URGENT ASUS TECH / ENGINEERS - GL502VS Battery drain while plugged in solved.

[hotstocks]

Dear Asus Techs,
I am a computer technician myself. I have repaired and built computers for 25 years. I personally own 6 laptops and 6 desktops at all times. I have diagnosed and troubleshot the problem of the Asus GL502VS battery draining while plugged in and gaming. I bought this laptop a week ago and almost returned it as I noticed this problem right away, but I decided to help all of you guys. I also own a Sager 8153-S, which is the EXACT same machine spec wise as this Asus. It has an i7 6700HQ, 16gb DDR4, Nvidia 1070 graphics, same IPS panel and drive configurations. The Sager DOES NOT drain battery while plugged in and gaming EVER! Also the sager CPU runs 20C COOLER (75C vs 95C on this Asus) and the GPU runs 5C cooler (72C vs 78C on the Asus) during heavy gaming. The Sager has a slightly thicker chasis with more powerful fans, so that is to be expected, but the Sager also has 4 fan profiles to choose from, one being maximum, which really is loud but cools it to below 70C gaming both gpu and cpu. Anyhow, ASUS TECHS LISTEN UP BECAUSE HERE IS THE TRUTH AND ANSWER:
1)The Sager comes with a 230W AC PSU adapter, so I figured since the Asus comes with a 180W adapter and my kilowatt meter is reading 180W at the wall, the Asus adapter is underpowered and therefore draining even while plugged in because I see the 1070 GPU using up to 125W and 45W cpu then add the display, ram, drives, mobo, fans, speakers, wifi, etc. and you are WAY OVER 180W, not surprising the battery is being used to get up to about 200W that the system is pulling. So I used my Sager psu (has the exact same connector and volts / amps but is 230W, Alienware also had this problem where they shipped last years laptops with 180w adapters and had battery drain while plugged in, so they SENT EVERYONE A FREE 230W and did a bios update and it SOLVED THE PROBLEM FOR EVERY SINGLE LAPTOP). But to my surprise, even the 230W Sager adapter did not help, the adapter was not burning hot like the Asus, but it still had the battery drain and only pulled 180w from the wall, even though capable of more. SO PEOPLE it is not going to help to JUST have Asus send a 230W psu, that is only 90% of the problem. They DO need to send everyone at least a 225W PSU though.

2)With a proper psu of >220W, the battery SHOULD NOT DRAIN WHILE GAMING. I can run prime 95 in the background to peg CPU at 100% and game to peg GPU at 100% and even then on the same speced Sager, THERE IS NO BATTERY DRAIN, and it is pulling about 220W from the wall to game and charge the battery. SO, there is something in the Asus bios (and I have the newest 300 version) that even with my proper 230W PSU, WILL ONLY ALLOW 180W TO GO INTO THE SYSTEM. THAT IS ABSURD! If this is the case, a simple new bios release to increase the wattage allowed to come in and charge the battery plus a new adapter >220W for everyone is all that is needed.

3)My nightmare scenario, and if this is true I will be returning mine for a full refund and buying a competitors notebook. And I am an Asus fanboy, I have 12 Asus destop gpus, 6 Asus desktop mobos, and countless other Asus products that I am very happy with. But if there is a defect in the GL502VS motherboard or a component that restricts the system to not getting over 180w, then there is NO fixing this. I surely hope there is not this situation, and we only need another 40W added to the PSU and getting into the laptop to game and not drain the battery while plugged in. I would sure hope the Asus engineers are not completely incompetent and I have no idea how they could not have seen this issue or turned a blind eye. We are talking about a top speced $1700 laptop, not a a $300 unit. There is no excuse for the battery to be draining while gaming and plugged in.

Lastly, I can even get the battery to drain while plugged in and NOT gaming or using the cpu barely at all. If you run just a GPU intensive benchmark or gpu only rendering with cpu almost idling, it still does this. The reason is because the most the cpu ever takes is 45W, But the 1070 shouldn't be using over 100W, and I see it using up to 125W! The 125W plus everything else just to idle the computer is already at 180W so battery drain.

So Asus techs and engineers, the problem is the inadequate psu, something limiting a better psu from powering the system fully, and the 1070 is over volted or running way over specs. Maybe a bios release with less voltage to the 1070 would fix this as it would use A LOT less power saving 25W, and it should not be any slower, downclocked, or any problems. Actually the system will run cooler with the 1070 having less voltage. I have not found a utility to allow me to change the 1070 voltage or I would have done this myself and tested it with less voltage to get it within 100W part spec. I have tried throttlestop for the CPU at -.1 and while it doesn't do enough to solve the battery draining problem, it does get the CPU under full load down from the ridiculous 98C to about 88C, so that is worth doing. Sorry for the long post, but there is too much hoping, praying, RMAing (that doesn't work), and non-tech people in these forums trying larger psus and thing to figure this out, and they all don't work. And it is not an isolated few laptops, it is EVERY ONE made. So please get back to me and resolve this or let me know your plans so I can know whether to return this or not.

Thanks, sincerely

P.S. I have just seen the 1070 go up to 133.52W all by itself. Definately an issue here, this is a 100W part.

[cl-Albert]

Welcome to the forums!

Hope you don't mind if I lock this thread for now and direct everyone back to the other thread below so we don't end up with 2 competing threads about the same topic (you might still be able to edit your post here though, but not sure).

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?88742-GL502VS-Discharging-while-in-charge/page8