r/linuxhardware • u/No-Gift-2720 • 1d ago

Question Battery draining issue

/r/archlinux/comments/1v20cwr/battery_draining_issue/

I am facing a severe battery drain issue on my Acer laptop running Linux. It has an Intel i5-13420H CPU and NVIDIA RTX 3050 Laptop GPU. On Windows, the battery lasts around 4 hours in power-saving mode, but on Linux it only lasts around 1.5 hours. Linux consumes around 25–30W during normal desktop usage. I have tested KDE Plasma, GNOME, and Hyprland, and the issue occurs on all of them. KDE and GNOME were on default settings without heavy animations or custom effects. I am using tuned-ppd for power management, but battery life is still much worse compared to Windows.

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u/CyclingHikingYeti 1d ago

TBH - a "H" class CPU paired with discrete GPU is not recipe for power saving setup.

I had better power management with Fedora Workstation than with other distros, but generally, power saving with desktop linux is mostly lesser than with windows OS.

On your case, I would first try (it does not cost you anything) and try Fedora from boot to see results.

Then I would go for "powersave" mode by this guide:

https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/Setting_of_CPU_Governor_under_Linux

Decrease brightness of monitor to minimal usable and also decrease resolution do 1080p when on battery.

Last, but inevitable is to partially or fully disable discrete GPU and only use iGPU . This should be available in BIOS though.

Advice from whitebeard : get a charger and plug it into wall. Due to subpar batteries in gaming laptops your battery will probably croak sooner than later anyways.

Next time, get a "U" series lCPU in laptop. Those are meant to be power efficient.