GL502VM owners. OPEN YOUR LAPTOP. Bulging battery.

[link626]

I opened my laptop today because I was getting BSODs and needed to test the RAM.

To my surprise, when I removed the bottom panel, I saw that the battery cells were bulging.
I keep my laptop plugged in all the time, and the laptop is just 16 months old.

This is a bad battery, and I'm wondering if the constant 5% discharge/recharge cycle ASUS programmed into this laptop contributes to the bulging battery.

Check out the pictures, you can see the bulges

[FastM]

holy **** that's big problem!

[StarJack]

Looks like outgassing for sure. Just curious, did you game hard on it for the 16 months with long game sessions and high temperatures?

StarJack

[link626]

There weren't many games to play.

However, when there was a new game, I played 6 hours straight until I completed the single player mode.

So I only played 6 hour sessions no more than 10 times total. I would consider myself a light gamer.

I remember only playing the new wolfenstein, cod, battlefield.... and a couple others which I can count all on one hand.


Dell was generous enough to replace all bulging batteries from their XPS notebooks, even those who were out of warranty.

I don't think Asus would be that generous.

So now I have to resort to my credit card's extended warranty to cover the bill.

Asus wants $410 to replace the battery. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

On a positive note, unlike the Dell XPS, there is enough room for the battery to expand, so the laptop chassis doesn't bulge.

On a negative note, I bet my battery barely holds a charge. I need to do a discharge test.



I've also been getting random BSOD a few times a month. Many times when I wake up the monitor, a few minutes later, it BSOD.
The bugcheck code suggests it might be ram issue.

So now i'm doing memtest and hoping my onboard soldered ram is not broken. Cuz then I would need a whole new laptop.

[xeromist]

link626 wrote:
I'm wondering if the constant 5% discharge/recharge cycle ASUS programmed into this laptop contributes to the bulging battery.

Nope. Constant charging at 100% will reduce the useful life of the battery faster while periodic cycling between low but not empty (like 20%) and high but not full (like 80%) would maintain the longest life. Allowing the battery to discharge slightly and then topping it up is a compromise to extend the life while ensuring the user has an approximately full charge whenever they might unplug and go. There's nothing about that which would cause a catastrophic failure.

Deep discharge such as draining the battery fully and then letting it sit for months can cause damage, rapidly dis/charging, or attempting to charge an already full battery can all cause damage. The internal BMS should sever the connection to cells before they get out of bounds. It's likely either the BMS failed or there is a physical flaw in your battery pack, like the internal short in the Galaxy Note phones.

[link626]

xeromist wrote:
Nope. Constant charging at 100% will reduce the useful life of the battery faster while periodic cycling between low but not empty (like 20%) and high but not full (like 80%) would maintain the longest life. Allowing the battery to discharge slightly and then topping it up is a compromise to extend the life while ensuring the user has an approximately full charge whenever they might unplug and go. There's nothing about that which would cause a catastrophic failure.

Deep discharge such as draining the battery fully and then letting it sit for months can cause damage, rapidly dis/charging, or attempting to charge an already full battery can all cause damage. The internal BMS should sever the connection to cells before they get out of bounds. It's likely either the BMS failed or there is a physical flaw in your battery pack, like the internal short in the Galaxy Note phones.

i remember my old laptops used to charge to 100%, and then stop.
Were they actually trickle charging?

because the odd thing is, when I actually went to use the battery, it had very low battery life, like it was miscalibrated. i.e. Windows saw 100%, but the actual battery capacity was already at 60%.

[xeromist]

Potentially yes, but it's also possible that it was charging between 99 & 100% but just displaying fully charged.

Also different battery chemistries have different requirements which could change how the charge is maintained. Really old laptops have nickel chemistry rather than lithium.

In this case it sounds like the battery was faulty.