Question Is it safe to replace a dead laptop battery with a much weaker one ?

[Aleksa Zagorac]

My laptop battery has swollen (battery model: L17M3PG2, 11.52V / TYP 4955 / 57 Wh MIN 4840 mAh / 55W). I took the battery out for safety reasons. I could not find the replacement battery (not even some third party battery) because this battery is non removable and has a cable to connect it to the motherboard. I could not find anywhere this or similar model of battery with the right cable length (because they made 2 types - one with shorter and one with longer cable - I need the one with longer cable).

Note - I noticed a decrease in performance in my laptop while it is working only on the power cable, without the battery. I later found on the internet that it is because the battery in my laptop acts like a UPS device, so when doing some hard work on my PC or play heavy games, FPS drops occur.

My question:
Is it safe to replace the battery with the weaker one? Will my laptop performance go back to normal? Performance and laptop safety are most important to me, I do not mind if the battery will last a shorter time because I rarely use it without the power cable.

I found a battery that would fit into my laptop and has a long enough cable, it is also a Lenovo battery but for a different model of Lenovo laptop, and it is much weaker (11.34 V / Typical Capacity 3223mAh / 36 Wh / Rated Capacity 3087 mAh / 35 Wh)

PS - I live in Serbia and there is not much Lenovo parts here. Also, most of the stores outside of Serbia do not ship their products to Serbia (or have humongous shipping fees) + customs fee in my country is also very expensive when ordering something from abroad...

 

[TerryLaze]

The battery might not work at all depending on how much "security" lenovo used on the laptop.
If the laptop reduces performance due to the battery not being there it might do the same if it sees that the battery is smaller than it should be.
The batteries do not state how much amp (A) they deliver so if the smaller one has less amp it might not work at all or make the laptop shut off when the laptop does hard work.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

It's very likely that the system will detect an incorrect battery and simply refuse to start up. Don't try to be smarter than the engineers, use the correct battery.

 

[geofelt]

One cause for battery bloating is the motherboard bios.
I had a similar situation and the updated bios fixed the overcharging situation.

As to a replacement, lower capacity, by itself is not bad.
But replacements that are not legitimate may have incompatible electronics in them.
They may not work properly or, possibly not even work at all.
In the US, a search for "l17m3pg2" finds many such units for sale.

 

[neojack]

i am sure that your house is more expensive than a battery. Fake or improprer batteries put an important risk of fire.

It's one of the rare parts that are only and i repeat ONLY to be ordered from the OEM manufacturer.
the battery you find is for a different model. Each laptops has a specialized battery charger that is tuned for it's own battery model. It may or may not work with another model and in the worst case set a fire.

if you can't for various reasons, plug your laptop directly with it's power adapter. It will work like a desktop computer without battery.

You wrote about a swolen battery. store it OUTSIDE of your house or any building. far from a wall or a vehicle or anything that can burn

 

[Aleksa Zagorac]

Is there any way to improve performance of my laptop while it has no battery?

My laptop has reduced performance now, while it has no battery, and in some heavy games, my FPS is around 140-150 (before taking the battery out it was 160-165FPS always) and every few seconds I have random freezes that last half a second or less. This can be very annoying and can cause me problems when testing games because I work in the gaming industry...

The performance issue happens only in heavy games and programs, not when using my PC casually, but because of my job I need to have good laptop performance all the time.

Note - I tried setting the power plan for best performance and turned off power throttling through the registry, but neither helped.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Laptops are designed to have a battery installed at all times. The power delivery system needs it to be there.

 

[punkncat]

Output power needs to be the same. Ah can be lower but the laptop will not run off mains as long.

 

[Aleksa Zagorac]

Laptops are designed to have a battery installed at all times. The power delivery system needs it to be there.

If I get a UPS device and use it, can that improve laptop performance?

I tried finding a battery on amazon but nobody ships to Serbia because there is some stupid law here that batteries are not allowed to import here without some kind of permission, so I cannot order it here from abroad unless I open a business company which deals with the procurement of batteries and get a permission from state...