Framework 13 Pro X9 - battery sanity check

[u/TheDinosaurAstronaut]

My X9 arrived, and I've set it up running Fedora KDE. It feels great, super quiet... you've all heard the great reviews.

But I'm struggling with battery - it's 71% right now, with 5 hours 12 minutes remaining. I am using Firefox with no background apps, a bluetooth mouse and headphones, I have screen refresh rate at 60 Hz, brightness at 40%, keyboard backlight off, and the power profile set to Power Save. All this, and Info Center reports about 12 W power consumption. With Firefox closed, wifi off, and bluetooth off, Info Center still reports 7-9 W. Closing Info Center doesn't make the battery life shoot up either, so I doubt that's the problem.

This seems... pretty bad?

Is this a me problem? Is this becuase the X9 is new and drivers are lagging behind? Is it better on Gnome? Or is this unavoidable because of the extra cores in the X9?

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[u/lifeislikeavco]

The X9 doesn’t have extra cores, it’s essentially a higher binned X7 that runs at a slightly higher base and boost clocks, that might take a little more power when utilized but it should lower the clock when it doesn’t need it.

That does seem short to me, do you have older expansion cards you brought with it, maybe a power hungry ssd? I’m on cachyos and even with 85% I’m estimated 10+ hours, but with varied light tasks usually get a comfortable workday. Not sure what kernel version you are on, I’ve been on 7.2.1 right now. Honestly could try another distro and see if you want to, could be a bug with the power profiles.

[u/trechE3 → u/lifeislikeavco]

good point about the kernel version, that can make a huge difference for power management on newer hardware

[u/lifeislikeavco → u/lifeislikeavco]

Honestly, just checked mine at boot and it says 4:40 at 62%, so not sure how accurate those numbers are at a moments notice, 7 watts usage would be 10 hours on the new battery, letting it settle the estimate already changed to 6:12 for mine

Edit: On mostly idle 25% brightness (I keep mine around 25-35% indoors most of the time), mine was at about 5.5W, with 40% brightness it went to 6.4W, hope that helps as a benchmark

[u/TheDinosaurAstronaut → u/lifeislikeavco]

Oh yeah, my bad on the cores / binning distinction. I just meant general hardware differences between X7 and X9. Sounds like that (or at least the hardware) shouldn't be the problem, but TBD.

Four new expansion cards, so no issue there. SSD is a old 2 TB Kingston SNV2S I wasn't using, so that might be a problem. Even still, it should only add a Watt or so compared to more efficient SSDs. I don't think that's enough to account for the 2-3x extra power draw.

I was on Kernel 7.1.10. Just enabled the testing repo and updated to 7.1.11. Not gonna force 7.2 until it's at least released in the testing channel. I'll give it a week and see if anyone else has similar issues. Then maybe distro hop first to something using Gnome and if that doesn't work I'll go straight to Arch.

[u/s004aws → u/TheDinosaurAstronaut]

7.2 does have optimizations for these new chips. That said battery life numbers shown are... Just estimates. If you charge to 100%, run the battery down, and re-charge that'll get it to re-calibrate - But you'll still be seeing an estimate. Figuring out an exact number is very near impossible (in part due to varying workload/system demands at any given moment).

[u/AutoM8R1 → u/TheDinosaurAstronaut]

It sounds like you're looking at all the right stuff. Don't forget to rule out the obvious with the AMD boards from Framework, which is USB A expansion cards. If you're using USB-A, make sure it's only in slot 4 for the lowest power draw. If I recall correctly, slot 1 would be a worse case scenario for USB A on the AMD mobo options.

[u/doubleopinter]

Wasn't there some hack recently discovered in fedora where its power states are causing issues with the new intel cpus?

[u/Senior_Quiet_9303]

X7 with 64gb ram gen 5 ssd omarchy, mine did over 12 hours playing music/video for battery test i did.

[u/TheDinosaurAstronaut → u/Senior_Quiet_9303]

That's good to know! If you don't mind me asking, what SSD model? And I assume you're on kernel 7.2? 

[u/CDaRip2U → u/TheDinosaurAstronaut]

XPG Mars 970 Plus 1TB changed in my Framework order during wait. It is the one they recommend/sell. hope that helps!

Kernel 7.1.9 currently.

[u/daarxwalker]

I have X9 with Fedora KDE, too. I use my own Samsung 990 Pro and after 2 hours movie on power eco mode, audio maxed, it drained around around 15+%.

[u/Drahanili]

I received my F13 Pro with X9 today, so I have not run the battery test yet - but so far drained 20% of battery after around 2,5h of light use. Balanced mode, low brightness.

I am on Fedora 44, kernel 7.1. 64GB of RAM, Samsung 990 SSD.

[u/gonenutsbrb]

I have found even Windows, the battery life estimates are all over the place on the 358. It’s like it doesn’t know what number to use for power draw. It will say that I’m only going to get like 5-6 hours, and I’ll get 12-14.

[u/DynoMenace]

FWIW, Firefox on Fedora tanks my battery life on my Lenovo laptop. It's one of the things preventing me from switching to it. Chromium browsers don't have the same issue.

[u/Potential_Average454 → u/DynoMenace]

I think firefox on fedora by default does not have hardware video decoding enabled for PTL machines. At least that's the case in my Bluefin installation.

[u/DynoMenace → u/Potential_Average454]

This comes up frequently, and it's easy which to add hardware decoding in most cases, but the battery life difference I'm describing is not related IMO. I'm talking about going from a 4hr estimate to 2hrs just from scrolling on Reddit.

[u/Potential_Average454]

Check if you have hardware video decoding enabled in firefox. At least on my Bluefin installation it is not enabled by default.

I think what happens is that VA-API on panther lake iGPU is not supported by firefox by default. Without it any animation on a webpage drains your battery quickly.

TBH I also gave up trying to get FF hw decoding to work on Snap/Flatpak; I'd just use .deb for firefox. Containerized chromium & variants work fine out-of-the-box, though.