Ubuntu
acpi package

Battery drains too quick - fan always on

Asked by Tiago Machado

I bought an Asus U36 ultrabook some time ago, because it had 4-6 battery hours (average real values).

Now that I updated to Ubuntu 12.10 x64, My battery lasts less than 3:15 with the type of use I would get 5 hours at least in Windows 7.

First I wondered that the GPU was always "on", rather that using the IGP (low consumption within ivy bridge). However I ran some commands that clearly have shown that I do not even have the GPU working (only the IGP) - which is fine by me.

I also installed bumblebee and jupiter to try to control the power consumption - but the problem is the same - altough I might notice that with jupiter is less bad (also, on demand governor works fine) - but clearly this not normal. I suppose that in a "normal" notebook with 1:30 battery would get 30 minutes or something (which is very bad).

It's probably related the very strange fact that: it's cold in my domestic environment, and my fan is ALWAYS working very fast.

What can I do ?

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Daniel Letzeisen (dtl131) said : 		#1

If you have Bumblebee/bbswitch, you may find this page useful (it should already be installed, so look at Usage section): https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch

It might also be useful to post /var/log/Xorg.0.log

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#2

Switching GPU support is still pretty slim. If If you can, disable one of the GPUs in BIOS. It's a lot simpler to avoid the whole switching mess if you intend to run anything but Windows. When it was released, both Nvidia and AMD said they would not be supporting Linux but they did subsequently join the Linux Foundation. They may support it in the near future.

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