W530 Power Adapters, 90W vs 135W Vs 170W

[dragon-fly]

I Just got my W530 3720QM K2000m and i find it ridiculous that it cant use the 90W Adapter when idle and uses the battery. I Read threads of similar things with the W520, as well as some on the W510, and it appears that this used to work on the W510, 90W power adapter delivered the system in working condition with reduced performance.

Now, i use my laptop as both a worstation and an entertainment laptop. if i were to go on a flight or be in a car, i sure wont be doing intensive VMware or 3d stuff, so 90W would be more than sufficient to drive the laptop as well as charge the laptop. i even have a Killawatt meter, i plugged in the 170W Adapter into it, and then ran my laptop while having the battery charged. the max power consumption that it pulled was 70W At the wall, surfing the web in optimus mode.

Why cant we have a power saver mode to allow usage of the 90W adapter? or at least have the Choice between "battery only" - reduced performance anyways and "reduced performance AC/only"? At the very least it would avoid draining the battery for absolutely no good reason. My system idles at under 30watts anyways and that would leave 60W to do anything else, for example charging the battery at 40W - to give the total of 70W at the wall, from the 170W Brick.

i Wish to see a revised bios to correct this or at least allow this. i dont believe its impossible or too complex to code. it was done on the W510, i dont see why it cant be done on newer, improved, smarter, more power controlled, 22nm ivy bridge based systems.

and yes, if i wanted to use the full power of my machine i would have the 170W adapter, however, i currently own a T60, T61, T400 and now just added a W530, so i already have two docks + 4 90W adapters, + a 90W AC/DC Travel adapter. having to purchase another 170W adapter is kinda ridiculous, not to mention that its not compatible with any of my three other machines due to the fact that it is keyed.

Please make a bios revision to address this issue. Thanks.

[timg11 · Accepted solution]

This topic has been discussed in this thread:  and this thread. 

I have not seen a satisfactory reason why the notebook cannot operate from 90W in a reduced performance mode.  The conditions that cause a 135W power draw are rare. For light use my W520 draws 15-20 watts. As a thought experiment, consider what would happen if you had a 90W adapter attached, and suddenly the notebook tried to draw 135W.  The adapter would shut down due to over-current. This is exactly the same scenario that would occur if I unplugged the adapter while operating. The notebook is designed to instantly switch over to battery if the AC power goes away. So there is no risk to the computer. Maybe if the adapter is poorly designed, it could be damaged.

I challenge Lenovo to provide a technical reason why the W520 and W530 cannot operate off a 90W supply in a reduced performance mode.  I believe a good portion of the 135W is for charging the battery. So if the power drain exceeds 90W, stop charging the battery. 90W should be more than enough to operate the notebook only under any circumstance. Under most circumstances, it can operate the computer and charge the battery.

 This thread describes mods that will trick the notebook into thinking it has a different capacity power supply.

[dragon-fly]

i just tested power draw of my laptop and under turbo boost, integrated graphics only, the laptop only draws 80 watts at the wall. there is no reason for it to not run on 90W adapter without discharging the battery, in fact, there is a 10W balance to charge the battery.

The most i made this laptop consume was 151W under full OCCT Load, with lenovo turbo boost enabled, Throtlestop forcing even higher turbo, and loading both quad core and k2000m to the limit using OCCT PSU Test, and testing all cores including logical cores, for only 30 seconds, after which the second level turbo boost drops off after the cpu has heated up and the system draws only 130W at the wall after that.

[dragon-fly]

given my tests were done on a W530, i shall post my results here.

Bottom line: Lenovo power manager has no freaking clue as to how much power the system actually uses when its plugged into the wall. it cant even do basic arithmetic.

 

In any case, these are my findings. on the W530, with a i7 3720 QM, 32gb of 1600mhz ram, K2000m, these are my results on power consumption.

These tests were done to see if there was a logical explanation for not allowing the use of a 90W adapter at all on such a machine. bottom line is, if throtled, there is no reason not to. limiting the use to intel gpu only and not allowing turbo boost, effectively eliminates ANY possibility of using more than 90W when not charging the battery. The proof: The last two lines of this table. 60W Max power consumption at the wall under OCCT PSU Test when the cpu is limited to 2.6ghz, and the battery is removed/not charging. PSU Test stresses both cpu and gpu simultaneously.

