Dell XPS Battery Life Optimization

ORIGINAL POST

I currently have a 2021 XPS 15 9510 with an OLED screen that I use for school and casual gaming. A lot of users of my model complain of short battery life, so here are MY tips that completely made a night-and-day difference for my battery life WITHOUT losing performance. I now get 6 hours watching videos on YouTube at 4K, at FULL BRIGHTNESS.

Check your battery health, sometimes the battery from the factory is defective. You can do this by running the “powercfg /batteryreport” command in CMD prompt, and dividing the current capacity by the designed capacity. If it’s less than 100% out of the box, send it to Dell for Warranty replacement, you paid for it new, so you deserve a new battery.
Clean Install Windows 11, and by that I mean completely reinstall it from a USB drive, and delete ALL partitions. This removes the bloatware that Dell puts in there, which uses quite a bit of CPU power in the background, you don’t need 90% of that crap. This will also free up some RAM and storage for you.
Disable BitLocker and Killer Network Service if you don’t need it. Killer Service is especially a big CPU and RAM hog, and it caused more problems for me for connection with than without.
If you have the OLED screen, USE DARK MODE, on everything! I cannot stress this enough. Install a chrome extension that makes every site you visit dark. The one I use is called Dark Reader. It lets you crank the screen to max brightness with very minimal battery life impact, unlike light mode which will eat through your battery even on 80% brightness.
Install ThrottleStop, set the mode to “power saver”, and check “disable turbo boost”. This will limit the voltage and speed of the CPU when on battery, which helps a LOT! You don’t need more speed when doing productivity tasks at school or work. When plugged in and gaming use the performance mode.
If you have a discrete GPU, in my case RTX 3050 Ti, make sure it’s off for anything non-gaming or non-3D related. Like actually off off. You can do this in NVidia control panel.
Set the laptop to HIBERNATE on lid close, not sleep. There is a big difference. Hibernate takes a bit more to boot up, but less than from shut down and takes much less power than sleep. Its also more secure because the Lock Screen pops up on boot up.
Make sure your keyboard backlight is off when it’s not dark around you.
Keep the battery cool when doing heavy tasks like gaming by using a cooling pad or elevating the back so the intakes have air and the hot exhaust can rise up. High heat permanently destroys lithium ion batteries, and LiPo batteries like the ones found in laptops are especially sensitive to heat. Every few years, put on new thermal paste (Gelid GC Extreme is a great option). Never game on battery power alone.
Set your battery to charge to a maximum of 90%, and don’t let it drop below 10%. This gives you more room to work with than 80-20 while still not charging to full and discharging to empty.

Do ALL these things and I guarantee you will see a huge difference in your battery life.

12 replies

eslforchinesespeaker · 4 months ago

wow. sounds good. that report has a ton of daily detail, which i assume is not generally useful. basically, we want to compare "design capacity" (intended), vs "full charge" (what we're getting now).

we want to look at the last line in the report?

Since OS install

At Full Charge

Active	Connected Standby
3:26:13	19:18:39
	83 % / 16 h

At Design Capacity

|Active|Connected Standby| |---|---| |5:40:13|31:51:27| ||50 % / 16 h|

So what do i have left? i'm running at 50% of theoretical capacity? and 83% of what capacity?

2 upvotes on reddit

TrueScooterDom · OP · 4 months ago

Yes correct. You want to divide full charge capacity by design capacity, in my case 84 Wh. Run this in CMD: “powercfg /batteryreport” Then copy the HTML file path, find it and open it. Divide the full charge capacity by design capacity, multiple by 100 and you get your battery health percentage.

2 upvotes on reddit

Most_Studio_3612 · 3 months ago

I owned a Dell XPS 9500 4k since 2020. It's still my daily driver. I upgraded the ram to 64gb and second SD slot 512 gb . I recently repasted the CPU and GPU , honestly it was super easy. Just followed along a youtube video. I use Throttlestop 9.2 I set the Multiplier at 20 , Disable Turbo, BD Prochot checked, Speedsep checked and C1E checked. My CPU and GPU Idles between 39 - 50 Celcius. I still can game on this laptop. Battery life is at 21% still gives me 2 hours of battery life just watching shows. I just ordered a battery for 40 bucks on ebay. I think this laptop will continue to hold up for a long time. Maybe an other five years to be honest with you.

