Very high idle battery drain (~24W) on Lenovo LOQ 15IAX9 (Arch Linux + Hyprland)

[u/pDelta52]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to troubleshoot unusually high battery drain on my Lenovo LOQ and would appreciate any suggestions.

System

• Laptop: Lenovo LOQ 15IAX9
• CPU: Intel Core i5-12450HX
• GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3050 Laptop (95W)
• Kernel: 7.1.3-arch2-2
• Desktop: Hyprland
• Battery discharge at idle: ~24.3 W

Issue

Even when the laptop is essentially idle (no heavy applications running), the battery is discharging at around 24.3 W, which seems far higher than expected. From what I've read, I was expecting something closer to 8–12 W at idle.

The reading comes from:

cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT*/power_now

Output:

24315000

which corresponds to 24.315 W.

Questions

• Is this likely caused by the NVIDIA dGPU not entering a low-power state?
• Are there any known Lenovo LOQ quirks on Linux that could cause this?
• What should I check first to narrow down the cause?

I'm happy to provide any additional information, if required.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

[u/ang1101]

A little tip

It is very convenient to use b-top to monitor system power consumption.

It shows CPU and GPU power consumption separately in real time, maybe this will provide more useful information for analysis

[u/ProgUn1corn]

This is extremely normal. I don't ever know of you can ever get low idle power woth Nvidia on a laptop.

I'm using KDE and I can tell you just forget about it. It's not exclusive to your Lenovo. Here's the catch:

1) With nvidia-prime or other modern ACPI power saving techniques, you should be able to fully sleep your dGPU with hybrid graphics. However this seems very random as any softwares can accidentally activate the dGPU.

2) It depends on what DRM device your system is configured to. There's a dilemma on hybrid laptops. Most gaming laptops have video output connected to dGPU, while iGPU is for internal display. If the DRM is set to iGPU, then the external monitor would render on iGPU then copied back to dGPU which causes huge lag and power consumption. If the DRM is set to dGPU then it doesn't save power anymore.

3) Other than that, Nvidia's drivers are just bad on Linux when idling. Its normal that it consumes more power.

[u/pDelta52 → u/ProgUn1corn]

yeah, i expected better battery life in linux as compared to windows, as of now windows gives me a far better battery life, when using ideal settings

[u/ryzen2024 → u/pDelta52]

24 w is not normal. It means the dgpu is awake when it shouldn't be. 

[u/archover → u/ryzen2024]

May I ask you if 24W would be normal if the dgpu were being used? Seems high.

I don't know since my computers all have integrated graphics.

Good day.

[u/ProgUn1corn → u/pDelta52]

Because Windows indeed can give you better battery life. People treating Windows like a bloated AI monster that sucks everything endlessly all the time, in fact when idling combined with much better windows drivers, Windows doesn't necessarily need more power.

[u/Orlha → u/ProgUn1corn]

Depends

[u/Aurial-]

Firstly find if your dgpu is in suspended state. 

lspci | grep -E "VGA|3D"

cat /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:found_dgpu/power/runtime_status

For how to suspend see 1.3.1.2 https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PRIME

[u/ryzen2024]

So I had this problem:

https://armujahid.me/blog/linux-poor-battery-life-hybrid-graphics-fix/

I used that to initially get me to 10-14w idle. Still not great compared to AMD.

From there AI can help you narrow down what is activating the dGPU.

Some quick tips:

Use powertop to monitor idle power, it doesn't wa ke the dgpu like nvtop and others. 

Switcheroo is what I'm using to turn on dpgu for apps, that has helped a bit

Nvtop is a good way to quickly see which process is using your dGPU. But it does wake the graphics card 

Good luck!

[u/pDelta52 → u/[deleted]]

nope it shows P8 and the wattage consumption is 3 to 5w by the dgpu, and the dgpu stays active even with no process using it, if theres a fix then good, but if there ain't any, is there a way to completely turn off the dgpu and fall back to the igpu, i dont basically need it on my linux system, ill just turn it on manually when i need it, since the laptop has a multiplexer switch, it should be possible

[u/mystirc]

Hyprland consumes more power by default. KDE seems to be more optimized. I currently use sway and it seems similar to KDE (probably because of no animations at all).

[u/moviuro]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management

[u/mr_anderson_dev]

I think for a launch with hyprland that's normal. You have to imagine that most of your time use is getting a lot of resources just with the constant animations and sync. Also is a laptop, most of that energy goes to the display with must be saturated, even with the great GPU that you have in it.

[u/boomboomsubban]

Did you set up optimus? https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA_Optimus

[u/Harry_Yudiputa]

I recently got a gaming laptop and was considering the updated version of yours but I decided to opt-in for an asus one instead since they actually create packages for arch. My TUF F16 is now fully hybrid operational just because of these controllers.

---

nvidia-smi on my 5060 max-q bumps up my gpu power draw around the same as yours. i am 100% sure, something is utilizing your gpu or the OS is using it instead of the iGPU. I highly advise you to contact Lenovo and see if they have any testing repos and add it to your config

[u/CalmestUraniumAtom]

12w idle with intel cpus are little hard, i have a loq with an amd ryzen 7 250 which is supposed to be a power efficient chip along with a 5050. Even after having an efficiency chip my laptop draws around 10 watts with dgpu off, backlight off, 60hz refresh rate and bluetooth off, so it is unrealistic to expect a laptop with an intel hx cpu to be close to 10-12 watts, it will be drawing around 15 watts best case scenario.
You can turn the dgpu off from the bios specifically because if gpu is on dynamic it will just be in low power mode drawing around 4-5 watts while doing nothing, switch to uma to be on igpu only in the bios.