The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Any hard data about battery life if upgrade RAM on X230?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by atczhl, Dec 15, 2012.

  1. atczhl

    atczhl Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    12
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I'm debating about whether or not I should upgrade the ram from 4G to 8G on my Lenovo X230. I've been searching on the web about how this would effect the battery life, but it seems that all the comments are either qualitative and anecdotal rather than quantitative. Does anyone have any hard data about this?
     
    atczhl, Dec 15, 2012
    #1
  2. Flickster

    Flickster Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    104
    Messages:
    335
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    31
    I honestly doubt that you would notice it that much. If you are really worried just get a single 8GB module rather than x2 4GB and low voltage ram.

    If you are comparing a single 4GB dimm to a 8GB, like I said before, I doubt you will notice it. I wouldn't worry about it.
     
    Flickster, Dec 15, 2012
    #2
  3. atczhl

    atczhl Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    12
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    What about if it was x2 4GB instead of a single 8GB?
     
    atczhl, Dec 15, 2012
    #3
  4. Commander Wolf

    Commander Wolf can i haz broadwell?

    Reputations:
    2,962
    Messages:
    8,231
    Likes Received:
    63
    Trophy Points:
    216
    In general going from 1 dimm to 2 dimms will indeed increase power consumption by a small amount. I just did a quick test on my x220t and I got about 5.5w with 1 dimm and 5.8w with 2 dimms. These are fairly rough numbers as I'm just watching the little line in perfmon, but I think in general you can see about a quarter to a third of a watt difference at idle. Obviously your mileage may vary depending on what you are doing and what exact dimms you have (I'm using a fairly vanilla set of 1333MHz 2GB dimms), but I wouldn't really worry about it until that quarter/third of a watt becomes a significant percentage of your total power use.
     
    Commander Wolf, Dec 15, 2012
    #4