1 upvotes on reddit

farrellts · 4 months ago

This is some very interesting recommendations which come at a good time for me since I'm having battery issues with the kind of bizarre XPS 16 (refurbished) which Dell sent me in replacement for my beloved but faulty XPS 15. But I have a question for you: I'm aware of the Killer interface for network but had not realized it was something that I could separate from network operations as a whole. Do you know what it actually does? Besides bothering me about things it says I ought to do like buy a new router? So it has nothing to do with the operation of tcpip and so on?

2 upvotes on reddit

TrueScooterDom · OP · 4 months ago

From what I can tell, I’m pretty sure it’s just some bloatware that the wifi card comes that is supposed to prioritize some of the incoming bandwidth for certain tasks like gaming or streaming movies, but I had only positive experiences disabling it and lots of negative experiences with it enabled, so I disabled it. You don’t need it for wifi connectivity anyway because Intels own drivers handle that.

2 upvotes on reddit

farrellts · 4 months ago

You make good points about the Intel drivers handling the whole thing, though I do believe that "Killer" is an Intel trademark in this regard, so it's their own brand of bloatware. So did you just disable the services with" Killer" in their names?

1 upvotes on reddit

megamorphg · 4 months ago

Thermal paste on what? The battery?
Also, I recommend opening it up and dusting and cleaning it out once a year.

1 upvotes on reddit

TrueScooterDom · OP · 4 months ago

On the CPU and GPU dies good sir, that will keep heat away from the battery and move it towards the exhaust through the heat pipes.

2 upvotes on reddit

megamorphg · 4 months ago

Didn't realize those were exposed, I know how to do it on a desktop but is that safe to do on a laptop?

1 upvotes on reddit

PerkyDreamin · 4 months ago

Or you could just buy a MacBook and not have to worry about it. After 3 years I finally made the switch and now my life is fire

4 upvotes on reddit

NoDoor7118 · 4 months ago

MacBooks aren't viable if your an engineer though

3 upvotes on reddit

PerkyDreamin · 4 months ago

true, I've only seen MechE's require windows though. Its been fine so far as CompE

1 upvotes on reddit

See 12 replies

r/Dell • [2]

Summarize

Optimise XPS 15 OLED Battery runtimes?

Posted by [deleted] · in r/Dell · 5 years ago

Are there ways to optimise the OLED variant of the XPS 15 to hit around 8 hours of use, like speedshift settings, disabling turbo on battery etc or using predominantly dark backgrounds and dark mode?

1 upvotes on reddit

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5 replies

Jimmyl101 · 5 years ago

They are some good options. I use dark mode out of preference and have disabled turbo boost on mine (mainly for thermals). Getting some really good battery life still, probably near the 8 hour mark for light tasks.

1 upvotes on reddit

[deleted] · 5 years ago

What about media consumption like going between youtube with its inbuilt dark mode?

1 upvotes on reddit

Jimmyl101 · 5 years ago

Just checked with a battery report, I am averaging between 6-8 hours (mostly 6 hours) over the past couple of weeks and would watch a lot of 4k video on youtube.

Full charge capacity is 87.4 mWh of a designed 97 mWh

1 upvotes on reddit

letsmodpcs · 5 years ago

I can get 8hrs out of my XPS 15 OLED, but I have to be intentional about it. I'm using TS (ThrottleStop) to undervolt. I have a battery and an AC profile. On battery I disable turbo and set Speed Shift to 200. (Not gonna get into how to use TS here - lots of good in-depth articles on the web.)

I run dark mode where I can. Also consider using MS Edge (the new one, not the old one) as MS is pretty good about minimizing power consumption in their browsers - esp while streaming video. (I still mostly use Chrome, but if I were wanting the absolute best battery run time, I lean heavily on Edge.)

Since we're all in quarantine right now - every videoconferencing app I've used is a huge power suck. Slack video, Google Hangouts, Zoom (these are the three I'm mostly on.) Don't expect good battery life while using these.

