Mac laptop battery draining while playing

[Thom Blair III]

FINAL EDIT:
It turns out I had mistakenly bought a 45W power adapter instead of the 85W one I needed.

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I just bought Subnautica and immediately started playing.

As soon as I start playing Subnautica, my battery stops being charged & starts draining, even though it's plugged in to the AC adapter. I'm guessing it's because it's running too hot, causing my Mac laptop to shut off access to the battery:

"Overheating can stop your MacBook Pro or Air battery from charging if the thermal sensors within the computer detect a drastic rise in temperature, and shut off access to the battery as a safety precaution."
(https://www.getbatterybox.com/pages/macbook-battery-not-charging-what-to-do-to-fix-it)

Here are the specs for my laptop:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)
2.5 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB
Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

According to an app I have (iStat Menus):
- My 4 CPU cores all are running at about 170°F during play
- My GPU is also running at about 170°F
- Both sides of the fans are running at 6000rpm
- My graphics card was running at about 60fps consistently

In-game settings are:
General:
- resolution: 1280 x 720
- fullscreen: off
- Vsync: on
Graphics:
- detail: low
- water quality: medium
- anti-aliasing: TAA
- anti-aliasing quality: off
- bloom: off
- lens dirt: off
- depth of field: off
- motion blur quality: off
- ambient occlusion: off
- screen-space reflections: off
- dithering: on

From the console, I see:
- use frame time for physics step: enabled
- target frame rate = 144
- vsync count = 1
- quality level: 0
- res: 1280x720
- texture quality: 2
- light shafts: disabled
- frame time graph: disabled
- ambient particles: enabled
- visualize depth: disabled
- water volume: disabled
- water surface: disabled
- LODGroup bias: 0.66
- Shadow cascades: 1


I noticed that the console says the "target frame rate = 144" but my computer's app says the graphics card is only running at 60fps. Can I set the target frame rate to 60 so it's not computing more than can be displayed?

Or, are there any other solutions?

One thing to note is I have played Steam's Creativerse quite a bit without having this problem & here are the minimum requirements for it:
Processor: Intel Core i5, 1.7 GHz Dual Core
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000
Storage: 2 GB available space

Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks in advance.

[BTown780]

It could be that your system is draining power (While playing) faster than it is taking in, and thus the battery is also being slightly drained. Think it might be more of a hardware question than one of the software.

[Thom Blair III]

Originally posted by BTown:

It could be that your system is draining power (While playing) faster than it is taking in, and thus the battery is also being slightly drained. Think it might be more of a hardware question than one of the software.

As soon as I quit playing, the battery goes back to charging again. When I then start playing again, it stops charging. That makes me think it's something in the game.

Or, are you saying that my hardware is not capable of running this game? I don't know how to tell if my computer is too weak to run it.

[Tim]

Your Specifications aren't too low to run it, ideally I would want 4gb of graphics RAM for Subnautica, but that's neither here nor there.

You can typically set a fixed FPS through your graphics drivers or in game, but unless you're getting visual problems I wouldn't bother messing with it.

It sounds like your graphics drivers may already be locking to 60fps, likely to match what your screen is capable of.
Sadly this won't be the solution to your problems, as it doesn't matter what the game is aiming for fps wise, drivers typically get the final say so on that count.

What temperature are your GPU and CPU running at?

Afterthought, the safety feature exists to stop the battery blowing up on your bollox, smart.
So pull the battery, hopefully the feature is intelligent enough to detect there is no potential explosives on your lap?

[Thom Blair III]

Both are running at 170°F.

[Tim]

Geez, 'Muricans and their funny methods of measure, a quick google says that's about 76 degrees in normal people measurements. :P

If that was a desktop I would say that's fairly concerning temp wise.
For a Laptop, meh, not circuitry melting temps.

Yeah I would try pulling the battery, Laptops don't need a battery to run when the mains charger is in.

