[SOLVED] High (?) power usage on laptop

[vale umbra]

Hi, recently installed arch on my laptop (xiaomi redmibook pro 15 2023 / R7 7840HS, 780m), DE is kde plasma, also I installed kvantum, plymouth, for cool looks (transparency etc), and wallpaper engine locked at 5fps
I used tlp with theese params changed

RADEON_DPM_PERF_LEVEL_ON_AC=high
RADEON_DPM_PERF_LEVEL_ON_BAT=low

And cpupower with powersave governor
Powertop says that discharge rate is about 16-17w when idle (only konsole is open)
Any ways I can lower this number, without disabling transparency, wallpaper engine and all this stuff?
Also, would some other DE (hyprland) use less battery than kde does? (also w/ transparency and stuff)

[obsidian plume]

Switching to a different DE won't impact your laptops power consumption by a lot. (also Hyprland is a WM, not a DE!)

[vale umbra]

"(also Hyprland is a WM, not a DE!)"
Got it

[obsidian plume]

@vale umbra What does cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor say when your laptop is plugged and unplugged?

[vale umbra]

both is powersave

[obsidian plume]

You should probably set CPU_SCALING_GOVERNOR_ON_AC=performance in /etc/tlp.conf for better performance.

Show me the output of ps aux --sort=%cpu | head -n 10

[vale umbra]

Changed it, but cat still prints powersave on ac

[obsidian plume]

systemctl restart tlp.service

[vale umbra]

remains powersave

[obsidian plume]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Powertop

[vale umbra]

what exactly do i need here? or just install it?

[obsidian plume]

install it, make a report, put it here

[obsidian plume]

@vale umbra seems like its the kworker that is causing some issues

@vale umbra try pacman -Syu and reboot. If that won't work, install vanilla linux and boot with it

[vale umbra]

okay

[obsidian plume]

@vale umbra do a pwtop report for both of these cases

[vale umbra]

after -Syu

Vanilla linux means reinstalling arch entirely?

[vale umbra]

also, as kworker you was meaning 53.1% 32.7 kWork commit_work ? (from 2nd report)

but looks like got better, 9.5-10w idle

[obsidian plume]

yeah that's a slight decrease

[obsidian plume]

From what I know that is the estimated idle power consumption for your laptop

I can still help you if you want to further decrease power consumption

[vale umbra]

I guess i need that help, because after a bit power usage went back to ~15-16w
upd: then it went back to 9-10 on idle, and then back to 15, after I opened and closed settings app

[obsidian plume]

have ypu tried the vanilla linux?

[vale umbra]

I didn't
I really don't want to set everything up again ahah

[obsidian plume]

you can just pacman -S linux and then select the linux kernel from grub. As long as you don't remove your main kernel you should be fine

[vale umbra]

should it appear as different choice in grub?
I did pacman ..., but there's only my main kernel
upd: noticed that system lags when on bat (window resizing causes stutters, low-fps animations etc; everything cool on ac, and performance settings on bat), is there any tweaks to avoid that, or I should choose between nice look/power saving/lags?

[obsidian plume]

Yes, under 'Advanced options for <your OS>'

[obsidian plume]

Check your CPU and GPU usage % while on bat

[vale umbra]

cpu is 8-11%
gpu hovers on 50 (system monitor is open), and increases to 80-90 when I open konsole on top of it
upd: changing radeon_dpm_perf... in tlp.conf to performance drops it to from 90 to 30%
Upd2: most of it is wallpaper engine (dropped to 20-30% w/o it), idle discharge dropped to 8-10w

[vale umbra]

tried Arch Linux with Linux linux (if it's the right one), looks same

[obsidian plume]

then it looks like your graphics settings are too extreme. You mentioned using blur, can you check the pass count in your settings?

[vale umbra]

didn't understand what pass count is

[obsidian plume]

The blur quality, in this case

you might want to lower it

[vale umbra]

where do I find it?
is it in desktop effects tab on settings?

[obsidian plume]

probably

i don't use plasma

[vale umbra]

so there's only 2 sliders
blur amount and blur noise, but both seem to not affect discharge rate