[SOLVED] Laptop power adapter issue

[Talgoth]

Hello, i have a friend who has an issue with his power adapter for his new laptop. The laptop is a brand new Alienware m17, has a NVIDIA(R) GeForce RTX(TM) 2060 6GB GDDR6 in it with 8th generation i7-8750H . It has a 60Wh battery and a 180w power adapter. What he told me was he had been playing for 4 hours while plugged in(most likely playing a very demanding game, probably The Division 2 at max settings) and suddenly his power adapter turned off. I asked him if when touching it it was hot enough to hurt his hand and he told me it was close to it. After waiting a while (unsure) he plugged it back in and everything worked fine.

I am not very familiar with power problems, but since the power supplies were 300w before (i think) i'm wondering if the power adapter is too underpowered for the graphic card. He emailed Dell about his problem, they told him to check his drivers, which he did but his laptop is only 2 weeks old. Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you for reading.

 

[Lutfij]

You may want to see if the laptop has any BIOS updates pending. It's not unusual for Dell to acknowledge that there are design flaws in their products. The only issue is that the issue needs to be brought to their attention and if the number of issues reported is high enough, they will issue a notice for recall. The power brick shutting off is a safety feature to prevent further damage coming to the adapter. You might want to see if reduced game settings and other game titles recreates/changes the issue.

 

[Talgoth]

You may want to see if the laptop has any BIOS updates pending. It's not unusual for Dell to acknowledge that there are design flaws in their products. The only issue is that the issue needs to be brought to their attention and if the number of issues reported is high enough, they will issue a notice for recall. The power brick shutting off is a safety feature to prevent further damage coming to the adapter. You might want to see if reduced game settings and other game titles recreates/changes the issue.

Ok will do when i see him. I told him to keep using his laptop as he had been using it to see if we could recreate the problem at will but to keep an eye on his power brick once in a while just to be sure. He wants me to lower the laptop's power (under clocking instead of over clocking it) but that's the very last resort i wanna use. Like you said, will suggest to him to lower the settings a bit which should solve it. Still waiting for an answer from dell but thank you for giving me a few things i can try out while we wait on their answer.

 

[Talgoth]

Well i went thru his laptop. Checked everything, updated what needed updating except the bios. When i checked the bios, i saw the charger was on express charge instead of standard charge. When i switched it to standard charge, he tested it for an hour and things didn't get near as hot as before. Been a few days and still looks good. The only thing still bugging me is why his battery discharges when he is plugged in. Only happens when he games at max settings on his game (Division 2). Which still makes me think that his 180w brick isn't enough to power the laptop.