1 upvotes on reddit

[deleted] · 5 years ago

What about watching 1080p videos over time?

1 upvotes on reddit

See 5 replies

r/techsupport • [3]

Summarize

Replaced battery but life barely changed

Posted by Temporary-Flatworm83 · in r/techsupport · 1 month ago

I've had this Dell XPS 15 for between 3-4 years and the battery life became super short, lasting under an hour while running my common software's. I tried all the go-to life save saver methods; Battery saver mode, lower-performance for extended life, cleared out some memory-fillers, and always having brightness as low as possible.

Recently I got fed up so I replaced the battery, along with cleaning out the fans and replacing the thermal paste (well needed). After everything the life is technically improved, but still only lasting maybe 2 to 2 and a half hours.

Is there anything else I can do to improve the life, or is this the best it's getting until I need to get a new one?

Note: I use this laptop for school and honestly just need this to carry me through another 3 years if possible, so I would prefer avoiding any high expense repairs

UPDATE: Battery Report Images https://imgur.com/gallery/battery-report-fdIGg2y

The battery was replaced on 7/29, so reports before then are from previous battery.

1 upvotes on reddit

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SameCartographer2075 · 1 month ago

Where did you get the new battery from? Is it a genuine Dell battery?

Run a battery report as described here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/caring-for-your-battery-in-windows-2db3e37f-5e7d-488e-9086-ed15320519e4

1 upvotes on reddit

Temporary-Flatworm83 · OP · 1 month ago

Yes, I got directly from Dell. It's a 3-cell 56 Wh replacement

1 upvotes on reddit

SameCartographer2075 · 1 month ago

What does the battery test say?

1 upvotes on reddit

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r/DellXPS • [4]

Summarize

Battery life on XPS 15?

Posted by farrellts · in r/DellXPS · 8 months ago

Dell states that the battery on my XPS 15 9530 is supposed to be 14 hours. It was not even close to that when I received the unit back in August. Then and now I get between 7 to 9 hours, depending on how I am using my laptop. Is Dell just fooling us with this 14-hour thing? Should I utilize the one year warranty which comes with the unit and ask them to replace the battery?

I do keep the screen pretty bright and I know that eats up more battery then a dimmer screen. But honestly, but all I'm doing is just editing in a Word and Excel, along with using File Explorer and Chrome, maybe read some emails or PDF files sometimes. I do keep a number of applications open at the same time. Still, how much battery can that eat up? (For something more computationally intensive, such as video rendering or compiling code, I have the unit plugged in.)

So ... is Dell just lying to us? 7 to 9 hours between charges is great, but I'd rather have 14!

1 upvotes on reddit

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9 replies

ClippyGuy · 8 months ago

dell runs a test and gets 14 hours by using the 1080p version with the GPU off idle on the desktop, that's how they get 14 hours (and battery saver configs that would make the computer unusable)

1 upvotes on reddit

farrellts · OP · 8 months ago

That's funny! Thanks for the explanation.

1 upvotes on reddit

Skubeeraw · 8 months ago

you finally crawled out of your cave? it's the same with EPA car MPG. it's in a tested environment, not real world estimate. they had it on battery saving, lowest brightness, looping a simple video with everything like bt and wifi turned off so yeah, technically, the battery can last 14hrs.

1 upvotes on reddit

farrellts · OP · 8 months ago

Called out of my cave? I don't have a cave. Do you?

1 upvotes on reddit

Skubeeraw · 8 months ago

lol, first time on the internet? y u mad tho?

reading comprehension skills isn't your thing. let me break out the crayons for you. you posted that you were upset that dell states the batteries lasted longer than they claim, even stating "is Dell just lying to us?"

I'm just stating the facts to you that PC manufacturers are not the only ones testing their claims in a controlled environment, car makers have been doing it since the mid 70's. Everyone knows their F-150 doesn't get the mileage that Ford claims, but cruising on a flat tack with everything off, windows rolled up at a steady speed of 45 on a clear crisp day on a base model that has no features to weigh down the car can get you the mileage.

hence, where have you been since the 1970's? Car makers do a controlled environment testing, same thing with pc makers.

don't get your panties in a bunch for just a quip about you crawling from a cave.