 

The first battery of tests were to find out what tests should and shouldnt be performed, and what numbers were accurate. it was clear that power manager had no idea how to do basic math and later tests did not include it's random numbers. it only properly aproximates power consumption when on battery, not when on AC.

 

It was also concluded that using OCCT:CPU Resulted in the same power draw as CPU: Linpack, and thus OCCT CPU Was used to expedite number crunching.

 

Without futrher ado, here are the results:

Maximum power draw AC No Battery 170W Adapter
Quad core hyperthread Bluetooth Wifi
Optimus	Killawatt	Power manager	Cpu power Throtlestop (W)	Cpu speed (GHz)
Idle	32-36	16	5.6	1.4
Linpack stock	73	34	30	2.6
Linpack Lenovo Turbo	73	33	30.3	2.6
Linpack Throtlestop turbo	104	48	50	3.4
OCCT Turbo boost/stock	75	33	27	2.6
High Performance Profile
OCCT Turbo boost/stock	90	41	42.6	3.4
High Performance Profile Max Brightness, keyboard backlit
OCCT Throtlestop	105	48	42.5	3.4
High Performance Profile lowest Brightness, keyboard off
OCCT Throtlestop	80	37	42.8	3.4
High Performance Profile Max Brightness, keyboard backlit
OCCT PSU TEST	103	52	53.9	3.3
K2000m	Killawatt (W)	Cpu power Throtlestop (W)	Cpu speed (GHz)
Idle	29	4.8	0.8
OCCT CPU	90	42.4	3.4
PSU TEST	110	36.4	3.4
4000HD	Killawatt (W)	Cpu power Throtlestop (W)	Cpu speed (GHz)
Idle	20	5.1	2.2
OCCT CPU	87	41.8	3.4
PSU TEST	94	53.1	3.3
4000HD, CPU Limited to Stock 2.6ghz
	Killawatt (W)	Cpu power Throtlestop (W)	Cpu speed (GHz)
PSU TEST	60	29.5	2.6
OCCT CPU	58	26.4	2.6

[drc138]

This has been an interesting thread.  I would like to add a new wrinkle to the discussion.

I have just purchased the following suite of equipment:

 (1)  ThinkPad W530 laptop (model #24384CU);  (2)  ThinkPad Minidock+ (model #433815U).

With the W530 came a power adapter rated at 170W in & 20V/8.5A out.  With the Minidock came one rated at 90W in & 20V/4.5A out.

Why is the adapter with the W530 bigger than the one with the Minidock?  Wouldn't the machine need more power when connected to the dock, when presumably it would have more peripherals connected with it?

Is it okay for me to swap them, i.e., use the 170W adapter with the Minidock and the 90W one when travelling with the W530?  (This forum has already discussed issues with using the 90W unit, but I am interested in knowing if it is okay to use the 170W one with the dock.)

Thanks.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

there are two types of Series 3 Minidock workstation, there is the 90 watts version and the 170 watts adapter version.

Your W530 won't work properly in the 90 watts adapter version. the plug head for the 170 watts adapter is different to the 65 watts/90watts/135 watts version.

[drc138]

Very interesting.  I indeed notice the different plug heads.  However, as we speak, I have been running the W530 in the dock with the 170W adapter plugged into it.  I wonder if this means that I possess the 170W version of the dock but that it came with a 90W adapter (which I have not used so far).

Cheers.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

the adapter head for the ThinkPad 170 watts and 90 watts are different, maybe they have packaged the wrong adapter with your dock?

[dragon-fly]

The 170W plug head can not fit into round plug dc jacks, so i dont understand what you are saying?!?!?!?!

also, the 90W adapter can not charge the W530 when you are using it, or atleast, not the quad core W530
. if you have a dual core edition, i do not know how those react, but my W530 i7 3720QM With K2000m and 32gb ram can not be used with a 90W adapter. it runs on battery only.

[ThorsHammer]

I have not done any testing for proof, but my understanding was that the 170W came from the total power draw when using all of the possible ports, drive bays, and devices under full load.