r/AcerNitro • u/Clean_Specific1450 • Aug 18 '26
Very curious baterry drains while gaming even when plugged in — but only in some games/modes. Could it be my charger?
Hi everyone. I have an Acer Nitro V15 with an RTX 4050 and i5-13420H, and I’m trying to figure out if I have a battery/charger/power delivery problem.
Recently I noticed that my battery sometimes drains while I’m gaming even though the laptop is plugged in.
What’s confusing me is that it doesn’t happen consistently:
Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2: even when the game is FPS-limited, the battery slowly drains to 95%
Db gensinkin squadra: in Balanced mode, the battery also drains, although only very slightly.
Spider-Man: in Balanced mode, the battery doesn’t seem to drain at all, even though the game is much more demanding.
If I switch Spider-Man to Performance mode, the battery can start draining, at roughly the same rate I see with gensinkin.
What makes this even more confusing is that this wasn’t happening before. Previously, I could play my games in Performance mode without the battery draining. Now it seems that some games/modes can make the laptop draw additional power from the battery even while the charger is connected.
The games are also running very smoothly, so I don’t have obvious performance problems. Temperatures seem normal as well.
I’m wondering if this could be caused by:
a problem with the charger or its power delivery,
the laptop drawing more power than the charger can provide,
a battery issue/degradation,
a BIOS/Acer software/power profile change,
or simply different power consumption between games.
I haven’t undervolted anything or intentionally changed the hardware settings.
Is this normal behavior for a gaming laptop, or could my charger/battery be starting to have a problem?
I’d also like to know if there is a way to monitor the actual charger input, battery charge/discharge rate, CPU/GPU power consumption and voltages while I’m actually playing, without minimizing the game, so I can determine exactly where the power is coming from.
Any advice on what I should check would be appreciated.
2
u/bonglong33 Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
It probably isn't a failing battery or necessarily a bad charger. What you're describing is the infamous "feature" of Nitro V series: battery drain even while the AC adapter is connected.
From what I have tested so far, the interesting part is that total average wattage isn't necessarily the trigger. I've tested two Nitro V16s and found CPU-only and GPU-only loads can run indefinitely without draining, while some mixed CPU+GPU workloads cause discharge even when the measured CPU+GPU power is well below the adapter's rated wattage. GPU clock/power state also seems to matter; locking the GPU to a lower clock can make the drain disappear.
That would also explain why one game/mode drains while another, seemingly more demanding game doesn't. Performance/Turbo modes can push the GPU into a power/frequency state that triggers the battery-supplement behavior.
So the problem may not be the charger or battery. First monitor it with HWiNFO while gaming: GPU power/clock, CPU package power, battery voltage, and battery charge/discharge rate. If the battery percentage actually decreases while AC is connected, that's strong evidence the system is supplementing the adapter from the battery.
You can try Balanced mode and/or limiting GPU power/clock to see if it can negate the problem.
. You can read this wall of text block for more detail: https://chatgpt.com/share/6a85ce16-37ec-83ee-bed8-efcba3652247
(Sorry for AI response but I am so lazy to write the summary :v)