1 upvotes on reddit

Popular-Ad-9134 · 8 months ago

Battery life on my device anything between 1-3.5 hours. The later being watching something like Netflix. Its completly unrealistic.

1 upvotes on reddit

Skubeeraw · 8 months ago

it can. you have wifi turned on and watching HD streaming video. you have to turn everything off, lowest brightness, and looping a simple video.

1 upvotes on reddit

CommanderKeen27 · 8 months ago

That's not real. It will go between 4-5 hours realistically speaking.

2 upvotes on reddit

CreamOdd7966 · 8 months ago

Dell tests battery life in best conditions- you will not get 14 hours without significant tweaking.

1 upvotes on reddit

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r/Dell • [5]

Summarize

XPS 15 7590 - How to optimize battery life?

Posted by JoeKoh · in r/Dell · 6 years ago

I'm curious about what kind of battery/power settings people are using and how that affects the battery life. I'm on an i7 4k OLED model and would like to optimize my battery life as much as I can without crippling the performance. Any recommendations for effective ways to do this?

3 upvotes on reddit

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7 replies

StandAloneComplexed · 6 years ago

This article might give you a few hints. In a nutshell, avoid charging/discharging your battery completely, and try to keep it between 50 and 80%. Using a threshold above which the battery doesn't charge anymore, and a lower threshold it should reach before charging again can easily double or triple its life cycle.

For the same reason, avoid this trick to use the default margin security, as this would indeed give your battery more capacity on the short term, at the cost of greatly diminishing its lifecycle.

4 upvotes on reddit

JoeKoh · OP · 6 years ago

Does that mean I should charge my laptop back up to 80% whenever it hits 50%? Also, by altering the power manager settings to limit charging to 80%, it will stay at that point and run off AC power while plugged in, correct?

Btw have you tried doing a battery calibration? I'm thinking about trying it out since my battery shows only 87 WHr capacity.

1 upvotes on reddit

StandAloneComplexed · 6 years ago

> Does that mean ...

Yes.

>Btw have you tried doing a battery calibration? I'm thinking about trying it out since my battery shows only 87 WHr capacity.

No, because as stated above, this is exactly what would kill your long term battery life. This margin exists for a reason. Unless you don't mind buying a new battery in just a few months, don't do it.

1 upvotes on reddit

howyoudoin06 · 6 years ago

Since I have not applied that trick, I have chosen to already not use 10% of my battery capacity. Does that mean I can regularly charge upto 90% instead of 80%?

1 upvotes on reddit

StandAloneComplexed · 6 years ago

By default the 100% charge displayed is about 90% of the battery with the marge of security. But you can further improve long term battery life by lowering that number. In a nutshell, avoid the extremes to get more of your battery long term, at the cost of less available energy per charge.

1 upvotes on reddit

StandAloneComplexed · 6 years ago

Also, since you have an OLED display: use dark theme everywhere. There isn't you can do much with it unfortunately, since OLED consumes less energy with dark/black color but much more when displaying bright pixels.

2 upvotes on reddit

DellCares · 6 years ago

Hello,

Here is a general article on how to improve the battery performance https://dell.to/2OP6ZyB

Also, a video on how to extend the battery life https://dell.to/2OMhl29 ^SA

3 upvotes on reddit

See 7 replies

r/DellXPS • [6]

Summarize

Dell XPS 15 Battery drain FIXED

Posted by Active-Rip-888 · in r/DellXPS · 5 months ago

I have been trying for the past months fix my xps 15 battery drain. I changed the battery, undervolted my CPU, reapplied thermal paste all for nothing.

Until recently when I decided to try a clean install of windows 11. I installed it, set the region to World in the installer to get no bloatware and after it was done I only installed the windows updates nothing more. My battery life went from 2 hours max to 7-8 hours. Turns out it was the dell drivers. The laptop runs perfectly with only the updates installed by windows.

I do recommend turning of the dGPU when not using it, it tends to use it instead of the iGPU when love running the laptop. So yeah, just do a clean install of windows, delete any bloatware and you are good to go.I am on the latest bio if anyone is wondering and I also use throttlestop to undervolt. If you have any questions please leave a comment.

