Which component upgrade has caused my battery life to drop?

[n00b2]

Hi Everyone

I have a Dell L502X and recently I upgraded a bunch of components and now my battery life has gone from around 6 hours to just over 3 hours. I changed my 720GB 7200RPM hard drive to a 512GB SSD, upgraded the wifi card from the Intel 6230 to the Intel 7260 AC and doubled my RAM from 8GB to 16GB. Any idea why my battery life has basically halved? I thought upgrading to an SSD and the Intel 7260 with bluetooth 4.0 is supposed to improve battery life and RAM doesn't have much impact at all. Would have thought any hit on the battery would be minor and not so drastic.

Thanks

 

[glamdringfh]

Hi n00b2,

I'd venture to say it is probably your RAM. Not because the modules themselves are draining power, but because you're able to do more things more quickly on your laptop. If you're now able to keep more tabs on your browser open and run additional programs at the same time that will almost certainly be the cause of the lessened battery life.

 

[n00b2]

Hi n00b2,

I'd venture to say it is probably your RAM. Not because the modules themselves are draining power, but because you're able to do more things more quickly on your laptop. If you're now able to keep more tabs on your browser open and run additional programs at the same time that will almost certainly be the cause of the lessened battery life.

The RAM is definitely allowing me to do more things then before and also to do more things at once but the battery life drop was noticeable straight away. Like I reinstalled windows onto the SSD once all the components were upgraded and straight away the maximum battery life before even installing drivers was around 3 hrs. Was definitely over 6 hrs when I last reinstalled windows on my old configuration. Is that to be expected?

 

[glamdringfh]

As long as your power saving settings have stayed the same I'd say it looks like your new components are just going to be taxing your battery more. I'm honestly suprised at the extent of the draw, but it certainly seems to be the case.

 

[n00b2]

As long as your power saving settings have stayed the same I'd say it looks like your new components are just going to be taxing your battery more. I'm honestly suprised at the extent of the draw, but it certainly seems to be the case.

The huge difference in the battery life is what is confusing me especially considering 2 of the components I have installed are supposed to improve battery life. Is there any way to check if the RAM is the culprit other than swapping them back out? Limiting the RAM allowed to be used to 8GB somehow?

 

[glamdringfh]

The easiest way to test it would be to physically change the modules back out.

 

[n00b2]

The easiest way to test it would be to physically change the modules back out.

OK I will give that a go. If that doesn't change the battery life much you have any idea what else might have caused the drastic drop?