1

Elementary OS is installed on my hard disk drive.

All the Debian based Linux distros I have tried out, including Elementary have one common issue - the battery consumption is huge, compared to the amount of battery Windows consumes. My laptop doesn't have great battery performance, but when Windows runs on it, and I'm doing lightweight stuff, it easily lasts for 4 to 4.5 hours. With Elementary, it hardly lasts for 2 hours.

Is this because I am installing the Linux distros on the HDD?

My laptop - the Acer Nitro 5 AN515-51 - has a 128 GB NVME SSD and a 1 TB HDD. Since I use a few Adobe softwares and other Windows-only Softwares, I don't want to remove Windows from the SSD partition and install it on the HDD.

If anyone can help, could you please give me answers to the following:

  • I might consider getting a SATA SSD to replace the current 1 TB HDD, but, will that help with the battery consumption issue?
  • I have tried out tlp, but that doesn't cause much of a difference. Are there any other ways to deal with this?
Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

My experience with low battery life on Linux has been that the two main culprits are the Video card and the screen. You can't do much about the second if you have a 4k screen.

However, the Video card problem is mainly a combination of two issues:

  1. The Nvidia proprietary drivers for Linux are not as optimized as that for Windows. This causes high power usage (15W plus on my system; use powertop to see for yours) whenever the system is using the video card. So, I just switch off the video card unless I have to play any games ( I know it's a bad solution, but it works).

    sudo prime-select intel # Log out and log back in after this

    This brings down the power consumption on my laptop from 15W+ to less than 10W.

  2. Depending on the driver version you have installed, the above fix may or may not work for you. Here is the temporary workaround to get it working and here are the instructions to try out the official fix in Ubuntu.

Improve this answer
1
  • Thanks a lot. This might have helped. I'll still need to check out the second issue. But, this is something I haven't tried before. Thanks a lot!
    – NovoBook
    Jan 28, 2019 at 15:08
1

My experience is that poor power consumption is caused by the video card running too hot and not knowing when to slow down.

Have you tried to install a video driver to your video card?

Try installing the driver for your: GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti

Improve this answer
2
  • Thanks! I'll check this out. I have a GTX 1050 though.
    – NovoBook
    Jan 26, 2019 at 7:47
  • the fan constantly keeps running, even when I'm not doing graphics intensive work - like coding (for web dev), or watching movies, or simply browsing the web.
    – NovoBook
    Jan 26, 2019 at 7:49

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.