Battery discharging while plugged in

[Anejey]

Hello. I have about 4 months old laptop (Acer Aspire 5 41g-125m) and I was playing a game and after turning off the game I noticed my battery dropped to 95%. It already happened several times but I was ignoring it until now. Temperatures stays at 70° - 80°. I'm using charger that came up with it. Is it normal or did I already killed my battery? Or is the charger not powerful enough? It's plugged in 24/7 and I'm using cooling pad if that helps. I can give more info if you need.

[GOD RAYS ON ULTRA™]

The battery doesn't keep changing constantly. I'm very picky with charging my laptop. Every once in a while, I'll let the battery completely discharge itself then charge it up completely. This helps with battery performance.

If it's on the charger too long it will stop changing. It's designed that way to protect your battery.

Let the battery drain until windows shuts itself down. Then leave the laptop off and let the battery cool for a few minutes, then stick it on the charger while laptop is off. When it's done changing, turn it on with the charger still plugged in then unplug from the wall after it boots.

Do this like once a month.

[MA☝Omgwtfbbqstfu™]

lenovo/ibm would let you set the charge thresholds in battery manager to only use a certain % of your battery to extend its life. Lithium ion doesn't like extremes, too full, too empty increase wear. Teslas also have a battery preservation mode you can enable to increase the amount of spare capacity to not charge to preserve battery life span. Your charger isn't doing that, its just stopping the charge and letting it drop 5% before starting again, you can't constant trickle charge such batteries, go boom. Its also why they recommend not leaving it charged in 24/7, unless it has some battery preservation function like the thinkpads.

[Chris Solomon]

I have a new MSI laptop, and the battery only charges to a maximum of 97% before windows changes the status to 'plugged in, not charging' I don't know why I can't get it to 100% full charge. maybe i need to use the battery calibration utility that came with the laptop?

[MA☝Omgwtfbbqstfu™]

Originally posted by Chris Solomon:

I have a new MSI laptop, and the battery only charges to a maximum of 97% before windows changes the status to 'plugged in, not charging' I don't know why I can't get it to 100% full charge. maybe i need to use the battery calibration utility that came with the laptop?

Maybe you can, but as I said you probably don't want to.

[_I_]

poor psu

get a stronger power brick for the laptop

[rotNdude]

The laptop is only 4 months old, contact Acer since the laptop should be under warranty.

[Revelene]

Replace the battery and then learn better battery care.

FYI, modern batteries do NOT have memory, so letting them drain all the way and then charging again is pointless.

The biggest factors that effect longevity for today's batteries are voltage, temp, and cycle. It is best to keep a battery outputting at nominal voltage. Under voltage and max voltage will lessen the lifespan of the battery, keeping most batteries between 30-80 percent charge keeps them within nominal voltage (this varies a little between different capacity/output). Avoid excess charging. Your batteries are only rated for so many charge cycles.

[Anejey]

I already know some of this and I used to keep battery at max 80%. Thing is if it's not plugged perfomance while gaming is much worse and because I used it mainly for gaming and watching movies I keep it always plugged in. I know it can damage the battery but I don't travel anywhere and I almost never need to run on battery. I was thinking about removing the battery but I'm not sure if that will affect warranty or not and I'm not exactly PC nerd so I don't really know how.

[Ad Hominem]

Originally posted by DudeSau©e™:

The battery doesn't keep changing constantly. I'm very picky with charging my laptop. Every once in a while, I'll let the battery completely discharge itself then charge it up completely. This helps with battery performance.

If it's on the charger too long it will stop changing. It's designed that way to protect your battery.

Let the battery drain until windows shuts itself down. Then leave the laptop off and let the battery cool for a few minutes, then stick it on the charger while laptop is off. When it's done changing, turn it on with the charger still plugged in then unplug from the wall after it boots.

Do this like once a month.

I don't think you need to do that anymore with modern (lithium ion) batteries. They're a chemical reaction and only have a finite number of charge/discharge cycles before they wont be able to provide power very well anymore.

It depends on the chemistry of the battery though. Most common these days are lithium ion, and they don't need to do the discharge to dead thing. Nickle cadmium batteries are the ones that have a 'charge memory' where it helps to do the full discharge.

The only benefit to the full discharge once in a while of a lithium ion battery is to keep the device's charge readout accurate, not for the actual health of the battery.

[Ad Hominem]

Originally posted by Dr. Trager:

I already know some of this and I used to keep battery at max 80%. Thing is if it's not plugged perfomance while gaming is much worse and because I used it mainly for gaming and watching movies I keep it always plugged in. I know it can damage the battery but I don't travel anywhere and I almost never need to run on battery. I was thinking about removing the battery but I'm not sure if that will affect warranty or not and I'm not exactly PC nerd so I don't really know how.

I'm thinking your laptop has a battery power profile to use less power when not plugged in. Use less power means less computing power, and worse performance. If the battery is easily removable without taking the machine apart then you can take it out no problem. If you're going to store it for a while out of the machine, charge it up to 40-50% first and keep it away from heat.

It used to be true that you could damage the battery by overcharging them, but it's been pretty common for years now that these gadgets have built in overcharge protection circuits that stop putting power to the battery when it's full, even if it's still plugged in. Same goes for smart phones too.

The other thing you can do is actually do a full discharge. This doesn't do anything for the health of the battery, but it kinda recalibrates the charge readout on the machine to be more accurate, because after a while it can kinda 'forget' how big the battery actually is. I wouldn't do a full discharge after every charge because that will just shorten the battery life, but once in a while it's fine. It's what they're made for right?

https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-tips-for-extending-lithium-ion-battery-life/

Looking at #3 here.

[Anejey]

My laptop froze while gaming so I had to do hard reset and while booting up again it installed some windows updates. After that when I unplug laptop battery drops to 96% and when I plug it back in it changes back to 100%. When I leave it unplugged it seems to be discharging and when I plug it again it is back on 100%.

I also noticed that it shows weird temperature on CPU. Could there be something wrong with motherboard? http://prntscr.com/n4bqyw

EDIT//: After few minutes I unplugged it again and it shows 95%. It is discharging while plugged in even though it shows 100%. I'm only watching YT now.
EDIT2//: I plugged/uplugged it few times and it started charging again.

[Ad Hominem]

I would try just letting it discharge completely. The battery monitor circuits can 'forget' how big the battery really is which will lead to erroneous readings. Letting it discharge completely will remind the battery monitor circuit how big the battery actually is.

The percentage shown is a nice accurate number but we have to remember that batteries are a chemical reaction and can be kinda messy in terms of trying to gauge them.

[_I_]

if its idle it should charge when plugged in

when gaming its common to drain while charging if the brick cant keep up with the laptops load

this is why should only begin gaming on laptops when fully charged

[MA☝Omgwtfbbqstfu™]

You can always get a bigger brick with more capacity.

Again, such batteries aren't charged all the time, 100% is bad for the batteries longevity.