Guild Wars 2

So everytime I play, My laptop decides to lose battery while plugged in.

If anyone else has experienced this or knows any fix, Please let me know.

I have been running the game in “High Performance” or “Balanced” power mode, but it drains the battery. While in “Power Saving” mode it actually charges, but I get terrible frames.

I must stress that this is while my laptop is plugged into the wall/charging.

My Graphical settings are whatever they got set to when it auto-detected.

bad AC adapter or dc charger board in the laptop are usually the issue for this.

This is perfectly normal for current laptop models, because manufacturers seem to save on PSU efficieny (or the power supply specification reaches the maximum deliverable). Because your laptop needs more power than it’s PSU (which is external) can deliver, it taps additional power from your battery. Most gaming laptops do this. You can see a similar behavior by playing a battery taxing game on your smartphone while it is charging.

You can throttle this behavior by the following methods:
1. Lower graphic details ingame
2. Throttle your CPU via BIOS overclocking tools by underclocking it.
3. Throttle your GPU using the GPU tweaking tools of your GPU manufacturer by lowering core and shader as well as memory clocks.

Ettanin.8271:

2. Throttle your CPU via BIOS overclocking tools by underclocking it.
3. Throttle your GPU using the GPU tweaking tools of your GPU manufacturer by lowering core and shader as well as memory clocks.

All that may as well have been in some other language. Sorry, Really not too experienced with Hardware. Any chance there’s a simplified version of those two points?

Ettanin.8271:

This is perfectly normal for current laptop models, because manufacturers seem to save on PSU efficieny (or the power supply specification reaches the maximum deliverable). Because your laptop needs more power than it’s PSU (which is external) can deliver, it taps additional power from your battery. Most gaming laptops do this. You can see a similar behavior by playing a battery taxing game on your smartphone while it is charging.

You can throttle this behavior by the following methods:
1. Lower graphic details ingame
2. Throttle your CPU via BIOS overclocking tools by underclocking it.
3. Throttle your GPU using the GPU tweaking tools of your GPU manufacturer by lowering core and shader as well as memory clocks.

This is just…No.

The OP has either a dying power brick, or the DC charger board is going bad in his laptop. Or rarely the battery is going bad (and getting shorted out as it heats up)

Its NOT normal that this is happening. You should ask around if someone you know has a working laptop charger and try that one. If it charges normally than you should simply buy a new charger. If that is not the case you should send your laptop for repair or you can fix it yourself.

Unfortunately, most laptops do NOT have a seperate AC input board, but the input is soldered to the main motherboard. If the AC plug gets struck while plugged in (as in dropped, knocked against a surface behind the laptop, etc.) the solder joints can become cracked or damaged and no longer make reliable contact. This likely often results in the entire motherboard to require replacement (very few repair shops can repair a cracked surface mount solder joint….assuming the pad on the PCB had not been damaged beyond repair).

TLDR: Your AC input plug may be broken (or intermittent) and that often requires significant repair costs (possibly a motherboard replacement to fix).

NOTE: I have a decade of laptop repair experience, so I’m just adding my educated guess….it could be a laptop / OS setting issue or a bad battery.

BTW, newer laptops CAN have circuitry that allows for battery use while the AC is plugged in but it does not have anything to do with PSU efficiency, but battery life. This is usually only found in laptops that have INTERNAL batteries (no removable battery pack). This usually only kicks in if the system is run for extended periods of time on the AC adaptor (in order to exercise the battery so it does not sit charged for long periods without any load…..this is BAD for any battery system). Note that this should NEVER result in the battery being completely drained (or even dropping below about 80% charge). If that is the problem, the internal battery circuit is not functioning properly.

Charging laptop should be able to charge up even running at full load. So the AC is not good in this case.

~Just another opinion.

This is definitely not normal, my low end Acer holds a charge while I play GuildWars and the power is plugged in so this really sound like your power supply has an issue. If it’s the power jack on the side of the laptop then it relatively easy to fix for anyone that know how to solder but some laptops are really hard to disassemble to get to the jack. Does the laptop charge normally when not playing the game?

? very normal for apple computers. apple doesnt distributed a large enough power brick to handle full load

could also be a brolen cable on your power supply and it is intermittently using the battery, you’d notice it going down quick while youre playing but not that quick just browsing etc

try wiggling the cable to see if it switches to the battery

Per above points, your AC charger could be in some way faulty. This will be difficult to diagnose without a known good AC charger.

Apple systems have the magnetic AC connection (to prevent the “breaking” I described earlier). This contact system can get dirty or corroded (this is not always visibly apparent) and not conduct well….causing charging issues. Clean contact surfaces with rubbing alcohol (obviously when turned off and not plugged in).

This actually somehow got fixed by setting a 30 frame limit ingame. Will read over the advice given and look into whether there are any clear issues with my AC Charger.

Thanks for all the responses.

Pangu.7053:

This actually somehow got fixed by setting a 30 frame limit ingame. Will read over the advice given and look into whether there are any clear issues with my AC Charger.

It really sounds a lot like the charger isn’t delivering enough current.

I’ve seen this happen when using an underpowered car charger with a 12V solar system and a laptop doing something intense; the laptop was draining so much power just staying on that none could be spared to charge its battery. The battery was actually draining slowly, though it said something like “40 hours remaining”.

The frame limit is probably reducing the system’s power consumption just enough to allow charging.

I’ve never seen a laptop that couldn’t charge at least slowly while using a proper AC charger, however, so maybe it is faulty. Or the manufacturer just went with the cheapest Chinese brick they could find.