I’m on a Dell XPS 15 9570 running Manjaro KDE. I’m getting terrible battery life for some reason. I’ve installed optimus-manager but I’m still getting terrible battery life (2-3 hours) even on Intel mode. PowerTop often says that my network interface is consuming 12+ watts, and I’m not sure how to fix this.
HI @mod3sty 
You can configure power saving methods wit tlp: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/TLP
Instead of configuring /etc/tlp.conf by hand, you can also use tlpui
pamac install tlpui
(also specifically note tlp-rdw from there or @megavolt’s archwiki link)
For further assistance … please provide more information.
I’ve been using LMT so far, I’ll try to configure TLP and see what happens.
I installed TLP and removed LMT, and it seems that TLP is a lot better. My battery is great now! However, PowerTop is still reporting that my network interface is using 12.5W, despite the discharge rate being 4.09 W in total
The battery reports a discharge rate of 4.09 W
The energy consumed was 503 J
The estimated remaining time is 9 hours, 38 minutes
Summary: 1861.5 wakeups/second, 0.0 GPU ops/seconds, 0.0 VFS ops/sec and 33.4% CPU use
Power est. Usage Events/s Category Description
12.5 W 2.3 pkts/s Device Network interface: wlp59s0 (ath10k_pci)
Also here’s the info I should’ve provided initially:
System:
Kernel: 5.8.16-2-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.0
parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.8-x86_64
root=UUID=320c4a27-3dc6-4163-850c-8d9ed44ffb3e rw quiet apparmor=1
security=apparmor udev.log_priority=3
Console: tty 2 wm: kwin_x11 DM: SDDM Distro: Manjaro Linux
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Dell product: XPS 15 9570 v: N/A serial: <filter>
Chassis: type: 10 serial: <filter>
Mobo: Dell model: 0D0T05 v: A00 serial: <filter> UEFI: Dell v: 1.16.2
date: 04/21/2020
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 36.3 Wh condition: 58.9/97.0 Wh (61%) volts: 10.9/11.4
model: SMP DELL GPM0365 type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: Discharging
ID-2: hidpp_battery_0 charge: N/A condition: N/A volts: 3.7/N/A
model: Logitech G903 Wired/Wireless Gaming Mouse type: N/A serial: <filter>
status: Unknown
CPU:
Info: 6-Core model: Intel Core i7-8750H socket: BGA1440 (U3E1) note: check
bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Kaby Lake family: 6 model-id: 9E (158)
stepping: A (10) microcode: D6 L1 cache: 384 KiB L2 cache: 9216 KiB
L3 cache: 9000 KiB
flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
bogomips: 52815
Speed: 900 MHz min/max: 800/4100 MHz base/boost: 2277/4100 volts: 0.8 V
ext-clock: 100 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 900 2: 900 3: 900 4: 900 5: 900
6: 900 7: 900 8: 900 9: 900 10: 900 11: 900 12: 900
Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled
Type: l1tf
mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable
Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI
Type: spec_store_bypass
mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp
Type: spectre_v1
mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional,
IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling
Type: srbds mitigation: Microcode
Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel UHD Graphics 630 vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel
bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:3e9b
Device-2: NVIDIA GP107M [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile] driver: nouveau
v: kernel alternate: nvidia_drm,nvidia bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 10de:1c8c
Device-3: Realtek Integrated_Webcam_HD type: USB driver: uvcvideo
bus ID: 1-12:5 chip ID: 0bda:5657 serial: <filter>
Display: server: X.Org 1.20.9 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: modesetting
display ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.0x11.2")
s-diag: 582mm (22.9")
Monitor-1: eDP-1 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 142 size: 344x194mm (13.5x7.6")
diag: 395mm (15.5")
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics 630 (CFL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.2.1
direct render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: Intel Cannon Lake PCH cAVS vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel
v: kernel alternate: snd_soc_skl,snd_sof_pci bus ID: 00:1f.3
chip ID: 8086:a348
Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.8.16-2-MANJARO
Network:
Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
vendor: Bigfoot Networks driver: ath10k_pci v: kernel port: 3000
bus ID: 3b:00.0 chip ID: 168c:003e
IF: wlp59s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros type: USB driver: btusb bus ID: 1-4:3
chip ID: 0cf3:e301
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 58.88 GiB (12.6%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Western Digital model: WDS500G3X0C-00SJG0
size: 465.76 GiB block size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 31.6 Gb/s
lanes: 4 serial: <filter> rev: 111110WD temp: 31 Celsius C scheme: GPT
SMART: yes health: PASSED on: 14d 10h cycles: 415
read-units: 3,766,122 [1.92 TB] written-units: 2,803,988 [1.43 TB]
Partition:
ID-1: / raw size: 465.46 GiB size: 457.16 GiB (98.22%)
used: 58.88 GiB (12.9%) fs: ext4 block size: 4096 B dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
Swap:
Alert: No Swap data was found.
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 36.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nouveau temp: 42.0 C
Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0 fan-2: 0
Info:
Processes: 301 Uptime: 2h 21m Memory: 7.42 GiB used: 3.36 GiB (45.3%)
Init: systemd v: 246 Compilers: gcc: 10.2.0 clang: 10.0.1 Packages:
pacman: 1434 lib: 392 flatpak: 0 Shell: Bash (sudo) v: 5.0.18
running in: konsole inxi: 3.1.08
It’s just some wild guessing from powertop (hence “power est”(imated).
For some hardware it can be pretty accurate but in some cases it spits out total nonsense.
I see. I guess I’ll ignore those readings from now on. Thanks for replying!
yes, TLP is a good tool, you may also remove powertop
just launch sudo tlp-stat and it will suggest what else you can install end/or mask