Then if it does continue to reach melty temperatures, it will shut itself down or restart before any damage is done.

I can't see a reason why Macs would be different to any other laptop in that respect.

[Thom Blair III]

Originally posted by Tim:

76 degrees C
If that was a desktop I would say that's fairly concerning temp wise.
For a Laptop, meh, not circuitry melting temps.
Yeah I would try pulling the battery, Laptops don't need a battery to run when the mains charger is in.

The laptop is made so you cannot remove the battery. Idk why, but you can't. I'll ask Apple what they think I should do.

[Dolomite83]

Use ion batteries and charger fins

[Phoenix]

What wattage is your charger rated at? As others have already stated, it's possible that hardware draw while running the game exceeds what the charger can provide (or what the charging port is capable of supporting). Ideally, you wouldn't want to play this on a laptop, at least not one that is meant to be overly...portable.

[Tim]

Wow, Apple really don't do anything normal do they?

Is it possible your mains charger lead itself has damage to the cable?
How wobbly is the connection to the charging port?

If you have a Multimeter(Voltage meter) try checking what your charger is putting out and compare it to what it says on the sticker on the back.
At least if that reads normal then you know the charger itself isn't the issue.

I would agree with everything Phoenix said, apart from the not using a laptop bit.
Games don't care whether it's a laptop or desktop, merely the specification and how much juice and thinking time they put in.
Laptops are just a thin desktop that runs a lot hotter.

Also, if it's an original, the charger will absolutely be capable of putting in as much juice as the system needs, at 100% draw from devices, they don't design things to shut down unless something is faulty.

[Phoenix]

Originally posted by Tim:

I would agree with everything Phoenix said, apart from the not using a laptop bit.
Games don't care whether it's a laptop or desktop, merely the specification and how much juice and thinking time they put in.
Laptops are just a thin desktop that runs a lot hotter.

Which i'm well aware of - i explicitly wrote

[...]at least one that's not meant to be overly...portable

By nature, laptops are meant to portable - that includes a down-sized power supply circuitry that does not support the same wattage as desktops (thin-clients not withstanding). It is not uncommon for laptop power supplies to be unable to support a 100% load on the unit they come with. I don't think there's anything wrong with the unit OP has. It's simply not sized accordingly.

[TylerthePianoGuy]

You are playing on a Mac. That is your first mistake...

[Tim]

Originally posted by Phoenix:

By nature, laptops are meant to portable - that includes a down-sized power supply circuitry that does not support the same wattage as desktops (thin-clients not withstanding). It is not uncommon for laptop power supplies to be unable to support a 100% load on the unit they come with. I don't think there's anything wrong with the unit OP has. It's simply not sized accordingly.

Fair Play, I guess I have been out of the Laptop market for some time, for the reason that the majority of them indeed aren't intended for gaming.
I wasn't intending to avocate laptops at all.

That's good to know though thanks, I knew the PSU was downgraded, but I wasn't aware they were penalising performance to gain aesthetics so much.
I believed they matched the PSU spec to rest of the components, talk about cheating the buyer.

Apple being what they are, I can only assume they took full advantage.

To be fair, Subnautica does seem to eat CPU and GPU time like a champ.

[NuCkEnFuTs]

OP you may be able to get away with pulling the battery and only using AC power. you could get a cooling station to put the laptop on top of.

[Thom Blair III]

Originally posted by NuCkEnFuTs:

OP you may be able to get away with pulling the battery and only using AC power. you could get a cooling station to put the laptop on top of.

Thanks, but I can't remove the battery on this laptop...it's built-in. I am using as many cooling fans and temperature control apps as I can.

[NuCkEnFuTs]

oh that's right MAC, everything is soldered in place and not removable. is there a safemode you can boot to? if so does the game still drain the battery? i would also turn off V-sync. and change the target frame rate to 60fps.

i would also start saving my pennies for a new system, this is a pretty demanding game and really can tax a system.