Question Poor gaming laptop battery life and shoddy game-play.

johnboy51

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Jun 26, 2020
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I have an MSI GP63 Leopard 8RE, purchased a couple of years ago from Wal*Mart. Ever since I started playing graphics-intensive games, the battery life dropped from what was supposed to be 4 or 5 hours to less than an hour. Games would 'skip' every couple of seconds. Being near a plug didn't help a whole lot because the charger couldn't keep up with the power demands and would eventually give out. Eventually, the original power supply gave out completely so I went to my local computer store to get an iGO generic adapter. I still have the same problems, though I don't think this new power adapter will die out anytime soon. Changing display settings doesn't help.

Is this a common problem for gaming laptops? Did I purchase a bad computer? Is there anything I can do to enjoy these games without having to worry about the battery being rapidly drained?

John.
 

johnboy51

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Jun 26, 2020
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I can deal with poor battery life, but what I don't get is why the power supply shuts off. The only thing I can think of is my laptop battery is a bad battery and it's sending some sort of 'feedback' to the power supply essentially telling it that too much power is coming through. I might add this only happens when playing games. I could be watching a streaming movie or just surfing the web and no problems.

Should I get a new battery? What do you think?

John.
 

johnboy51

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Jun 26, 2020
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Thank you all for the response. I need to come to a resolution on this quickly or else I'll be getting a desktop gaming PC which'll probably be obsolete in a year! lol

Connected to my laptop, in addition to the power supply, is a USB optical mouse and an XBOX-type controller specifically designed to work with Windows 10.

The power plan is set to 'best performance'. I kinda knew the battery wasn't going to last long here, but I figured the power supply woulda backed things up. So much for that idea.

I've adjusted my Nvidia drivers for other games before with minimal results.

To my eternal shame, I've not done any updates other than what was required by Windows 10.
 

johnboy51

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Jun 26, 2020
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Thus far, I've updated my Nvidia drivers (as per suggested) an changed my battery settings to "Balanced" instead of "Best Performance". The results are marginal, at best.

Finally, I don't know if I mentioned this before but my power supply gets real hot before it cuts out.
 
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the only important thing is that the voltage is identical to the laptops specifications as well as the polarity of the charger.

If the battery is really bad and doesn´t have a protection circuit inside, if it´s not the original one anymore and a very cheap third party battery, then the battery could explode. But that´s because of a bad battery and not more wattage. This could happen with your current low power charger as well.
 

johnboy51

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Jun 26, 2020
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This laptop will need up to 160Watt under heavy load. In this test a 180Watt power supply was mentioned for it.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-G...-Xotic-PC-Edition-Laptop-Review.307690.0.html
and in the specifications homepage it says 180Watt as well
https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GP63-Leopard-8RE/Specification
This might be your problem, you will need double the wattage you have now. Because of this the power adapter is getting this hot


Thank you, Helpstar! Do you know of a reputable place (online or brick-and-mortar) where I can get a 180 Watt power supply? And what of my battery? Is there a simple test I can do to see if it's faulty before I buy said power adapter?