8 upvotes on reddit

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6 replies

Reguladr · 5 months ago

How are you undervolting? On my 9510 they disabled it.

2 upvotes on reddit

Active-Rip-888 · OP · 5 months ago

So as far as I remember I tried I think for a month to undervolt it. I couldn't tell you exactly what I did because I tried everything that was on the internet, but looking back on the threads that I used I think this was the method that made it work: Undervolting 2020 Dell Laptops like the Vostro 7500 and More Tips to Improve Thermals, Battery Life, and Speed - Brendan Greenley

1 upvotes on reddit

Boink-Ouch · 5 months ago

I wonder if throttlestop causes you to eat a bit more power because it allows your CPUs to run faster (chewing more CPU). Have you tried an experiment to disable it? Or are you wanting the faster speeds? (I would!)

1 upvotes on reddit

Ok-Business5033 · 5 months ago

It really depends on how much he tweaked it. Technically, yes, it could be using more power.

But that's kinda not the entire picture because more power would be assuming the CPU is actually doing more.

If it's not boosting at all due to power savings or simply not needing to, then it would be using significantly less power.

2 upvotes on reddit

Boink-Ouch · 5 months ago

Of course.

1 upvotes on reddit

Active-Rip-888 · OP · 5 months ago

So for throttle stop I tested the battery life with it on and off. I spent like a week only testing the settings and benchmarking it and now I am so happy with my results. While on battery I set my EPP to 160 so it saves power and while browsing and light tasks my CPU takes 4-10 W of power. Mostly 5W . And while on power I set my EPP to 0 so max power to the CPU.

2 upvotes on reddit

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r/Dell • [7]

Summarize

How to maximize battery life for Dell XPS 15 9570?

Posted by Automatic-Primary342 · in r/Dell · 3 years ago

I recently had to replace the battery on my Dell XPS 15 9570 because of very poor health. I wanted some advice on how to better use the new battery to maximize its life.

I had the device for about 4 years. However, the battery life became notably worse in the last 2. I could only use it when it was plugged in (otherwise it would give me a 'Low Battery' warning). Also, in the last couple of weeks, the device wouldn't turn on even when plugged in.

I rarely explicitly turn off the device. I just close the lid. However, I think it sleeps and eventually shuts down. Is that ok?

Also, I usually use the laptop for a long time and may leave it plugged in. I stop charging when I'm done using it. Is it ok to keep it plugged in for a long time? Do you think I should adjust any configurations (when to stop charging, when to sleep, etc.)?

Also, I haven't noticed any swelling or damage to the old battery, so I'm not sure about the cause.

I would appreciate any help. Thank you.

3 upvotes on reddit

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IkouyDaBolt · 3 years ago

Lithium Ion batteries degrade based on voltage; the lower the voltage the longer it should last. If the ideal plan is never to use it on battery, then setting the threshold to 60% will prolong it the most while still giving it the ability to be a "UPS" in case of a power failure. Or you could just leave the battery out entirely until you do need it, that's up to you (though discouraged if given batteries aren't easily removable). While not a Dell, when I tested my 2 year old MSI battery it tested at 99.4% at the time. Batteries aren't an exact science, though.

Disabling Intel Turbo Boost will lower thermals significantly more than undervolting (while maintaining security of the processor); but you should be able to check battery's thermals in the diagnostic page from time to time to see what loads yields what temps. 45C is absolute maximum for charging, sure, but under regular use I like to keep it below 33C.

Also make sure the computer is at its maximum power saving when on battery; I've been under the impression that loads above 1C (i.e. 50W+ on a 50Whr pack) puts too much stress on the cells.

Keep in mind if you do decide to set a charging threshold it would be wise to cycle the battery every month as the voltage tends to drift lower without updating the percentage.

2 upvotes on reddit

[deleted] · 3 years ago

A lot could just depend on the quality of the battery. My Latitude is always plugged in. Almost always. 2 years later it's at 83% health. I don't do anything special. It's right up there with the excellent Apple batteries.

1 upvotes on reddit

Eason85 · 3 years ago

Some other suggestions:

Disable all Dell services unless explicitly desired, as well as Killer.

