pack's pcb handles that. Don't buy anything under ~$7.50/piece. There are sellers re-wrapping used cells with a fresh sticker or even soldering used cells inside brand new plastic casings .

 

ok cracked open the battery and its got 12 (as you suspected) ICR18650-22HU in them (made by Samsung)

But your saying the factory board will know how to charge these higher capacity batteries?

And yes, you are completely correct, if the batteries dont have a built in soldering point, they are an absolute ***** to get soldered AND are prone to popping free with the lightest of jaring (this is a laptop after all).

So I can see this is going to be a bit of a project to solder all 12 of them in the right configuration, but I'm TOTALLY down with doing this, if you tell me its going to work. lol. If I go through all of this to have the same capacity as my old layout I'm going to be major bummed!

Any recommendations for specific units to buy (ebay listing or particular partnumber/website to get them from) ??

Thanks!

Jon

 

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=Panasonic+NCR18650B+3400mAh&_sop=1

Can you point out the ones I should get ?

 

Ok, that sounds interesting... that would potentially mean about 9hours of battery life on this machine ...
I might be tempted to try this as well How hard was it to open the pack?

 

Those are good quality batteries (since they deliver as promised, which isn't a given). But the 2,200 vs. 3,400 will make a difference:

Spoiler: Samsung ICR18650-22HU vs. Panasonic NCR18650B 3400mAh

The firmware inside the casing doesn't know what capacity cells are inside and will keep charging blindly until it reaches the voltage ceiling (~4.2V). A low-capacity (or worn) cell will simply reach that ceiling sooner (internal resistance creeps up faster). With the 3,400 it'll take longer to charge and, of course, to de-charge . One thing that will be 'off' is Wh report in the OS since that is based on the battery firmware's value. There's flashing software for that, but it's merely a cosmetic thing; consider the ' 65Wh/100%-charge-left-5-min-shutdown'-effect. Same reason; the battery circuit is blind (barring an occasional calibration).

It worked with mine, so ... and the new project should be about +30%. Will know that in a week or two.

Ordered from this seller's listing. Some were a wee bit cheaper, but these were fine so got the other batch from them as well.

Btw, there might be some additional wires inside the pack:

Spoiler: possible configuration

 

Ok, 12 of them ordered looking forward to this little project!

Thanks,

Jon

 

Anyone got a dead battery? ... i'd prefer not to ruin mine, it's almost new, but i do want to try and make a stronger battery .

How would one go about flashing battery firmware values?

 

Yeah, I definitely would NOT destroy a good battery, hell I have 2 brand new ones, and I still decided to do this out of curiosity. But I DID use my nearly dead one to do this project and will keep the new ones as 'nice to haves' as one is already being stored in my refrigerator and 40% charge for some years use down the road if needed.

Thanks!

Jon

 

See Smart Battery Workshop.

Any eeprom programmer is fine, yet you need something to decode the binary file to something readable. Alternative is to keep the battery specifications next to the binary and hex-tinker the proper values directly.

 

I have BlackCat USB, will that be ok?
Guess i'm in the market for a dead battery

 

Yes, knock yourself out .

The item you may want to change is on page 32; 5.1.23 DesignCapacity. However, this is merely the Wh report in the OS and serves no actual function in the charging process. Really, the only value you could change that will have an effect is 5.2.2 ChargingVoltage (page 37). This is the maximum voltage the charger is allowed to supply and could be set safely at 4350 mV (if it isn't already). A 10% increase here is a ~10% increase in capacity or a lot of smoke and such. Though the max. operating temperature and a specific fuse ought to prevent excessive overcharge ... in theory.

 

Awesome ... Higher voltage means it will charge faster at same current right? ... But won't that shorten the cell lifespan?

 

Close, but no; the charger supplies x amperes (which you can also specify in the fw; ChargingCurrent) at an indeterminate voltage. When the cell is empty it will need only base voltage to deliver those amps, yet charging the cell increases its internal resistance and the voltage necessary to supply the x amp will creep up slowly. At a certain point it reaches that Vmax (ChargingVoltage) and the amperes will drop to zero, at which time the battery is considered 'full' and charging stops completely.

Hence changing ChargingCurrent (x amps) will increase charging speed and ChargingVoltage (V max) will do the same for total capacity. Both will shorten lifespan, though.

 

There: Guide: replacing and upgrading laptop batteries.

 

Well all my stuff came in, and the project is ready to go, with one exception, I just dont have time to do it right now

If anyone wants to take this off my hands, you can have an already opened (ready to go) stock battery case AND all the new batteries needed to create this MEGA battery pack for $100 plus shipping.

Just let me know,

Jon