Razer Blade 2013 : improving battery life -> C-States, BIOS, ASPM ?

Hi all,

I am an owner of a Blade 14 from 2013. I mainly used it plugged in these last years, but I am now going to use it more as an ultrabook than as a gaming machine. I recently changed the battery (which was pretty weared) for that purpose. While checking everything, I noticed that my Blade couldn't get more than 4 hours of battery life in extreme power saving mode (more or less idle, screen at lowest brightness, power saving mode etc...).

According to Batterybarpro (neat utility to check the discharge rate), I'm around -14-17k mW on idle, far from the 8-9k mW I remember I used to have a few years ago (which should give the around 6-7 hours battery life it had back in 2013).

I also downloaded Throttlestop to undervolt my CPU, and noticed that it never reached the C6/C7 c-states, with package power around 3-4W minimum. According to http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...e-on-windows-enabling-deeper-c-states.815602/, which I followed quite thoroughly, I should be able to have a consumption <1W at idle, so a -3k mW decrease, which should help go from 14 to 11k and get a couple extra hours of battery life.
I tried pretty much everything (drivers, services etc.) to see what prevented my CPU from not going into deeper C-States, none worked. For that purpose, I decided to completely reinstall Windows, but it didn't help.

Another thing I noticed, in the energy-report, was that a USB composite device was not entering selective suspend. I tried to uninstalled it from the Device Manager, but it made my trackpad and keyboard stopped, and reinstalled automatically after the next reboot. So I guess that's the reason for it not entering suspend, but who knows.
Also, the report says that PCI-express active power state management (ASPM) is disabled (PCI Express Active-State Power Management (ASPM) has been disabled due to a known incompatibility with the hardware in this computer.).
From what I read on the internet, it can impact battery life and maybe the C-States, but it's mainly for the d-GPU which is off most of the times thanks to Nvidia Optimus.

Last but not least, I think (but not sure) that a few months ago the battery drain was less worse than now, around the 8-9k mW I had (but I didn't really cared back then). The only major thing that happened since then was the Spring Creators update.

So my questions are :
Is it possible that the C6/C7 c-states are disabled in the BIOS ? if so, is it possible to enable them (couldn't find any modded BIOS of the 2013 Razer Blade - the original one doesn't give any option regarding CPU/C-State etc) ?
If C6/C7 were already disabled back in 2013, how come my Blade use so much power at idle ?
How can I enable ASPM ? Is it the cause of all that ?
Is it possible that a Windows update (Spring Creators) messed up with the Blade ? (Can't be a program I recently installed since I re-formatted and reinstalled everything yesterday).

Overall, other 2013 Blade owners, how are your idle discharge rate, battery life, C-States ?

Hoping for your help and thanks for reading this long post.
Regards,

Guillaume

 

Here are 2 screenshots of the Taskmanager/Throttlestop (C-states) and the energy-report.

 

Seems like the highest C-state is set to C7s in the BIOS, yes you can change it to Auto or C10 if you unlock the BIOS, I believe that @stranula is the guy that has done the unlock part, I tag him here, hopefully he sees.

 

I'd be glad if my computer went to C7s. C10 seems quite unlikely on Haswell. The real question is : even if C7s is the highest possible on the BIOS, why do my CPUs won't go that far ? Or maybe I don't understand everything ...
Thanks for your help though, and I hope Stranula will see this message.

 

Wow it's my first time seeing old Blade user Yes I remember on my previous Blade 2017 battery life down around 40% after spring update. Maybe if you want under -10kW you should use older windows version or maybe original window that comes with it 8.1? Btw I'm stuck also at -17kW on Blade 15 that made it only not 5 hours battery life. Maybe you should wait and look in a week, I heard also on first week installation and windows install it'll get sometime till windowd report the battery life correctly...which I hoped last month

 

I assumed your laptop has a SATAIII controller (AHCI controller)? Are you using Intel chipset driver? Just curious, I know some people found that they are using the driver provided by Microsoft when they check in the device manager which may have chance preventing the CPU package to enter deeper C-state.

Also, you might find this thread useful, very nice thread wrote by @Che0063:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...e-on-windows-enabling-deeper-c-states.815602/

 

As written in my first post ( ), I thoroughly followed this guide, and the right drivers are installed. Thanks for your help though.

@Jokansai : I might try reinstalling an older version of Windows. Quite painful though, as i recently finished to reinstall everything. Hope it'll work and be worth the time doing it...!
Thanks for your insight

 

My Machine is GS65, I was able to do some digging in the BIOS, there's a setting called Native ASPM under the RC ACPI page, I believe Razer has similar option inside that BIOS too, but maybe only accessible through unlocked BIOS.

The description of Native ASPM is:

Enabled - OS Controlled ASPM, Disabled - BIOS Controlled ASPM

When I set Native ASPM to Enabled, I was able to reproduce your problem, the highest it'd go to is only C3, but when I set Native ASPM to Disabled, it can go up to C8 no problem, maybe you can see if you can find a way to unlock your BIOS and see if this is the cause.

 

Thank you for that ! Sorry for the delay of my answer, thought the thread had died...

I should definitely check it..! the only problem being I can't find any unlocked Razer Blade 2013 BIOS on the internet ...
Someone reading this having knowing any BIOS database ?
I guess asking Razer won't help, they are not really "modified-system" friendly ...

edit : eventually found one a few threads below (luckily someone posted it a few weeks ago!). Hope it's unlocked, and will definitely try the Disable ASPM.