1 upvotes on reddit

[deleted] · 3 years ago

All systems:

undervolt CPU 50-100 mV
undervolt GPU 50-75 mV

Windows:

do a full reinstall of vanilla Windows 10, newest version
adjust power settings putting AC power to balanced and On Battery to power saving
disable GPU on battery

Linux:

install Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04 (best battery life IMO, AVOID POP_OS!!!!!!)
install tlp
adjust power settings depending on your DE
enter nvidia settings and make GPU profile adaptive (or power saving)

> I rarely explicitly turn off the device. I just close the lid. However, I think it sleeps and eventually shuts down. Is that ok?

No unless closing the lid hibernates/shuts down

> Is it ok to keep it plugged in for a long time?

Unless it's charging all the time, no.

> Do you think I should adjust any configurations (when to stop charging, when to sleep, etc.)?

You should stop charging at 80% and enter low power at 20%, shut down at 10% (critical power)

> Also, I haven't noticed any swelling or damage to the old battery, so I'm not sure about the cause.

From what you said you heavily abused it and it's insane that it lasted 4 years, although the 2 years it worked normally seem about right.

2 upvotes on reddit

Automatic-Primary342 · OP · 3 years ago

I appreciate the feedback. Thank you so much!

1 upvotes on reddit

cloud_t · 3 years ago

Perfect. Just want to add that Dell laptops usually artificially ships at 10% wear (from battery spec). Fixing this manually won't improve their battery longevity but it's always good to know. They can always confirm with powercfg on Windows.

1 upvotes on reddit

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r/Dell • [8]

Summarize

XPS 17 Battery Settings

Posted by blinker1eighty2 · in r/Dell · 5 years ago

I was wondering how people have their XPS 17's battery setup. I feel like it is not optimized correctly on my unit because I am only getting about 3 hours of battery life per charge.

Thanks!

1 upvotes on reddit

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friedrice71 · 5 years ago

Asking what others are doing means nothing if you are doing different tasks. What is running to kill your battery? What programs are running? Have you looked at the task manager to see what processes are running? Are you running programs that take gpu power? What power mode are you in? What thermal mode are you in? Are you still getting through windows updates and or have a bunch of background tasks going? ....long story short you need more context to your issue. Then people can truly help.

2 upvotes on reddit

blinker1eighty2 · OP · 5 years ago

I am only talking about battery life for whenever I’m using my computer casually. I don’t expect superb battery life while I’m using engineering softwares or rendering softwares, but i do think i should be getting better than 3 hours for general internet browsing when I’m not using those applications. I opened my task manager and didn’t see anything out if the ordinary. From full charge, with just chrome open browsing the web, I get about 3 hours. I used support assist to check for updates and issues and made sure everything was good. My power setting is adaptive. My thermal setting is optimized. I don’t think I am performing background tasks but this is my first pc in 8 years so I’m not 100% sure on that.

1 upvotes on reddit

friedrice71 · 5 years ago

Interesting, sounds like you should be getting better battery then. Double check that you are in the "Dell" power mode instead of "Balanced." You have to go to Power settings in the old school control panel to find that adjustment. Don't use HDR in battery mode if you are, pretty big battery draw. Check that you don't have things running in the background such as hidden programs you might not use in your task bar at the bottom right. The Task Manager has a "Startup" tab that will let you disable any programs from starting on booting into windows. I use only Windows Defender for virus protection as it has worked fine for me and takes less resources than a lot of the other options. My typical battery life when just cruising the internet (news, reddit, youtube, etc..) i can get 5-8 hours.

Browsers can take a surprising amount of power draw, don't assume is should always be light on battery. Some websites have so many moving ads or errors that if you check your task manager when its running you might be surprised.

I reference the task manager a lot because its one of the quickest ways to see what is taking power. Computers don't just lose power doing nothing, if your battery is draining fast then it must be running some processes....unless you got a bad battery.

2 upvotes on reddit

twothousandnineteen · 4 years ago

Dell power option - battery extender mode on, and on the taskbar - maximum battery life mode, this gives me about 7 hours of browsing

1 upvotes on reddit

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r/DellXPS • [9]

Summarize

How to improve dell xps 9320 plus battery life ?

