Reduce Z96J Power Consumption <15W!! (3:30 on 6-cell)

Hello everyone,

I recently found that by disabling hardware with hardware manager in windows xp, I was able to decrease the discharge rate of my battery from ~22W to under 15W. With a 6-cell, it should be possible to get close to, if not more than, three hours and thirty minutes. Unfortunately, the capacity of my 6-cell is 83% of the original capacity, due to being discharged almost every day for the last year and a half. I was, however, able to pull off just over three hours, even with the worn battery. I was also able to get well over five hours on my 9-cell, which still holds close to the designed capacity.

In order to consume less than 15W, you must turn off wireless and bluetooth, lower screen brightness to nearly off(2 or 3 notches above min), powerplay enabled, and max powersaving for your processor enabled, with minimum system load.

This results in a discharge rate of roughly 22W. What you must do now is disable hardware in xp's hardware manager.

The biggest difference is made by disabling the bluetooth, and all the usb controllers. I believe the reason the z96j gets such poor battery life relative to the s96j is that the bluetooth does not poweroff properly. However, the bluetooth is connected via internel usb, and disabling the usb controllers cuts power from bluetooth, as well as the webcam(also connected via usb). However, once you do this, you will not be able to use usb devices until you enable the usb controllers in hardware manager.

I also disabled the cd drive, the Ricoh multimedia card reader controllers, the 1394 controller, wireless card, ethernet, all BT com ports, the sd host controller, the sound card, and the UAA bus driver.

I know that many people will not want to use their computer like this, but it is perfect for me for taking notes in class.

Also, it should be noted that it is possible to get roughly 3 hours on a 6-cell with about half brightness. You could probably get close to 3 hours with the screen at comfortable brightness and wireless turned on.

I hope someone finds this helpful.

 

Thanks JPZ! Nice job.

I personally already use low brightness and have disabled many of the features in my v1jp that i don't use, like the webcam and firewire port.

You stated that you can disable the USB controller, but how do u know which controller? I do need all 3 of my USB ports, I understand the USB Root Hubs, did u disable those too?

The lowest discharge rate I ever got on average was ~25W, I would love to get 20W.

Aside I do keep my Wifi on...in class since you never know when ur bored and wanna check something out.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

I have all my usb controllers disabled unless I use them. Even if you don't have anything connected, they still use power. Not as much power as a usb device, but they do consume power.

Keep in mind that you could significantly increase your battery life if you did not have to use usb devices. A usb device can draw up to 500ma at 5V, which is 2 and a half watts per device. Most devices do not use this much power, but still, you could probably lower power draw from 25W to between 20W and 23W just by removing usb devices.

Also, I tend not to use my wireless in school, but there are times when I want to access the internet. When this happens, I just re-enable the wireless card, and disable it when I am done.

If you have devices connected via usb and they are powered on, you should be able to find which hub they are on within device manager. If you click info on each hub, there should be a tab giving your power information. There should be a list of all devices connected to that hub, and how much power they require.

This can also be done under linux using various methods. I also run Gentoo on my z96j, but I haven't had time to try to lower power consumption below 20W under Gentoo.

 

thx for your useful information,,i will try this at school if i forgot my adapter.