How can I improve the battery life on Manjaro?

bl4z3 · 12 November 2020 09:33

Hello.
I have installed Manjaro on my 3 month old laptop.Everything works awesome, including PRIME, but I have terrible battery life! I have installed tlp and powertop and apply both recommended things at boot. I have the prime driver installed so my dedicated GPU doesn’t run all the time. It is an optimus laptop with AMD Ryzen 5 3550H + Nvidia gtx 1050. Any way to fix my battery life? I get only 1.5-2h life as compared to 4-5h on Windows. Powertop shows 20W power usage after boot with no apps open.
Output of inxi -Fxzz-

System:    Kernel: 5.9.3-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.0 Desktop: GNOME 3.38.1 
           Distro: Manjaro Linux 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: TUF Gaming FX505DD_FX505DD v: 1.0 
           serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: ASUSTeK model: FX505DD v: 1.0 serial: <filter> UEFI: American Megatrends 
           v: FX505DD.310 date: 12/24/2019 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 28.3 Wh condition: 43.0/50.6 Wh (85%) model: FX50442 
           status: Discharging 
CPU:       Info: Quad Core model: AMD Ryzen 5 3550H with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx bits: 64 
           type: MT MCP arch: Zen+ rev: 1 L2 cache: 2048 KiB 
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm bogomips: 33551 
           Speed: 1223 MHz min/max: 1400/2100 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1223 
           2: 1222 3: 1223 4: 1222 5: 1222 6: 1222 7: 1223 8: 1223 
Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA GP107M [GeForce GTX 1050 3 GB Max-Q] driver: nvidia v: 455.38 
           bus ID: 01:00.0 
           Device-2: AMD Picasso vendor: ASUSTeK driver: amdgpu v: kernel bus ID: 05:00.0 
           Device-3: IMC Networks USB2.0 HD UVC WebCam type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus ID: 3-1:2 
           Display: x11 server: X.org 1.20.9 driver: amdgpu,ati,nvidia 
           unloaded: modesetting,nouveau,radeon resolution: <xdpyinfo missing> 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD RAVEN (DRM 3.39.0 5.9.3-1-MANJARO LLVM 10.0.1) 
           v: 4.6 Mesa 20.2.1 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: AMD Family 17h HD Audio vendor: ASUSTeK driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus ID: 05:00.6 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.9.3-1-MANJARO 
Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet vendor: ASUSTeK 
           driver: r8169 v: kernel port: e000 bus ID: 02:00.0 
           IF: enp2s0 state: down mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Realtek RTL8822BE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WiFi adapter vendor: AzureWave 
           driver: rtw_8822be v: N/A port: d000 bus ID: 04:00.0 
           IF: wlp4s0 state: up mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 1.14 TiB used: 279.91 GiB (23.9%) 
           ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Western Digital model: PC SN520 SDAPNUW-256G-1002 
           size: 238.47 GiB 
           ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST1000LM035-1RK172 size: 931.51 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 184.91 GiB used: 124.92 GiB (67.6%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 
Swap:      Alert: No Swap data was found. 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 48.6 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 48.0 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 2700 
Info:      Processes: 300 Uptime: 48m Memory: 7.28 GiB used: 2.63 GiB (36.1%) Init: systemd 
           Compilers: gcc: 10.2.0 Packages: 1561 Shell: Zsh v: 5.8 inxi: 3.1.08

visone · 12 November 2020 11:20

Hi!
I have the same combo and I had the same problem. This is what I did to fix it:
Dual Graphics:
1. I use optimus-switch to change between gpu’s, I don’t use prime, just change between them when I needed, the other one is shutdown. This way you only use one gpu at the same time= less battery drain.

Power Manager:
1. There’re some options for this matter, you can use tlp ( cli app), tlpui(gui app), slimbookbattery, laptop-mode-tools( I think this is the name).
2. I use slimbookbattery, it have 3 profiles that you can configure in any way you want. You can configure the power governor, disable the wifi,bluetooth,etc when you don’t need them.

DE/WM:

Configure your desktop enviroment or window manager as light as posible.

With all this I have ~5/6h of battery with the amd gpu only, ~3/4 with nvidia gpu

bl4z3 · 12 November 2020 11:26

How do I use optimus-switch? Do I need to nuke my drivers?
Im using tlp,tlpui and powertop already.
Using GNOME, not much added pretty barebones

visone · 12 November 2020 13:13

Hi!
This is the repo

I used it with amdgpu/nvidia drivers and with hibryd drivers without problem. Just follow the instructions on the repo.

theshank · 15 December 2020 13:57

wow, 5-6hrs is amazing. How much power does your laptop consume when idling? Mine consumes 10-11W. And even light browsing the web takes it up to around 14W.

visone · 15 December 2020 15:04

Hi!
I didn’t check, only timed the battery last. I can tell you that I use bspwm. A lightweight wm and I reached that time disabling composition, I mean without effects and transparencies, using de amd ugpu and the powersave profile

theshank · 15 December 2020 16:12

I am on xfce. Will try out if using only a wm withotu DE improves the battery life. Thank you.

bkarlan · 11 April 2021 15:59

I have an early '13 MB pro retina. It has Intel and Nvidia and I have very short battery life using manjaro gnome, perhaps 2 hours. I looked at this but this requires running the nvidia graphics drivers instead of the open source drivers. However, if I install the nvidia drivers, I’ll never boot into the GUI again, I just get a blank screen. Does anyone know how I can install the nvidia drivers successfully?

Murphcid · 2 October 2021 11:40

I am running a System 76 Darter Pro (gen 1 coreboot, 49 watt/hr battery), I have installed TLP and I still never get more than 3.5 to 4 hours MAX just browsing the net, watching YouTube, and some light word processing. I have also dropped brightness way, way down to 27% and have no keyboard lighting, bluetooth off. Is there anything else I can do to increase laptop battery longevity under Manjaro Cinnamon?