You recently purchased a new gaming laptop in hope that you will play your hardcore PC Games to your heart’s content. But something doesn’t seem right why is your gaming laptop’s battery draining so fast, it can’t run for more than 2-2.5 Hrs. This is a fairly common problem for almost all of the gaming laptop owners across the globe, well this is a problem for regular laptop owners also but they don’t run heavy games like Valorant, Call of Duty Warzone, etc. so their batteries last for 4-5 Hrs on average.
Why the gaming laptop’s battery drains fast?
There are several reasons for your gaming laptops battery to be drained fast. The most common reasons for gaming laptops battery draining faster are the accumulation of dust in vents(most overlooked also), simultaneous unwanted background processes, and inadequate system settings.
There are several other reasons related to the fast battery draining in a gaming laptop. I’ve discussed them in detail in this post further.
Most common battery-draining reasons
- Using dedicated graphics all the time.
- Improper system settings.
- High-frequency display settings.
- Always connected to unwanted networks.
- Unnecessary peripherals are always connected.
- Screen brightness not optimized.
- Battery Life set on performance.
- Some other small things
Battery Draining Reasons in Gaming Laptop
Primary Graphics Processor
One of the important and unknown reasons behind gaming laptops battery draining is graphics card processor or dedicated graphics card is set as the primary graphics processor.
Sometimes we unknowingly set dedicated graphics cards as the primary display processor. Setting your graphic card as the primary display processor enhances your workability and experience but this comes at a price. The price is that your gaming laptop’s battery will drain much faster.
Display Rate
Gaming laptops come with one of the best features that are the display refresh rate. Some of the gaming laptops have a display refresh rate as high as 300 Hz.
To explain in short display refresh rate can be thought as the time our screen changes in one second. The more the display rate the more the smoothness or fluidity in the motion of the video/game.
This helps in enhancing our gameplay but it also drains the battery much faster. It is not required for our general day-to-day processes on the laptop. An optimum display refresh rate is around 60 Hz for the perfect experience.
You can always change it while playing any game to have an excellent performance.
Unwanted Networks & Functions
We need to connect to some network to perform a task, but after completing the task, we forgot to disconnect from that network or switch off that particular function of our laptop.
A perfect example of this is using Bluetooth for playing video games through Bluetooth keyboards and mouse and after playing games we simply put them aside but actually, we should disconnect them properly and switch off the Bluetooth in our laptop and on our devices.
Another thing that can be seen is that the location feature is on every time you should always keep it off until necessary. There are many other small things that don’t seem that much a problem but when they combine with each other they result in draining of your gaming laptop’s battery much faster.
My suggestion to everyone is that everyone should keep in mind and check on regularly to save some battery time.
Extra Devices
Similar to the topic discussed above we sometimes forget to eject our peripherals like Bluetooth Dongle, USB drive, DVD/CD drives, etc. These all things kept on running in the background and keeps on consuming battery which results in the faster drainage of a battery of your gaming laptop.
Screen Brightness
Many people like to keep their brightness settings to a maximum i.e. 100%. To them, it doesn’t matter what they are doing they keep it full while they play games, write something, watch movies, or any other work.
But in reality, hundred percent brightness is very harmful to your eyes. I personally keep my brightness level between 70 to 80 range which is quite comfortable and not so heavy on my gaming laptop battery.
One thing you can do is keep the brightness setting on auto adjustment so that it can automatically detect which brightness setting is best for you and optimize the brightness level automatically. Doing this will be helpful for your eyes as well as your gaming laptop’s battery also.
Battery Mode Setting
One of the most common problems and solutions is the laptop’s performance setting. Windows come with 3 types of battery consumption/performance settings: Battery saver mode, Performance mode, and Balanced mode.
You can keep your battery setting on the performance mode while playing heavy games or doing some heavy graphics work like rendering etc., and a battery saver mode when your battery is low and you have to do some important task.
Leaving these two conditions at all other times you are performance setting should be kept at a Balanced mode which is the best mode to save your battery and have an optimum experience.
Most Overlooked Reason
There are many reasons that could cause your battery to drain faster than normal and these are overlooked. One of the most overlooked problems is the jamming of cooling vents through the dust.
The reason is simple, with time dust and small particles accumulate in your cooling vents and this is inevitable.
Jamming of vents makes the laptop not cool down efficiently and thus raises the overall temperature. In increased temperature laptop batteries always drain faster. So always clean your vents from time to time.
For better understanding, I have attached my own laptops picture below. In the picture see the circled area and notice the dust accumulated there above the fan outlet.
Well that is something far greater than dust, whatever it is that is the main reason of vent blocking.
Other Things To Look For
There are several other things which are left except the above important topics to look out for.
Some of them are-
- Keep your keyboard backlight off while not using it for something.
- Set sleep timer on low time to save some battery.
- Try to keep your gaming laptop cool by providing better air circulation with the help of cooling pads.
- Always keep your Windows up to date with the latest drivers and installations.
FAQ Related to Gaming Laptop Battery Draining
While playing heavy games on your laptops a lot of energy is required. This means that your laptop’s battery will discharge and charge more frequently than a laptop with normal use. Thus, this repeated process will surely affect your laptop’s battery life and hence we can say that playing heavy games frequently will impact your laptop’s battery life in a negative way.
The most overlooked problem is the jamming of vents, bents in copper cooling tubes, etc. These are the things that result in an increase in the temperature of the laptop and in return cause battery drainage much faster.
Conclusion
I hope that this post has helped you identify your problem. If you have any questions then feel free to ask in the comment box given below.
Thank You.