Posted by Beneficial_Bison86 · in r/DellXPS · 2 years ago

I have dell xps 9320 plus i5 1240p 3.5k oled touch screen. I use cool mode + battery saver mode + 50% brightness , but it only last about 4 hour. Are there ways to increase battery life? Please help me , i very disappointed about this battery life

1 upvotes on reddit

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https://www.reddit.com/r/DellXPS/comments/wkj7oh/xps_13_plus_audiospeakers_throttling_cpu/ijobblp/?context=3

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Teddyruxx · 2 years ago

Remove the bloatware - which means a fresh install, which will work wonders if you’re still using the Dell image, and if u want more u can run windows debloaters to remove some of the useless stuff. I used to have abysmal batt life, but now my 1280p lasts ~3h, maybe 4. If you’re thinking you’re gonna pull significantly more from this OLED machine you’re gonna be disappointed. The batt life’s one of the worst issues w it. Other than that i like it.

3 upvotes on reddit

Beneficial_Bison86 · OP · 2 years ago

can you name some bloatware that i should remove in my new lap ?

1 upvotes on reddit

Teddyruxx · 2 years ago

here are some posts that should help... that's not the most straightforward Q to answer... like, did you do a clean install, or no? the only specific programs i can think to say definitely remove are like, OneDrive, which is a PitA to get rid of w/out googling how to, but once you go through that process it's usually one of the worst culprits viz draining system resources, so it follows that it would drain batt too.

once you've done the clean install, best thing to do is google "windows debloater" and use one... they're simple to use, almost all have a GUI, just DL from github or wherever it's hosted and run it, follow instructions...

https://www.reddit.com/r/DellXPS/comments/vi9nz7/guide_2022_xps_1517_windows_11_clean_install/

now, I know that the 2nd link there describes the XPS 15 and 17, but the info's applicable to the Plus as well

1 upvotes on reddit

[deleted] · 2 years ago

Install Linux

2 upvotes on reddit

enleeten · 2 years ago

I mainly run Ubuntu 23.04 and it's a little worse than Windows 11, power wise.

Obviously for serious uses, Linux is much better but it still kinda sucks for power usage.

1 upvotes on reddit

waldoeGeek · 2 years ago

Running linux on the fhd i7 1380p getting 6-8 hrs battery life. Not sure what it would have been in windows as I removed it as soon as got the machine.

1 upvotes on reddit

[deleted] · 2 years ago

I use Debian and it is very power efficient, specially for web browsing and CLI work

1 upvotes on reddit

mindhead1 · 2 years ago

Get a Chromebook. Intel chips and battery life are like Oil and Water.

0 upvotes on reddit

enleeten · 2 years ago

Should have got the FHD+!

I get SIX hours!

3 upvotes on reddit

Beneficial_Bison86 · OP · 2 years ago

what cpu you use i5 or i7

1 upvotes on reddit

enleeten · 2 years ago

I have a i7 1280P.

1 upvotes on reddit

mccainmw · 2 years ago

Depending on what you are doing on battery (i.e. web browsing vs. gaming), you can disable turbo mode. I did that (leaving it enabled when plugged in) on my 9510 and noticed increased battery life and much lower cpu temps (obviously). With a 8C/16T 11th gen processor I don't notice any performance loss for productivity apps. I also have my brightness at like 20% (fine for inside).

1 upvotes on reddit

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r/Dell • [10]

Summarize

Performance Tips - XPS 9500 (2020) - Findings so far

Posted by Amneticcc · in r/Dell · 5 years ago

Hey All,

I got my XPS on the 29th, and since then I have been trying to find the most "optimal" general use settings for my particular hardware configuration and use cases. I thought I would share what I have found so far, maybe it will prove to be useful to many of you out there also looking for that perfect performance/thermal balance.

Note:

These are my setting based on heavier AC outlet use, there are not necessarily battery friendly settings.

My Specs:

4K Touch Panel

i7-10875H

32GB Ram

1TB SSD

I live in a warm climate, and with laptops Ambient Temp plays a major role in performance. Testing was done indoors with ambient of ~74 F.

