laptop battery help

mechanicalsonata

Estimable
May 21, 2015
2
0
4,510
hi, uh
i've talked here about this before but i want to put all what i have to say somewhere where they won't be ignored/talked over by some angry old geek squad worker.

so my battery, as you can probably guess by the title, is having some issues: power is draining from it while i am playing games.
and i just want to mention this: the black box on the laptop's charging cord (the power supply i'm guessing?) supplies 180 watts. and it is plugged in at all times.

this started to happen last summer. i thought it was because of the laptop's tempurature, i tried to never let it get above 80C. its normal temps ranged between 60C-75C then and apparently 75C-80C is normal for gaming laptops?
anyways, now the battery is draining when my pc's temp is at 55C-65C (that's its averages when gaming now as i very recently cleaned its fans)

in overwatch i have been playing on the same settings since october of 2016 when i got this laptop. here's a screenshot of them.
when i am playing i do have some things open but generally the CPU usage never seems to go above 47%

the battery will not charge above anywhere in the 89%-94% range. (it will be plugged in but underneath the battery percentage it will say "not charging")
in relation to what i just said i will mention this: the grumpy old geek squad man did mention that i should recalibrate my battery. well, he didn't specifically say that but he did say that i should charge it up all the way, then unplug it and let it go down to like 5%, and then charge it back up. i'm ASSUMING he meant to recalibrate it.
sadly i have not done this yet. because from what i am reading online you need to let your laptop sit for around 5-6 hours after it reaches its hibernation state. i'm a patient person but i do all of my work on my laptop and sadly i am very busy at the moment.

no, i have not tested using my laptop off of battery power (so just plugged in, battery completely out).

so basically my question is: should i look to get a whole new battery or will doing something like recalibrating my battery help? or, does anyone know if this laptop can take another type of battery?
any help is appreciated.

all battery settings are set to prefer the battery life over video quality.
as said before, i got this laptop in october of 2016.
it is a vector II 17 laptop from cyberpowerpc
model: NL9
manufacturer: quanta
this is the battery it takes
system specs:
windows 10, x64 bit
intel core i7-6700
16gb RAM
gtx 965

and i do want to mention this: i messed up when getting this laptop and it only has a 400gb SSD. i am going to be getting a 1tb HDD very soon. do you think that would help or would it not really matter?

if any more information is needed please let me know
thanks in advance.
 
Solution
Last question answered first: SSDs consume less wattage than a hard drive, but the difference is not drastic between the two. Regarding the battery, they rarely last more than two years before losing charge capability. Gawk Squad is a bunch of clowns so don't listen to them. Newer batteries don't need that "recalibtration" anymore. I've had a battery lose charge capacity on a laptop only owned for one year (new Dell and I was pissed).

As far as a replacement, it appears to be a very proprietary battery meaning it's not likely other vendors make one for it unlike say generic toner cartridges for laser printers. Your link to the SQU-1406 is the only model I could find out there for a replacement that others are selling.

Finally, on...

10tacle

Distinguished
Dec 6, 2008
329
0
19,010
Last question answered first: SSDs consume less wattage than a hard drive, but the difference is not drastic between the two. Regarding the battery, they rarely last more than two years before losing charge capability. Gawk Squad is a bunch of clowns so don't listen to them. Newer batteries don't need that "recalibtration" anymore. I've had a battery lose charge capacity on a laptop only owned for one year (new Dell and I was pissed).

As far as a replacement, it appears to be a very proprietary battery meaning it's not likely other vendors make one for it unlike say generic toner cartridges for laser printers. Your link to the SQU-1406 is the only model I could find out there for a replacement that others are selling.

Finally, on some laptops, there is setting that doesn't allow a charge to go to full 100% to save battery life. Usually it can be disabled in Windows. Whether or not that is the case on your charge capacity is not important though if the battery is starting to drain faster. That's classic battery degradation.
 
Solution