Minimum watts only for playing?

[WreckerALeX]

What is the minimum watts for playing a game(Without charging)?
25watts as mentioned by every youtuber?

I want a power bank but 20-25watts are like half price or even 1/3 of those that do 45w like the adapter.

As far as I know, 45watts is for both playing and charging at the same time but there is no need to charge if your battery is already above 90%.

I used a "Kill a Watt" device and running on the 45w official adapter with Resident Evil 7 @60fps(Mostly high 50s) and got as high as 29watts(-2watt for the Kill a Watt) without moving at the start of the game(Was doing Steam OS vs Windows watt consumption, TLDR is about the same if you do tweaks on Windows like debloating etc...)

[maxRunner]

This is an interesting question. I can't say I've messed around with anything under 45 watts. I'll just speculate a bit. Someone who is better with electrical engineering can help more.

If your charger can't keep up with power draw it'll just use the battery, while also charging your battery. AFAIK this isn't particularly great for it but it would prolong your playtime.

However, if you set a TDP limit plus use a few other settings to save power, maybe you can reduce enough power draw to match a lesser charger. I suspect you'll still get a notice that the charger is slow charging. At that point I don't know what happens (i.e. if it is using just the charger, or switching to battery + charging).

Anyway, just a couple observations to think about.

[Punkovich]

Max system power draw when not charging ive seen on mine is ~30w. SteamOS.

[Man's Best Friend]

Originally posted by maxRunner:

If your charger can't keep up with power draw it'll just use the battery, while also charging your battery. AFAIK this isn't particularly great for it but it would prolong your playtime.

You're partly right. Someone posted the charger controller a while ago, and I had a good look at the technical docs.
The battery is only charged if the charger is powerful enough to run the system and charge the battery. In the event of an under powered charger 100% of the power goes straight to running the system, and the battery is used to supplement the charger.

So running an under powered charger is like just running a less demanding game while fully on battery. No charging, just (slower) draining.

[maxRunner]

Originally posted by HTTP Error 418: I'm a teapot:

You're partly right. Someone posted the charger controller a while ago, and I had a good look at the technical docs.
The battery is only charged if the charger is powerful enough to run the system and charge the battery. In the event of an under powered charger 100% of the power goes straight to running the system, and the battery is used to supplement the charger.

So running an under powered charger is like just running a less demanding game while fully on battery. No charging, just (slower) draining.

Thanks, that's actually a better situation. Being able to use a low charge and it will split the difference with the battery.

[WreckerALeX]

bump