My General Use:

I bought this for a few different uses, I do a lot of development as well as a healthy mix of remote work, media consumption (moves and TV streaming mostly), and gaming (both on the laptop directly for light gaming and streaming higher fidelity games from my Desktop via Steam). My recommendations are based off of this.

Power Settings:

So there is quite a mess of settings scattered throughout both Windows OS as well as Dell & NVIDIA software that control specific aspects of the system's performance. I found the following settings to be optimal for me, when plugged in and while using HDR:

Dell Power Manager- Keep thermal management on optimized, Ultra performance results in throttling.
Battery Mode (Windows) - Jury is still kind of out on this one, I am still using "Best Performance" as my default though I found little difference in benchmarks using CinebenchR20 between Better and Best performance in all reality, I need to do more testing on this. Better performance may actually end up being better for extended heavy use as you have a greater chance of throttling with the Best setting.
NVIDIA Control Panel - This setting makes the biggest difference IMO. I did a lot of experimentation, and there are a few different things I would like to mention:
1. Use NVIDIA Control Panel for GPU overrides.... NOT WINDOWS! I see people recommending using Windows to Override iGPU vs dGPU. You have way more control in NVIDIA over how an application performs using your GPU, Power Management Mode for example.
2. I HIGHLY recommend keeping your preferred global graphics processor on Auto-Select, and experimenting with application by application performance settings, it will provide you the most control over you system to ensure you are using dGPU only when you really need to, and that you are using the ideal Power Management mode per application.
3. Speaking of the NVIDIA Control Panel - Power Management Mode, the best global setting I found is actually "Prefer Consistent Performance". I found that this mode provided the most consistent, smooth, jutter free performance out of all of the modes across multiple use cases. Maximum Performance performs worse due to thermals, and Optimal Power (default) provides little improvement in performance when using the dGPU over the iGPU IMO as I still experienced noticeable performance drops, though still performed better than Maximum Performance. I need to do more testing on the Adaptive setting however I find consistency to be key when it comes to performance.

These are just some of my observations, and lead to the best balance of performance, thermals, noise, and temps for me however YMMV.

Hopefully this helps some of you, and if you have other recommendations please share!

**Edited for clarity and expanded on a few statements**

48 upvotes on reddit

9 replies

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9 replies

[deleted] · 5 years ago

Thanks for your shard information! Really helpful.

I wonder if you can disable touch in BIOS. If so, can this operation save battery life?

Looking forward for your reply. Thanks.

2 upvotes on reddit

Amneticcc · OP · 5 years ago

No problem! You can disable touch in BIOS, that is a good question I am not sure what type of impact that has on battery life, I tend to use it case by case so I leave it on however it would be interesting to see how much of a difference it would make!

1 upvotes on reddit

[deleted] · 5 years ago

Thank you for your reply.

I have another question that does the BIOS support XMP overclocking for memory?

1 upvotes on reddit

kins82 · 5 years ago

I'm waiting to receive my XPS 15 and I was just wondering about all this. I'm saving your post for until I receive it!

2 upvotes on reddit

thesafinster · 5 years ago

So, you recommend leaving the global settings to "Integrated" and then selecting Nvidia for the programs we need the power? How much of a battery improvement should we expect compared to having the global settings at "auto-select"?

I primarily run web-based applications and run graphics demanding programs like gaming and cad., but not as often as web.

2 upvotes on reddit

Amneticcc · OP · 5 years ago

Ah sorry for the confusion, no leave the default global to Auto-Select which should be default make most applications used Integrated. If you need to perform an override do it on a case by case basis using Nvidia control panel not Windows.

I saw some people mention they switched their global to GPU which is going to decimate battery life so I thought I would call it out in my post :) hopefully that answers your question.

Updated my main post for clarity on this :)

1 upvotes on reddit

thesafinster · 5 years ago

Thanks!

2 upvotes on reddit

nexxtgamefinds · 5 years ago

Thanks for this!

4 upvotes on reddit

Jauffins · 5 years ago

Thanks for this! Posts like these are so important. ��

2 upvotes on reddit

See 9 replies

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